How to Make Your Recruitment Process Mobile Friendly

More than 86% of job seekers now use mobile phones to look for jobs, and the number is constantly increasing, so organizations and recruiters must make the recruiting process mobile-friendly to maintain a competitive advantage in the talent ecosystem. Most importantly, the danger of losing out on the best talent is more significant than ever for recruiters whose job ads and hiring procedures have not been adapted for mobile recruiting. 

Maintaining a mobile-friendly hiring process is crucial for acquiring top talent online. Here are some tips for employers on achieving this. But before that, let’s understand what mobile recruitment is and its significant benefits.  

What is Mobile Recruitment?

Mobile recruiting is a talent acquisition approach that allows job applicants to participate in a recruitment process just by using their mobile phones. 

According to a survey by Glassdoor, nearly 45% of job seekers are searching for jobs through their mobile phones at least once a day in 2014 when only 19% of recruiters were ready to build a mobile compliant career website by 2016. In the meanwhile, according to a LinkedIn report the percentage of mobile job seekers grew from 45 to 78 by 2016 thereby making mobile recruiting an unavoidable component of the hiring strategy for employers and recruiters who wanted to stay ahead in the recruitment ecosystem. 

What are the processes involved in mobile recruitment?

This process involves identifying and attracting both active and passive applicants through mobile-optimized job advertisements and job networking platforms.  

This also involves receiving applications through a mobile-friendly medium and conducting candidate screening such as skill assessments and interviews in a mobile-friendly manner. 

Advantages of Mobile Recruitment

• Helps attract a larger talent pool.
• Helps in talent retention during the application process.
• It makes several recruitment processes, such as interview scheduling, pre-screening tests, etc., less complicated.
• Simplifies Candidate Relationship Management, thereby improving candidate responsiveness.
• Enables quick and efficient employer, recruiter, and candidate communication.
• Reduces offer rejection rates.
• Shortens the overall hiring time.

Steps to Make Recruitment Mobile Friendly

1. Keep job postings brief and to the point

For any given job opening, it is essential to provide prospective candidates with all the basic information they should know before applying. The idea is to keep the job description simple to understand to encourage a good number of applicants.

2. Keep the application process simple 

One of the main challenges of mobile recruiting lies with the tiny keyboard and the screen. Due to this, reading lengthy job postings and filling up long online forms become challenging, leading to candidates turning away during the application process. Therefore, it is important to keep the application process simple and mobile-friendly.  

3. Utilize job listings on social media  

Many of your potential candidates are on their mobile phones and could be there on social media right now. Therefore, using social media platforms to promote your job openings becomes crucial if you want your job advertisements to have the highest chance of connecting with mobile consumers  There are integrated job boards on LinkedIn, Facebook and so on, using which you can attract candidates with both unpaid and paid social advertising. LinkedIn makes it easier to attract and acquire passive candidates.  

4. Activate ‘LinkedIn Apply’ 

In a traditional online job application process, the candidates are expected to go to the career page on the employer's website, where they must fill in the application form or upload their CV. Instead, it is much more straightforward to Apply with LinkedIn. It also enables recruiters to obtain critical candidate data from their respective LinkedIn accounts, such as employment experience, skills, certification, and educational qualifications.    

5. Minimize data-entry questions 

A traditional job application process involves application forms. This demands an effort to fill in pertinent details. Moreover, it becomes time-consuming and redundant while applying for multiple roles. The more straightforward solution is to allow applicants to upload documents such as their CV, cover letter, and certificates with a single click. In places where forms and data entry become essential such as in a pre-screening test, surveys and feedback, keep the question to the point and simplify it using drop-down options and checklists.   

6. Mobile compliant aspect ratio 

Any website or an online platform should be optimized for a seamless mobile interface. Candidates most likely visit the employer’s website to learn more about the organization before applying. Here it is essential to keep the website’s aspect ratio mobile optimized and test whether all the website components, such as the chatbot, links, texts, videos, and career page and its components are visible and functional through mobile phones. 

7. Enable mobile notifications 

It is vital to keep the applicants informed regarding their application status. Usually, communication with candidates happens over emails. As the click rates of emails are generally low, it is recommended to send important notifications and status updates through WhatsApp and SMS. This excellent talent retention strategy can effectively prevent candidates from ditching the application process, missing the test and interview rounds, late offer acceptance, and unresponsiveness in general. 

Challenges

Besides all the benefits mobile recruiting offers, there are some challenges that you will have to tackle. Several employers use third-party career sites for job postings that are not mobile-friendly, which is a hurdle.  

Providing an email contact to drop the CV is a solution for such cases. Also, some organizations outsource the entire talent acquisition process or some critical steps. In such cases, it is vital to confirm whether the recruitment service provider uses a mobile-friendly hiring process.  

To Sum Up

Since most job seekers use their phones to search for employment, making the process as satisfying as possible is critical. Doing so will help you draw in top talent, keeping you ahead in a highly competitive candidate-centric hiring market.

Fill this form by populating the Template Name with “Mobile Hiring” to get access to important stats regarding mobile recruitment during each stage of the hiring process so that it will be easier for you to prioritize the hiring steps that need to be mobile optimized.