Perfect your Mobile Recruiting Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

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Touch screen mobile phone with connections We’re living in a mobile world—you use your smartphone to find out the latest headlines; tablet to watch videos; and E-readers to learn a little more about your industry. It’s hard to remember a time without a gadget in the palm of your hands, and why would you want to? Everything is done at your convenience, whenever, wherever. Life is simpler.

So, if you’re more prone to use your mobile devices to communicate, wouldn’t it make sense to apply that same theory to recruiting?

Currently, 70 percent of all job seekers search for jobs via their mobile devices. In addition, 20 percent search for information about careers through these devices. These statistics indicate that if you don’t have or aren’t planning on incorporating mobile capabilities into your recruiting strategy, you’re losing out on candidates, some of whom may be pretty high caliber.

When you’re ready to get started, you can implement and then perfect your mobile recruiting strategy by following these four steps:

Create a mobile-ready career site

While you may believe it’s obvious to have mobile associated with your career site, the truth is, many organizations have yet to come on board. In fact, only one in five Fortune 1000 companies has mobile-ready career sites. Plus, since one in four come to career sites via mobile, you’re missing out on a large chunk of qualified candidates because they either can’t view information correctly or can’t apply directly.

To solve this, make it easy for job seekers to apply through their smartphones or tablets. This may require creating a smartphone application or otherwise ensuring your career site can be accessed through mobile devices. Either way, creating a mobile-ready career site will increase your chances at receiving those candidates who use their devices in the job search.

Make sure your employees can refer on-the-go

After career sites, referrals are cited as the No. 1 source of hire. If you pair that with the fact that 30 million Americans work remotely at least one day a week, you have the potential to receive awesome candidates by way of your employees even if they’re on the other side of the world.

However, with remote employees comes a certain communication barrier. They aren’t in the office like traditional workers, so they can’t slip you a lead through your employee referral program if it’s not convenient for them. Therefore, you have to ensure your employees can refer on-the-go. One tip is to create a mobile-ready portal or external website that they can access in the referral process. That way, they can still participate in an employee referral program, even if they aren’t there in person.

Confirm your mobile recruiting strategies are social networking-friendly

Along with just using mobile devices, many job seekers use social networking in their searches. For example, 60 percent of Facebook usage is through mobile. Candidates also use networks like Twitter and LinkedIn in their searches. Social is the way to go these days, and when you put mobile into the mix, you have a match made in job seeker heaven.
However, to access these candidates, you have to confirm your mobile recruiting strategies are social networking-friendly. For example, is it easy for candidates to view a job that you posted on Facebook through their smartphones? If they use the Apply with LinkedIn feature to apply for jobs on their tablets, can they do so efficiently? If the answer is no, again, you’re missing out on quality candidates. Be sure every job listing, career site link, or external piece of information you post on social networking sites can be accessed through mobile.

Open up your mobile recruitment strategy

I briefly touched on the power of referrals. These referrals aren’t limited to your internal network, though. External contacts, such as your business partners, former employees, and vendors, can also help you in the recruitment process. However, doing so may be harder, especially since they don’t have to participate in an employee referral program.
To solve this, implement fun games and rewards that be accessed through a mobile employee referral program. For example, let’s say a business partner referred you to a candidate via a mobile-ready referral portal on their tablet. When that candidate is interviewed, your business partner is placed on a mobile leaderboard for all to see. They can also receive rewards for their efforts. This method socially recognizes your business partner, which engages them, as well as makes their time worthwhile in simple way.

Implementing mobile capabilities into your recruiting strategy is a great way to amp up your hiring efforts. We’ll only see the mobile trend grow, so getting on this bandwagon sooner rather than later will only help you in your journey to find the right candidates.

What do you think?What are some other ways to perfect your mobile recruiting strategy?

By Ziv Eliraz