Mobile Recruitment Trends and Opportunities

Filling a particular job role with the right talent is amongst the biggest challenges every business has to deal with. Since the success of an organisation is greatly determined by the quality of its employees, hiring the right talent and networking right becomes a crucial need.

As technology evolves, companies are moving their talent search methods from traditional to a more modern and unconventional one. As demand for skilled talent is on the rise, mobile recruitment is the way to go.

Traditionally, employers call and email to get in touch with candidates, this trend has led to upsurge in mobile recruitment to stay connected on the move. As the name suggests, mobile recruitment is a strategy harnessing the potentials of the mobile medium to attract, screen, and engage candidates.

Several common tactics to engage potential talent before they attend interviews and screening rounds include setting up a mobile career page, launching mobile platform and apps, as well as mobile recruitment by text. Evolving with the changing pattern of how people search for jobs, mobile recruitment is increasingly becoming popular among HR professionals.

A survey conducted by Censuswide and Indeed presents a not-so-surprising finding - 78 percent respondents state use of mobile phones to apply for a job. While Millennials continue to dominate the statistics, the survey indicates that people from every age group find convenience in accessing job sites on their mobile devices.

Simplified application process turns out to be the main attraction behind mobile recruitment’s growing popularity. In this fast-paced era, people tend to avoid recruitment processes that require long time to apply and complicated navigation to route to new web pages.  

If you want your company to stay up-to-date with the latest hiring shifts, here are some mobile recruitment trends and opportunities, you need to watch out for:

Mobile recruitment is mainstream

As stated previously, people are slowly shifting their job hunting process from PC to mobile. However, despite this rising trend, a research released by PageUp suggests that 90 percent of companies surveyed in South-east Asia do not have an optimised mobile career site.

This shows significant gap between candidate expectations and company’s mobile recruitment strategy.

If companies want to bring their hiring process to the next level, they should be able to fill the gap by developing better mobile recruitment platforms. As more candidates are turning their attention to smaller devices, employers should grab the opportunity to find prospective talents.

Build your employer brand

Nobody wants to be trapped in companies using fraudulent practices. Just like customers who evaluate product brands before shopping, job seekers also evaluate employer brand before clicking ‘apply’ on the mobile recruitment platform.

To make sure that you leave a good impression on the minds of first-time visitors, you should build a strong employer brand. As most candidates look up to company websites for further references, you need to invest time in customising a well-designed brand portal and career page. This will convey better brand image that reflects upon company’s vision and values.

Focus on passive candidates

Survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 75 percent candidates are passive job seekers. It means that they do not actively seek for a job, but are always open to new opportunities. To respond to this trend, it will be better for employers to keep their hiring tap open. They need to be proactive to seek for potential candidates in the talent pool.

Employers also need to streamline their hiring process. As Millennials and Gen Y are growing up in a fast technology age, people are shifting their job application process to mobile for one reason: it is simpler, quick and easy. If there is no difference between recruitment process accessed on your desktops and mobile version, then you will lose prospective applicants.

Invest in mobile optimisation

People usually access mobile career sites when multitasking with other activities. They might open the career page while waiting for lunch at a restaurant, queuing in the subway, or sitting on the bus on their way back home.

Owing to brief involvement with a career page only with the sole intent to apply for a new job role, people at times tend to abandon the mobile application when the website takes too long to load. Unless they find traction to a particular web page, they might not come back again.

Hence to attract more attention from best talent, you need to invest in mobile optimisation processes such that candidates can access your mobile platform seamlessly. It is not enough to create better, easier, and simpler mobile application process, but you also need to integrate them into the candidate’s job application experience.

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