How much do you care about making your recruitment strategies mobile-friendly? Is mobile a key part of your recruitment strategies, or are you currently treating it as a secondary, nice-to-have feature in your talent acquisition process?
Many recruiters are now taking mobile-first recruitment more seriously, not only because people all over the world are glued to their phones, but because job boards are recording unprecedented amounts of mobile activity on their platforms.
75% of job search traffic on Indeed comes from mobile channels alone. So if you are looking to attract talent in the present and find ways to target top candidates in the future, mobile-friendly recruitment needs to become an integral part of your recruitment strategies.
The good news is that several recruiters already practice recruiting techniques that are beneficial to mobile-first talent acquisition. What is lacking is simply a strategic connection to understand what each aspect does for their strategies.
The even better news, however, is that nailing mobile-first recruitment strategies starts with the few small tweaks we will be discussing in this article.
Read on to find out everything you need to know to ensure you have the fundamentals of mobile-first talent acquisition down, so you can develop more comprehensive and effective recruitment strategies across all channels.
What are mobile-first recruitment strategies, and why are they so important in recruitment?
Mobile-first recruitment strategies make the most out of all pertinent mobile channels, like mobile-friendly job boards, apps, social media ads, and email.
With billions of smartphone users around the world, mobile-friendly recruitment can be seen as an improvement to your candidate experience, since most of the talent out there are already on their smartphones by default.
By placing a strong emphasis on mobile platforms in the hiring process, you will get to show candidates your job openings as they go about their daily lives, be it on their commute to work, during downtime on their smartphones, or while they are browsing their social media platform of choice.
This factor makes it virtually impossible to deny the positive impact of making mobile channels a part of your recruitment strategies. And by far, the biggest myth about mobile recruitment is that it can be difficult to execute.
This could not be farther from the truth, and with modern tools like applicant tracking systems (ATS) to collect information from all applicants across all channels, candidate information has never been easier to manage than it is now (more on this below).
The risks of not having or using mobile-first recruitment strategies
By far, the biggest risk from not using mobile-first recruitment strategies is the possibility of missing out on chances to reach more people with your job listings. This means there is an increased risk of lagging behind other recruiters or recruitment firms in the race to find high-quality candidates.
This becomes all the more apparent once you look at some statistics from the present and forecasts for the future.
As older generations gradually retire from the workforce, millennials and Generation Z’ers will eventually come in as the key working age group. This article by Pew Research states that Millennials started overtaking Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation in 2019. Pew has been doing research on millennials for decades, and they have effectively classified millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996.
With this in mind, it is useful to compare this finding with workforce forecasts and mobile usage statistics.
Research by Deloitte estimates that by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials. By then, these individuals will be from 29 - 44 years of age, meaning they will have already started gaining significant work experience and will likely be active in job seeking.
And according to this Forbes article, millennials spend an average of five hours on their phones.
This is not even counting Generation Z, who were born from 1997 - 2012. The first Gen Z’ers are already working, and the same Forbes article points out that almost 40% of smartphone users are Gen Z’ers/
While 69% of them reportedly own a laptop or PC, 75% of Gen Z’ers chose smartphones as their device of choice.
Based on these statistics, it can be inferred that mobile will be one of the largest potential channels for recruitment, both now and in the future. And evidently, in some age groups, this change has already started.
This is precisely why recruiters and HR leaders must not miss out on these developments, and start seriously considering mobile as a key channel in finding new recruits. And now that we have covered the statistics, let us explore a guide to ensuring your recruitment strategies are mobile-friendly.
How to introduce mobile-first recruitment strategies to your existing recruitment process
Below, you will find a list of three key points to consider when it comes to mobile-first recruitment strategies. As long as you keep these points in mind, the mobile side of your talent acquisition process will be more comprehensive overall.
1. Prioritize posting job listings on mobile-friendly job boards.
Given the prevalence of mobile device use in the modern population, most popular job boards have already optimized their interfaces for a mobile-friendly user experience.
However, to apply a more data-driven approach, consider doing some research on the job boards you are interested in using. Start with the most popular job boards that are relevant to your target candidates.
Secondarily, you could also find out how many downloads the app-versions of these job boards have received, either from information on their website, or by typing the job board’s name in an app store and looking at the number of downloads it has received.
However, achieving effective mobile-first recruitment strategies does not simply mean posting to mobile-friendly job boards. It is also very much about how to manage all the extra channels, and the increased applications that come with it.
Consider using an applicant tracking system (ATS) that allows for all applications received from all platforms to be sent into the system. This makes it much easier to manage hundreds or even thousands of applications at one time.
