“What’s your mobile recruitment strategy?!?”
If you spend any time in the recruiting, hiring, or HR space online, “mobile recruiting” is catchphrase you’ve seen and skimmed across hundreds or thousands of times by now. I’m sure it’s sometimes tempting to brush it off as just part of a series of buzzwords designed to sell newfangled software, marketing, and recruiting services.
Much like Search Engine Optimization, the idea of mobile recruiting is frequently talked about without really establishing what it means and how you can start to do it. So let’s get back to basics!
What is mobile recruiting?
Mobile recruiting is the act of advertising to, or otherwise trying to attract, candidates through a medium, platform, or venue that is inclusive to mobile users.
That’s it. That’s the whole deal.
“Mobile candidates” are not, necessarily, a special sub-species of candidates who only exist on their mobile devices. However, they may predominantly conduct their job search on their mobile devices. (Why? Because it’s convenient. Because their boss can’t search their phone’s browser history, and they can do it while waiting for the bus.)
Mobile recruiting doesn’t mean you must segment your recruiting efforts into mobile and non-mobile. It’s about being inclusive of candidates when they are on mobile devices.
For those who are hiring, the tricky part is making it possible for candidates to apply to jobs using their mobile devices, not just discover them. Older Applicant Tracking Systems and job boards involve long processes that can make candidates feel as though, by putting in the effort to apply, they just wrote a novel for you and then threw it into a black hole. Now try doing that when you need a powerful microscope or some serious zooming-in-and-scrolling-side-to-side skills just to read the damn application page!
From a hiring perspective, you might worry that by making applying as accessible as possible, you’re opening yourself up to the kind of candidates who take the quantity-over-quality approach to applying for jobs. You know the kind. They send out a hundred resumes a day to any job that they could be remotely qualified for, and even those they’re not.
Most hiring managers would prefer to have ten great candidates to evaluate than a hundred, mostly unsuitable, candidates. Some would even argue that if a candidate can’t be bothered to fill out your gruesomely long application form and screening questions, they probably don’t want the job anyway, so why cater to them? Well, if your approach to hiring is something akin to candidate hazing, you shouldn’t be surprised when the best candidates don’t want you.
A culture shift is required to make things easier for both the people doing the applying and the people doing the hiring to become more effective and efficient at connecting with each other.
So how do you merge the needs of a good candidate experience, hiring processes that don’t result in bottlenecks of having to sift through large swaths of unqualified applicants, and the need to be inclusive of mobile users?
That’s the very problem that Careerleaf is trying to solve with its recruiting technology. Our company’s first product was a consumer-facing website with a suite of job search tools designed to make it easier to search and apply for jobs strategically and intelligently. Having since pivoted and expanded to develop a full-solution proprietary platform for job boards, we remain fiercely dedicated to making things better for everyone involved in these processes.
That’s why we not only have the best tools available for job seekers, our software also gives employers a simple way to advertise open positions, search for candidates, and evaluate applicants–and we make it all available on beautifully designed mobile-responsive websites. And yes, when employers post jobs on Careerleaf-powered websites, their candidates can apply on their mobile devices. Easy peasy.
With us, your job board or recruitment website can be the venue that is inclusive to mobile candidates. It’s that simple.
Mobile Recruiting: not so mystifying after all.