A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the world of mobile recruiting. In that post I only gave you a snipit of what was shared at the September 2012 mRecruitng Camp. Today I want to provide you with more insights into adding mobile in your recruiting strategy. Hold on, there is a lot more information that was shared and I will try to break it down in a way you can follow.
Mobile Recruiting: What’s Working?
* Google gets more mobile traffic than desktop traffic
* 50% of large firms are on mobile – retail and customer service engagement is saturated so there is little year over year growth
Take note – Mobile Recruiting increased by 25% in 2011
* Only 10% of large firms are using mobile recruiting
* Only 10% of companies actually put mobile recruiting as one of their top 3 priorities
* 80% of recruiters see mobile as a key to social recruiting
* LinkedIn says the mobile user is the fastest growing segment for them – up 23% in 2011 for unique mobile visitors
* Mobile will give companies a way to fix their career sites; the simpler the better
* Because so few companies are actually using a mobile recruiting strategy – YOUR company gets the “early adopter benefits” such as 1,000% increase in traffic
* Pepsi saw that 90% of their mobile applications are being completed between 10pm and midnight
Learning from others mistakes
* 2 years ago UPS was using social media but had NO mobile site OR recruiting strategy
* Less than 10% of companies actually have a career site (Yep I was shocked to)
* Less than 30% of colleges have a career site (had I not heard it I never would have believed it myself)
* Make the application process easy – allow the candidate to upload a resume from various sources
* Don’t ask for the applicants social security number as the first question – engage them in the process then you can ask them further in – you want them to complete the application, not bail in the first two minutes
Tips for making the most of your mobile recruiting strategy
* Develop an overall People strategy first, then have your HR/Recruiting strategy piggyback off your corporate site – you are trying to reduce time to hire here. Make it simple for people to apply, get interviewed and get hired…faster
* Give your candidates a good online experience when applying for a job
* Short term you want to get applicant traffic converted to applying not just browsing
* Long term your mobile recruiting strategy needs to be all about the candidate experience (Simple and easy – are you seeing a pattern here?)
* After you get them hired you can start tracking what your retention rate is of the people that were recruited via mobile and compare with your other sources
* Integrate mobile with other recruitment advertising – in your job ads on billboards, buses or on job boards, direct people to your mobile site, use QRCodes on printed recruitment materials to engage people with smart phones immediately
* At campus recruiting events – get Opt-ins and capture the data so you can continue to engage these future hires
What is holding companies back from implementing a mobile recruiting strategy?
* There is a lot of heartburn around how does the mobile recruiting site/process actually integrate with our applicant tracking system – what information should you or do you need to be collecting in your mobile recruiting application?
* Mobile is new and moving so fast – getting companies to jump on the bandwagon and drive it through the organization can be a challenge
* From a career site perspective there just aren’t that many vendors that can actually help companies integrate their ATS with a mobile career site
* The ATS community hasn’t fully embraced this mobile recruiting thing so they may give you funny looks when you start asking how their ATS can be integrated with your mobile recruiting strategy
* How will you define a candidate? Again, the mobile recruiting strategy may not “play well” with the information you need for your ATS in order to satisfy all the EEOC rules
Track your data
* How many visits
* Subscriber/apply starts
* Conversion rate
* Apply completes
* Apply conversions
* Types of candidates – Professional vs. front line vs. hourly, etc
* Number of qualified applicants
Engage your current employees
Pepsi has a mobile career site so they decided they would extend the use of their mobile recruiting strategy to their internal employees. They use the term “Possibilities” in their recruitment advertising they optimized for internal applicants. Employees can upload videos, pictures or mini-stories that will used to showcase the company culture. The recruiting team gets permission from each person to also use their pictures, videos or mini-stories in recruitment efforts. Brilliant!
I hope that this post has charged you up about implementing a mobile recruiting strategy for your own organization. The big take away is don’t be afraid, but use mobile recruiting as a way to enhance your current recruiting strategy by exciting potential new hires and keeping your current employees more jazzed and engaged.
Happy Recruiting!