An ATS like Manatal, for example, allows you to post job openings across 2,500+ channels, several of which are mobile-friendly. Here are some of the platforms that Manatal can collect and store applications from, directly into your talent pool:
As long as you ensure that you have prioritized posting on mobile-friendly job boards, this first step will be taken care of.
RELATED: Job Boards: A Hiring Channel Recruiters Must Pay Attention To
2. Post jobs on social media.
Meta’s recent Q4 2021 user performance report stated that there was an average of 1.93 billion daily active users on Facebook as of December 2021. That is around one-fourth of the world’s entire population of 7.7 billion.
In the United States alone, Facebook is able to reach anywhere between 230 to 270 million people aged 16 to 65+ via their mobile and desktop platform (estimated figure via customized data from Facebook’s Ad Manager as of 2022).
For you, this means that chances are the candidates you are looking for are very much still on social media. And this is precisely why you need to post job openings on social media, to ensure you do not miss out on great candidates who might be using their favored platform.
Optionally, you could push for a paid ad strategy to target your job openings to more people, but this depends on your recruitment firm or company’s preferences on budget allocation. However, regardless of marketing strategies, social media platforms are not to be overlooked.
Applications from social media can also be sent to your ATS, the same way they can be delivered from job boards via Manatal’s platform. This is made available so that posting on social media does not seem like a chore.
READ MORE: Your Guide to Social Media Recruiting
3. Ensure your career page is mobile-friendly.
The first two points in this list were all about external posting to attract candidates and improve your recruitment strategies. This point, however, is all about optimizing your internal channels for mobile.
A career page is essentially a page on a company’s website that includes all of its available openings and career paths. Typically they include a small introduction about a company’s vision and mission, along with some examples of daily life at the company.
A website’s career page is one of the most valuable channels in getting high-quality candidates, because the people who apply this way are generally compelled enough to fill in their personal details directly with the company.
Imagine an applicant stumbling on your job opening on a job board, along with a sea of other available positions from other companies. Compare that with someone who thoroughly researched your company beforehand and feels compelled enough to apply for an open position on your website.
The latter ideally would have taken the time to read up on the company’s values, vision, mission, and core values before deciding to apply.
The truth is that in the end, it would be difficult to measure which of these types of applicants is more qualified than the other from the application stage, without first evaluating them.
However, without a functioning career page to begin with, you will likely miss out on massive opportunities to attract such applicants, and hence will run the risk of losing out to other recruiters.
And with modern ATS’, creating a career page can now take minutes of configuration instead of weeks of web development. For example, Manatal’s ATS currently offers a career page feature, which allows you to create a page (also optimized for mobile) at no additional cost.
All applications from this career page will also be fed directly into your talent pool in the ATS, increasing ease of access when you are creating your candidate shortlists.
This is why it is now much easier to include career page entries in your recruitment strategies, compared to the traditional way of linking the career page to a separate backend software.
RELATED: Craft a Solid Career Page with an ATS
What Can You Take Away from All This?
Implementing mobile-first recruitment strategies is not as difficult as many may think it is, and the results can often be exponential for any recruiter looking to take their recruitment strategies to the next level.
In this article, we covered three key points to ensure that your mobile-first recruitment strategies will result in great hires.
- By prioritizing your job listings on mobile-friendly job boards, you will be able to reap the increased reach that job boards give you, while getting an easy mobile platform where applicants can fill in simple forms and attach their resumes/CVs. It is both easier for the applicant to apply, and for you, this makes it much easier to streamline several applications into one platform, like an ATS.
- By posting jobs on social media, you are capitalizing on the billions of daily social network users who spend hours on their smartphones each day, and;
- By ensuring your career page is mobile-friendly, you will be able to maximize your potential to attract people who are interested in applying directly with you, through the platform of their choice.
At the end of the day, mobile-first recruitment strategies work well because they prioritize the applicant’s candidate experience over everything else. Compared to the traditional method of endless back-and-forth emails, calls, and making appointments, going mobile-first in your recruitment is both more convenient for you and the candidate.
If you are interested in launching mobile-first recruitment strategies soon, consider subscribing to an ATS to keep up with the increased amounts of applications. With an ATS, like Manatal, you will be able to post across thousands of job boards with its automation feature. All applications from both mobile and non-mobile will be stored inside the ATS’ database, for you to access whenever you need to.
To find out how Manatal’s ATS can help you transform the way you recruit and improve your mobile-first recruitment strategies, we currently have a free, 14-day trial to use the entire platform. To sign up for the free trial, click here.
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