Why you need a mobile recruiting strategy

The importance of mobile recruiting could not be more evident in today’s business world. Now, more than ever, job seekers and recruiters are relying heavily on mobile devices and remote hiring practices as their tools of choice.

Consider that, 67% of job seekers use mobile devices to apply for jobs. That means if your hiring process isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re being left behind.

But “mobile recruiting” is more than just using your phone to hire people. A lot goes into deploying a successful mobile recruiting strategy. This article will explore what’s needed.

What is mobile recruiting?

Mobile recruiting uses technology and new workflows to find active and passive candidates and hire them. This can fall into two categories:

• Hiring on mobile.
• Recruitment workflows on mobile.

Hiring on mobile creates an application experience that can be completed in its entirety on a mobile device. This might involve:

• Mobile career sites
• Mobile job boards
• Social media recruiting
• Text message communication

This type of hiring aims to provide candidates with a seamless way to use their devices to find and apply for your jobs.

Recruitment workflows on mobile, on the other hand, refer to the hiring process and tasks that recruiters complete when hiring candidates. This might include:

• Job creation,
• Writing recruitment ads,
• Reviewing candidates,
• Internal and external communication
• Extending job offers.

In this case, recruiting staff will typically use mobile recruiting apps that allow them to work collaboratively on their mobile devices.

So, mobile recruiting is a series of tools and workflows that enable a mobile-first method of working for recruiters and job seekers.

Why is mobile recruiting important?

Mobile recruiting taps into an overwhelming demand from job seekers and recruiters alike who want to be able to complete tasks on a mobile device. Workforce demographics have shifted dramatically in favor of Millennials and Gen Y, both of whom are mobile-first generations. As such, adopting mobile recruiting is critical to future-proofing your hiring process.

Apart from this generational shift, mobile recruiting also provides many benefits from a candidate experience and workflow optimization perspective.

Here are some of those benefits:

1. Recruiters can manage the hiring process anywhere using a mobile device. Recruitment mobile apps allow your hiring team to schedule interviews, provide internal feedback, communicate with candidates, and work entirely remotely, all from their mobile devices. This provides a great deal of flexibility to your team and ensures consistent collaboration regardless of location.
2. Job seekers get a seamless experience on every device. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of a well-executed mobile recruitment system. Job seekers can search, apply, and communicate with your team on any device they choose. And, more importantly, that experience is consistent regardless of their device. The bottom line: this provides a great and expected, candidate experience.
3. Recruiters and candidates can connect through their mobile devices. 90% of text messages that are sent are read within three minutes. That means this medium is the most effective way to reach candidates quickly. This, combined with an email to mobile, push notifications, and chat apps, help to improve your overall responsiveness to candidates. This also dramatically works to improve the overall candidate experience.
4. It allows recruiters to tap into social media and cross-platform analytics. Mobile recruiting and social media apps, paired with artificial intelligence, have given recruiters a literal treasure trove of useful data to use when prospecting candidates. Most recruiting apps will integrate with major social media platforms, meaning you can access more information about your candidate than ever before, and integrate that automatically into your ATS.

Of course, these benefits will only be realized if mobile recruiting is adequately used. Here are some dos and don’ts for mobile recruitment that will help you get started.

Dos and Don’ts of mobile recruiting

Like any new system or technology, the first step in deployment is determining your needs and your resource capabilities. These “dos and don’ts” are intended to showcase a best-in-class mobile recruiting strategy, which may be too lofty or unnecessary for your business. So, pick and choose these points as you see fit!

Do

• Create an end-to-end mobile experience that enables cross-platform functionality for every step, from application to job acceptance.
• Migrate, or mirror, communications between hiring managers and candidates to recruiting apps to centralize storage.
• Simplify and streamline the application process so that it can be completed quickly on any device.
• Communicate via text at non-critical stages of the application process, like confirmation or interview scheduling.
• Create a custom user experience for your website, career site, application portal, and job board that adapts to the user’s device.
• Ensure that your properties work seamlessly on all devices, and don’t crash, bug out, or force the candidate to jump to a different device.
• Use automation in your recruiting app to handle tasks like resume parsing, simple communications, analytics.
• Incorporate video interviews and collaborative reviews into your hiring process if your mobile recruiting app supports it.
• Use saved email templates to make it easier for recruiters to notify applicants at critical stages of the process from their mobile devices.

Don’t

• Shift your entire workflow and process documents to a mobile environment. Focus on what works best for your team and your candidates, and integrate elements of mobile recruiting where it makes sense.
• Use informal channels like text messaging for more serious conversations like pay negotiations or rejections. Treat these sensitive conversations seriously, and ensure that you speak directly with candidates if possible.
• Force candidates to switch between devices to start or complete an application. They should, ideally, be able to complete any application in its entirety from any device.
• Use a one-size-fits-all approach to building pages or application portals. The user experience should be tailored to as many popular devices as possible.
• Assume only young people care about the mobile experience, and forget to write messaging that appeals to all demographics.
• Try to do it all yourself. Bring in experts who know about mobile apps, web development, SaaS applications, and so on, to help get you started on the right track.

Now that we’ve covered off some general do’s and don’ts, let’s look at what you’ll need to get started with mobile recruiting.

What you’ll need to start mobile hiring

As mentioned, mobile recruiting is a combination of technology and workflows. To implement a quality mobile recruiting system, you’ll need the right tech stack, and the right intelligence guiding your decision-making.

To that end, here are three things you’ll need - or need to do - to be successful at mobile recruiting.

1. Mobile-friendly websites

This applies to any and all web properties that a candidate might visit to research or apply for a job. At the very least, these websites or pages should be responsive to mobile devices. Ideally, you’d have a fully customized user experience for each major device that a candidate may be using.

Luckily, most major web platforms and content management systems support mobile responsiveness. Or, you can onboard a recruiting app that can take over creating and hosting your ads and career pages in a mobile-friendly environment.

2. Mobile recruiting app

Mobile recruiting apps are something of a one-stop-shop for all of the advice we’ve included in this post. Many of the most robust recruiting apps act as ATS platforms that incorporate features for internal and external communication, interviewing, resume parsing, and analytics. The best ones offer all of these capabilities on any device and are specifically tailored to mobile users.

3. Data on what works

Before you decide what you are (and aren’t) going to implement, you need to know what is currently working, what needs improvement, and what might help. To find that out, you need to do some competitive research to learn what others in your industry are doing around mobile recruiting.

You should also consider asking current and former candidates what they thought of your candidate experience. Find the specific areas that need improvement and focus on beefing them up.

Lastly, you should leverage all data you have that can provide insight into your hiring process. Where do the efficiencies (and inefficiencies) lie? What devices do your applicants typically use? Where are the drop off points? Does your current process account for new trends in mobile usage or devices? All of these questions will help you dig deeper into where and how you can improve.

What’s clear is that mobile recruiting isn’t going away. It’s something that virtually every recruiter and company will need to get a handle on if they haven’t already. We hope this article has given you a good place to start!