Mobile recruiting isn’t easy to define because it’s constantly evolving. Every day its scope seems to expand a little bit further and another way to use mobile technology for recruiting emerges. This can create confusion and intimidation for employers when it comes building the right mobile recruiting strategy.
Matthew Kosinski, Editor at Recruiter.com, defines mobile recruiting as “the all-encompassing name we give to any and all recruiting tactics that make use of mobile technology.”
Despite the constant growth of mobile recruiting, companies can’t afford to miss out on the hiring boom taking place on mobile. 9 out of 10 job seekers are using mobile phones and tablets in their job search, and whether you are hiring hourly workers, millennials, engineers, nurses, drivers or any other type of professional – they are all spending more time than ever researching and applying for career opportunities on their mobile devices.
By understanding what types of tactics exist today, you can make better decisions when it comes to leveraging mobile to achieve your recruiting goals. Here is what the current mobile recruiting landscape looks like throughout the recruitment funnel:
Candidate Attraction // Nurturing
Email is dead when it comes to candidate engagement; open rates and response rates have plummeted and don’t get me started on the struggle to get candidate replies on inMail. Mobile recruiting by text messaging now offer personalized campaigns at scale that produce 3x the response rates of other forms of recruiting communication.
Employers that have a daily presence on social media not only improve their brands but also create opportunities to start conversations with passive candidates. Because so much social activity happens on mobile devices, the two often go hand in hand. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are essential networks that every recruiter should be updating on a daily basis to attract candidates.
Shortcodes and keywords are helping employers use text messaging attract candidates to fill their talent pipeline with ease. Companies can now post short codes in restaurants, retail locations, college campuses, anywhere you can possibly imagine, and making it so that candidates can apply for jobs with text messages. Nurturing candidates can be done easily by sending update messages that describe new job postings and company information.
Job Application // Interviewing
When a candidate visits your careers page using their mobile device, it should be just as easy to read a job description and apply for a job on that device as it would be using a laptop or desktop. By not making your job applications mobile compatible you are missing out on talent and branding your company as a dinosaur.
There are also a number of different mobile apps that can facilitate the process of attracting and engaging candidates. Posting open position through a mobile app can be tempting for employers because it eliminates the process of creating a mobile careers page, but job seekers often become frustrated by having to download multiple mobile apps to apply for different positions.
Many hiring teams are choosing to forgo the traditional cover letter and resume application process since these documents can be difficult to transmit on mobile devices and are considered outdated. Automated text messaging can help recruiters qualify candidates before they even start their conversation about career opportunities, and eliminate the need for a tedious application that candidates don’t want to complete and recruiters don’t want to read.
Employee Onboarding // Engagement
A number of employers have opted to use a mobile app to help onboard employees, seek their feedback and generate a dialogue around opportunities to improve the employee experience. The negative aspects of a mobile app here are that it can be expensive to develop and maintain for companies, and employees must own a smartphone and deal with the constant updates that come with mobile apps.
Text messaging is another way to use mobile for employee onboarding and engagement. Send messages to new employees that remind them where their onboarding training takes places and to complete all required paperwork can keep new hire start dates on track. Additionally, when employee surveys and other forms of engagement are created all employees are able to respond regardless of what type of mobile device they are carrying.
Mobile recruiting is tough to define because it’s constantly evolving, but that means there are more options than ever to take advantage and leverage emerging technologies to make better hires. For more helpful hints on how to use mobile throughout the recruitment funnel, download our eBook “Mobile Recruiting 2.0: How to Use Text Messages to Simplify Candidate Engagement.”
