Candidates Use of Mobile for Job Search Increases

As reported in an interview between leading online recruitment marketing firm Web Based Recruitment and Google’s Head of Industry for Recruitment Emma Frazer, Google has found that about 20 percent of job seekers have switched their search habits to a mobile device.

“Job seekers want to be able to search for a job anytime, anyplace, anywhere and not just via a desktop anymore” said Mike Taylor from Web Based Recruitment. “The proportion of mobile search figures will only get bigger in the future and the challenge now for Recruiters is to make sure that they are in a position to offer a mobile-friendly experience to job seekers to keep up with the demand.”

Despite this transition to mobile, the majority of companies are falling short when it comes to providing a positive mobile job search experience to candidates. Taylor continues, “A couple of weeks ago we completed a review which showed that 94% of FTSE 100 companies failed to offer a mobile-enabled careers section to help job seekers easily navigate and search for jobs. Clearly with 1 in 5 recruitment searches now being made via a mobile device these FTSE 100 companies will risk damaging their brand and reputation, as well as potentially losing candidates to their competitors, unless they quickly do something about it.”

Taylor feels that companies who ignore the mobile recruitment possibilities do so at their own peril in the job market. He says that some recruiters are now receiving up to one-third of their web traffic from mobile devices.

He said, “There really is no excuse for companies not knowing how many mobile visitors they get to their website as the information is readily available within their website analytics data. Once companies have an understanding of the data, the next step is to plan a mobile recruitment strategy to ensure that visitors can easily search for jobs, as this is what job seekers will be expecting from now on.”