Tap to recruit

With a huge range of people at your fingertips, how you can ensure that you’re using mobile technology to recruit top talent?

Smartphones make anything available to anyone, anywhere, at lightning-fast speed. If you can’t get it through your mobile, it probably isn’t worth having, and that’s especially true for recruitment.

In its annual Internet Trends report, US-based venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers found that the average mobile user looks at their phone 150 times a day – checking social media, buying goods, paying bills, and increasingly, looking at jobs.

Mobile: The numbers

Statistics from consultancy 4MAT show that one in five job searches is now run from a mobile device.

Social media plays a huge part in these searches, with the business-focused social network LinkedIn the clearest example, but Facebook and Twitter not far behind.

One in seven people around the world regularly uses social media, according to market research firm eMarketer. So it’s no wonder that recruitment firms such as Hays have partnered with social networks – they make recruiters’ lives easier by offering free information on an enormous talent pool, and allow candidates to directly apply for roles on the sites and apps that they already spend most of their browsing time on.

An unprecedented reach

LinkedIn has over 300 million members in more than 200 countries, and allows users to network (or simply be seen), receive personalised adverts and relevant job notifications, and add up-to-date information about their skills and employment status. Hays is the most followed staffing company worldwide on LinkedIn, and we are one of the few companies which has integration with LinkedIn. This collaboration plays a central role in our strategy to build engagement with our clients and candidates.

More than two-thirds of LinkedIn’s traffic comes from mobile devices and its dedicated smartphone app has been a ubiquitous instalment for businesspeople for many years.

With so much information available up-front, a recruiter can target a candidate, generate an automatic contact message, and have it discreetly read and responded to within minutes. Neither party needs to go near a desktop computer or laptop, and thanks to the rise in digital signatures, once a job offer is made, employment forms and contracts can also be signed digitally via a smartphone.

Mobile recruitment’s reach, and its speed, is unprecedented. It’s no exaggeration to say that a good candidate could find themselves a new job in the time it takes them to travel home from a bad day at work.

Employer branding 2.0

Job pages playing an increasingly important role in the hiring process, connecting companies and brands to millions of potential employees through personalised recruitment pages. From tech giants such as Google and Microsoft to global courier firm UPS – which recruits tens of thousands of extra staff in the run-up to Christmas – businesses use sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to create relevant, shareable multimedia about their company, and use the power of social media to disseminate it.

Crucially, the more data recruiters can employ to inform their recruitment strategy, the better. There are a huge number of social media sites, with different audience demographics warranting different recruitment approaches, from rich media and videos to more formal copywriting. Targeted adverts will work far better than the scattergun approach.

Look app-ealing

Alongside pages on social networks, a company’s own recruitment page needs a mobile-friendly interface with sound technology behind it. This front door to the business needs to be easy to navigate and transparent, giving key messages about the available roles and an identical experience whether it is accessed via desktop or mobile. And it should be shareable – in a social world referrals and advocacy is more important than ever.

Using mobile technology for recruitment is all about reaching a far wider talent pool and hiring more efficiently. After all, the potential is huge: research by Morgan Stanley estimates that 50 per cent of all global internet traffic will come from a mobile device by the end of this year. For recruiters and candidates alike, it’s clearly time to get mobile.