4 Hiring Apps To Keep You in The Game in 2013

As we approach the end of 2012, many of us will be taking stock of the key developments of the last 12 months and reviewing our recruiting practices and strategies to ensure they are appropriate for 2013. The landscape, processes, approach, culture and technologies relating to the talent attraction sector are continually shifting and evolving and it is important that we don’t blindly follow our existing path, and that we take a look forward and develop an approach which allows us to excel and lead the way or simply stay in the game in the likely landscape of 2013.

Since 2012 and 2013 seem to be the period over which mobile is going mainstream, I thought it would be a good time to look at the likely forces driving the smart-phone based candidate market in 2013 and outline which apps can help  to give you the edge in the 2013 sourcing environment.

Mobile candidate market 2013

Smart-phone usage has been growing sharply and reports suggest that up to 37% of Americans are using smart-phones and this is expected to rise to 43.1% in 2013.

We are also  expecting to the rise of 4G in 2013 which means mobile data speeds could increase from 3 megabits to 5 megabits of data per second and more, so almost doubling.

For the first time in 2012, it seems that more smart-phones were shipped than PCs, so we can see an increasing reliance on smart-phone usage by job seekers in 2013.

And we expect to see another first in 2013 as Boeing has recently announced it will allow cell phone usage on planes in 2013, opening up this previously untapped market. (Recruiters now wake executives up from their mid-Atlantic slumber with the latest job opportunities!)

This all points to candidate smart-phone usage levels like we have never seen before and employers should respond by further optimizing their hiring processes to enable smart-phone access if they want to fully engage with the talent market. There are 4 key apps that can help with this.

1. Video Interviewing on the go. Use smart-phone video interviewing apps like HireVue which enable you to develop interview questions and send them to smart-phone users who can video their response from their smart-phone and send them back to you. This is dynamic video interviewing and essential if you want to fully penetrate the 2013 mobile candidate market.

2. Mobile optimized careers site. Not really an app I know, but you should be reviewing your company careers site and making sure it is mobile optimized. Key features should included automatic resizing to suit mobile screens, easier to use search functionality, requiring minimal clicks to make the final job application.

3. Mobile optimized ATS. Use a tool like Jibe which is a mobile optimized job application system to integrate with your existing ATS. Smart-phone users can upload their resume from the cloud or their own system or they can generate a resume on the fly using their LinkedIn profile and submit this.

4. Employee referral mobile apps. Recruiting via employee referrals has become the dominant and most effective form of hire in 2012 according to surveys by Jobvite, CareerXRoads and others – and this trend is expected to continue in 2013. With employees being more mobile than ever, equip your roving work-force with referrals apps like Meshhire or Jobvite, so they can refer top candidates to your hiring team on the go, giving you even greater penetration of the candidate market in 2013.

Having a hiring process that is re-engineered this way will enable you to effectively engage with the extremely mobile candidate marketplace that is predicted for 2013.