If You Aren’t Becoming Mobile, You’re Going to be Left Behind

Mobile recuriting report chart It shouldn’t be news now that smartphone use is big (and is getting bigger). In late 2012, estimates pegged the number at over a billion smartphones with that number doubling by 2015.

If you’re a smartphone user, you’ve probably increased your reliance on the device steadily. I now expect my device to do everything but poach my morning eggs.

When you send a candidate or someone in your talent community or on your mailing list a notice of a new job, what are they going to see when they click through on their mobile device? Will they be able to do anything with it? And if you’re not there, how do you start and what does an optimal solution look like?

With 70% of smartphone owners already having used their phone to look for a job, if you aren’t at least preparing for a mobile future, you won’t be competitive with other search firms much longer. According to a Simply Hired’s new Mobile Recruiting Outlook, candidates like being able to know about job openings quickly; and while few have applied for jobs via phone, more would if recruiters made the process mobile friendly.

That’s what the mobile talent acquisition platform iMomentous has tried to explain in its latest research on the subject. “As mobile technology continues to play an increasing role in both personal and professional activities, the companies that neglect to include mobile in their recruiting and talent management processes will be at a serious disadvantage,” said Ed Newman, vice president of Strategy for iMomentous, in a statement that was released with the report.

The report a four pronged approach to making your recruiting mobile-enabled:

Optimize your content — All of the content on your career site should be able to be read on a mobile device. If you send out links in your e-mails to candidates, you need to make sure that the system auto-detects the device so that it can serve the proper page.
Connect with your visitors — Whether through SMS messaging, mobile advertising, or even cutting-edge ideas like gamification, people spending more time on their mobile devices means that if you advertise jobs, you need to be there too.
Engage using a native app — Native apps shouldn’t be just a replication of your jobs site; it should be an application that is valuable in engaging users with push notifications and additional functionality that can create a talent community.
Integrate technology structure — Making sure that redirects work properly, that the ATS feeds jobs into the mobile site, and that it can take applications from there are hurdles that can’t be underestimated.

If that sounds a little too ambitious for you, especially if you are still trying to get to any mobile presence (and many firms and employers are), it recommends you start with something small and work up from there. For example, you can have a mobile-friendly landing page that can take an e-mail address or phone number for SMS and some areas of interest.

You can download the full report as well as participate in a webinar on the subject next month.