What HR needs to know about mobile-enabled recruitment

The rise of the smartphone and an increase in internet penetration has transformed talent to a digitally savvy workforce. The mobile phone is gaining popularity as the go-to medium not only to receive candidate applications but to engage talent throughout the recruitment lifecycle including job search, compliance, communications and social media interactions.

Why mobile recruiting?

As more job candidates turn to professional social media networks like Glassdoor and LinkedIn to understand their potential employers, the ‘War for talent’ is now going digital. Organizations are looking out for ways to optimize the recruitment process, to be able to reach out to this growing tech-savvy talent pool. Here are a few advantages of mobile recruitment:

Improve the candidate experience: Recruitment involves “connecting” with current and potential hires through various channels. A seamless, multichannel interface (mobile, tab, laptop, smart device etc.) will help you communicate your employer brand consistently and to a wider audience. This is the first step to a tap into a new digitally active talent pool.

Build talent profiles through talent network forms: Mobile helps understand the candidate better by collecting candidate information through talent forms. With this, organizations can curate their employment offerings to the candidates’ needs and aspirations, allowing for a right organizational fit.

Data-backed hiring decisions: Mobile recruitment offers real-time data visibility. Companies can easily and reliably track hiring criteria such as applicant scores and performance tests and make a data-driven decision that’s more accurate. The automated nature of the test scores ensure that the data is available real-time.

Interview Management: Interview management is a cumbersome process in a recruitment cycle. Scheduling of candidate interviews, making a candidate profile and sharing assessment information to the interviewers and helping them record all important observations and feedback from the interview is necessary for a fast, convenient and accurate interview process.

Post offer onboarding: For any prospective candidate who is given an offer letter, a mobile based app can serve as a great resource to familiarize themselves with information about the company. The company can use this tool to notify candidates on joining formalities and also send on-boarding materials before their first day of work.

Always-on engagement: It is important to continuously engage with high-quality talent. Tie in your mobile recruitment strategy with your employer branding to create the desired “pull” for top talent. This includes timely communication and seeking feedback from candidates.
 
How can you begin?

Organizations must design a mobile recruitment strategy in line with overall talent management processes. For this, one must, at the outset, carry out a thorough assessment of current recruitment processes and capabilities with a mobile-first mindset. One can begin with analyzing and understanding how current job seekers utilize tools such as your career site, email content etc., Outline the current challenges (for example unresponsive content) and think of actionable ideas to address them. It is also important to clearly define the objective for going mobile- it is more volumes of applicants, better quality applications, active or passive applicants etc. Your implementation tools will vary according to the objective. Below are some practical insights on how to uphold the mobile recruitment paradigm throughout the recruitment pipeline.

Attract: First, ensure your Career pages and Email communications are mobile-responsive. Nothing is more frustrating for a candidate than eagerly logging into the company website to apply for a job, only to find it is not mobile-friendly. Social media is a popular mobile engagement-tool, make sure you regularly “talk to” potential candidates through advertisement, podcasts and videos on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. This helps create the desired visibility in the talent space.

Source: Mobile recruitment is all about converting a page-click to a real application. Put yourself in a mobile user's shoes. Provide easy CV-upload facilities from online storage mediums (such as Dropbox, Google Cloud). Allow candidates to “connect” their social profiles while applying. Enable easy “Call to Action” buttons, like “Apply Now” or “Learn More” to urge people to apply through mobile. 

Select and Engage: Active candidates like to stay informed about hiring status, progress, company events etc. Consider SMS / Instant messaging support for sending automated status updates. Reach out to passive candidates via blogs and extend selection means to video job interviews (Skype or Google Hangouts) for a live candidate experience.

Ease the process: Recruitment is a document-heavy process with candidates requiring to access Job Descriptions, CVs, cover letters etc. Enable mobile document sharing that allows for smooth document uploads and downloads, sharing, editing, and collaboration.

Ensuring success

It is important that organizations do not blindly implement the above measures just because it is a fad. They need to assess periodically the goals, outcome, and alignment of their mobile recruitment strategy. HR leaders must take the lead in articulating the business need for mobile-enabled recruitment services. They should also define success parameters to gauge effectiveness and efficiency. Leverage the power of Data Analytics to create mobile-recruitment specific dashboards and monitor KPI such as application conversion rates and quality of hire. Setting up mobile recruitment for success is not about introducing a one-time intervention, but getting results consistently.

Today’s diverse workforce cuts across gender, generation and races. Building a talent network at each stage of attracting, sourcing, selecting, engaging and hiring a candidate is critical for business success. A well devised mobile recruitment strategy will not only help bridge the current talent gaps but will help build a future-ready workforce to drive sustainable business success.