The vast majority of Internet activity these days happens on mobile devices, primarily smartphones. While retail and commerce has embraced this reality, taking advantage of easy to use tools if they can’t build their own, recruiting has resisted this change and is suffering as a result. Businesses that don’t have a mobile first approach to job recruiting are missing out on top talent every day.
Job Recruiting Problems By the Numbers
According to a study by MRINetwork, the lag in recruiting technology adoption has contributed significantly to the job skill gap that is appearing in a number of industries.
For example, 71% of respondents said that they felt frustrated that online applications can’t accurately parse an uploaded resume for information in many cases, requiring applicants to spend enormous amounts of time filling out increasingly detailed forms. This also relates to the 40% of job seekers who abandon applications that take more than 5 or 10 minutes to fill out.
Another finding from the MRINetwork study was that 58% of job applicants feel that their resume will never be seen by a living person. This is not an entirely unfounded fear. More companies are relying on recruitment tools that they either don’t fully understand or simply don’t meet their specific needs.
The Mobile Dimension
All of this is also related to another important statistic: in 2017, roughly 60% of job searches started on a mobile device. The was up after having doubled between 2005 and 2015. While more recent numbers haven’t been published yet, the trend suggests that nearly 70% of job searches will be done on smartphones by 2020. Mobile first job recruiting is absolutely necessary.
This is especially true when you consider that websites like ZipRecruiter are taking their first, halting steps into the mobile market by creating apps that let people know about jobs they might be qualified for. They aren’t very good at finding appropriate positions and applying is still difficult, but it won’t be long before somebody creates the industry standard in mobile career searching.
How You Can Benefit Now
Fortunately, while there aren’t a lot of solutions on the job search side of things, there are ways for recruiters to take advantage of the mobile trend while the field remains fairly empty. By being able to reach job candidates where they are searching, recruiters have an opportunity to find top talent and funnel them into a hiring stream.
The Talentify platform is designed as a mobile first job recruiting solution, for example. It can help format job postings so that they will rank on mobile searches and attract qualified candidates, as well as improve the mobile experience for people applying for jobs with your company.
It won’t be long before mobile technology takes another leap forward, resulting in even more people relying on smartphones and tablets as primary ways of accessing the Internet. That means that the people who you want to hire will be applying with the companies who are ready to engage them with a simple process using the technology they prefer. Is that going to be you or your competitor?
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