Mobile Job Search Increases

Over the past year, Snagajob saw its users increase their mobile job searching by 95 percent. The company recently released its second “Counter Intelligence: The Snagajob Service Industry Hiring Report,” which describes hourly job seeker activity based on the data taken from its website from April 2012 through March 2013. Although the report showed that job seekers nearly doubled their mobile job searching compared to the past 12-month period, there wasn’t a proportional increase in applications submitted.

According to the “Intensity Index,” a measurement of the number of job seeker applications submitted per job seeker, users submitted 4.3 percent fewer applications. This, SnagaJob said, shows that job seekers continue to be selective.

“As the unemployment rate has dropped, we’ve seen that job seekers aren’t as interested in applying for any job, but more so for the right job,” Jason Hamilton, vice president of marketing at Snagajob, said.

Snagajob found that job seekers submit an estimated three times more applications on desktop computers than when using mobile devices, a likely factor in the decrease of overall submitted applications.

“Smartphones let job seekers identify new opportunities on the go, but applying for jobs on mobile devices is easier said than done,” Hamilton said. “Until applying through mobile devices is made easier, we can expect to see job seekers continue to browse for or save jobs using their smartphones to return to later on desktop devices. This break between when job seekers find new jobs and apply gives them more time to discern which jobs they really want, which can be good news for hiring managers, as it shows job seekers are pursuing positions more closely aligned with their interests and skill set.”

The “Reactivation Index,” a measurement of job seekers who have resumed their job search after at least three months of inactivity, also showed a 3.1 percent increase of job seekers looking for jobs again compared to the previous year. At 6.8 percent, younger job seekers under the age of 24 increased their search efforts the most in the April-to-March period. Those job seekers ages 45 and older dropped by 2.4 percentage points.