Mobile recruiting

Mobile Recruiting is the act of finding job candidates actively and passively through the use of mobile career pages and internet recruiting strategies through social platforms. Mobile recruiting is a dynamic and growing industry with over 19% of job seekers using mobile devices to search for jobs.^[1]

Traditionally, recruiters have used tools such as online job boards like Craigslist, but the increase in mobile subscriptions has led to new strategies such as mobile search engine optimization, mobile career pages, and highly targeted mobile recruitment campaigns.^[2]

Mobile Career Sites and the Candidate Experience

While mobile devices are more convenient for jobseekers and passive candidates who discover jobs through web searches or by clicking on mobile ads or social media links, most companies do not currently have mobile-optimized websites. According to one recent study by Potential Park, only about 16% of the surveyed organizations had career sites that were ready to be viewed on a mobile device,^[3] and another recent statistic suggests that only 8% of the Fortune 100 have mobile-optimized career sites.^[4] In Kenya with a 73% mobile phone penetration, mobile phones are the tools of choice by the blue collar informal sector. Products such as M-Kazi, a mass market blue collar recruitment platform, allows a user to build and create a "mini-CV" on any generic 2g phone using basic SMS and USSD technology.

The lack of mobile-ready career sites leaves candidates without a way to search and apply for jobs while on the go or away from a traditional desktop screen, which is increasingly how today's candidates are accessing the internet. Google's 2013 Multi-Screen World Study suggests that, combined, nearly 50% of our on-screen media interactions happen from a smartphone or tablet, and that between 63-81% of the time, we switch between devices to accomplish tasks such as searching for information, using social networks, or browsing the web.^[5] With mobile job searches doubling each year^[6] and 40% of candidates abandoning a non-mobile-optimized apply process,^[7] human resource departments will be hard-pressed to offer solutions for candidates who will inevitably be discovering, searching, and applying for their companies' careers from mobile devices.

At present, several technology companies such as Work4 and iMomentous are working to create a bridge between companies' applicant tracking systems and mobile application technology in order to better optimize the candidate apply experience for mobile.

Mobile and Social Recruiting

Increasingly, candidates view and apply for jobs they find on social networks. As more and more companies begin to use social media to market to and recruit from their target audiences, so will those companies need to account for the number of candidates who choose to interact with companies' recruiting messages through their mobile devices.

Currently, Facebook is the number one most-used app in the US^[8] (with 75% of social media users accessing the network from their mobile devices, followed by Twit­ter at 28%, Google+ at 26%, Insta­gram at 13%, and Pin­ter­est at 9%).^[9] The numbers of users who connect with companies via their social networks represent a large opportunity for the recruitment industry to provide the ability for potential candidates to interact with careers they learn about through their online connections.

In response to this opportunity, there have been many companies founded in order to provide mobile recruiting technology, as well as many social recruiting companies that integrate mobile-friendly careers sites directly into their social recruiting solutions.

References