5 Predictions for the Future of Mobile Recruiting

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Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question about the employment market you’d like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter Q&A!

Today’s Question: At Recruiter.com, we’re wondering what the future of mobile recruiting will look like. What do you think? What tips, tools, technologies, or tactics will dominate the mobile recruiting space in the coming years – and why?


BobBentz1. Geo-Conquesting Will Help Employers Target Candidates

The key to finding candidates for hard-to-fill jobs such as nursing and truck driving is to concentrate on passive candidates since most people in these professions already have jobs. What makes mobile so valuable is that third-party data provides so much information about the candidates. No other medium has ever had the ability to match job titles and interests with available openings.

One tactic that is working very well for our agency customers is geo-conquesting. With geo-conquesting, we can bid high to programmatically show up in apps and on mobile websites at a specific geographic location. So, for instance, if we are recruiting nurses for a hospital, we may decide to geo-conquest nurses working the night shift at competing hospitals in the area. In the case of recruiting truck drivers, we geo-conquest truck stops in the region since truckers will inevitably be looking at their Facebook pages and checking sports scores during their rest periods.

Bob Bentz, Purplegator  

head shot2. Search Engine Results Rankings Will Become Even More Important

The future of mobile recruiting will follow much the same pattern as the rest of mobile search. While I’m no prophet, I think the signs are clear that mobile search is becoming more and more streamlined for user speed and ease. This goes far deeper than just having the fastest Wi-Fi or 3-4-5-6-7-8G network. It also means that search engines themselves are optimizing their formats and algorithms to account for an even shorter user attention spans on the mobile scale.

We can see this in developments like the Gboard. The Gboard’s single results panel for mobile usage revolutionizes mobile search (if it really catches on) because it limits search results to a single result. It’s like the featured snippet, but on steroids. That means that if you are really looking for success in the mobile market, you are going to have to be aiming for the No. 1 search engine results page (SERP) ranking for your given mobile search campaign, as opposed to the top eight to get onto the first page of the SERP previously. It not only makes the market more competitive by nature, but also makes advertising (which will inevitably be introduced, even if it hasn’t been yet) a very daunting cloud off on the horizon of single results panels.

Sean Martin, Directive Consulting  

Dominick Bernal3. Candidates Will Demand Simple Interfaces

Recruiters and developers should recognize that mobile is not an exotic animal to be chained, but a fact of everyday life. Many are overthinking mobile. Developers should simply put themselves in the shoes of users to optimize mobile platforms.

For example, while job seekers will run searches on mobile devices, when it comes time to submit a resume or fill out an application, many choose to use a laptop or desktop. Perhaps they prefer the full-size keyboard or the larger screen.

However, there are job seekers who don’t have regular access to a laptop or desktop or don’t have a resume. Developers should continue to work toward simple and easy interfaces, but also consider providing a way for a job seeker to express interest without first filling out the full application. A savvy recruiter could then engage the candidate in a timely manner and ask them to follow through on the resume/application piece.

Another way to make it easy for job seekers is to make it possible to apply using a social profile, particularly as we see more and more merging of social profiles. It’s fairly simple to incorporate a button for “Apply with LinkedIn,” for example.

Dominick Bernal, Decision Toolbox 

christy4. Recruiters Will Host Web Chats to Catch Candidate Attention

As business owners struggle to reach the most talented millennials and new graduates, mobile recruiting techniques will continue to increase. The newest technique I’ve heard of in Chicago is to host huge web chat events via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Like any recruiting technique, there are mixed reviews on how candidates respond to being contacted on their personal social media profiles.

Christy Hopkins, Fit Small Business 

MichaelIacona_Rake5. Recruiters Will Have to Pay Close Attention to Job Seekers’ Basic Needs

With so many ways to connect job seekers with employers, the future of mobile recruiting has the potential to look overwhelming. Recent research from my company, Rake, shows 87 percent of job seekers currently find it difficult to keep track of their job search efforts. This is most likely because 48 percent of job seekers use 4-6 job boards at a time. Now, add mobile recruiting efforts coming at them on top of that.

The spreadsheet is quickly becoming a thing of the past as mobile recruiting apps and tactics require job seekers to keep in stride with mobile-optimized tracking strategies. With technology always evolving, it will become more and more essential for recruiters to keep in mind the way job seekers track and apply to jobs and ensure they are offering easily trackable opportunities that communicate with organizational applications. No matter how advanced mobile recruiting technology gets, it’s futile if it leaves basic job seeker needs behind.

Michael Iacona, Rake  


By Recruiter Q&A