Our attention span doesn’t take long to dwindle. After just eight seconds of browsing, 50% of users will leave a website, and you can bet that if they’re browsing on their phone and your site isn’t mobile-ready, they’ll snap it shut even faster than that. There’s nothing more infuriating to a busy candidate than a recruitment process which doesn’t work on a mobile device. To stop driving candidates away, improve their mobile recruitment experience.

Optimise Your Website Design

Google’s Mobilegeddon update is here and there’s no ignoring it. If your website isn’t optimised for mobile, you’re likely see it drop down the rankings as other websites that are mobile-friendly gain priority. Exposure is important and all those candidates who close a website in eight seconds aren’t spending time scrolling past page one of Google either. Responsive web design is a must to ensure your candidates can easily scroll through job listings, read job descriptions without needing to zoom in and out, and apply for jobs (or at least save them to a list).

Allow Mobile Applications

Can candidates apply for jobs on their mobile devices? In many instances, recruiters are still peddling websites that force candidates to stop their job applications because the process doesn’t work on mobile. Candidates are usually required to enter their email address to receive a notification so that they can apply for the job later on a desktop computer. This drastically reduces your conversion rate from job listing browsers to fully fledged applicants.

Allow ‘Finish Later’ Applications

While some candidates might be applying at home on their tablet, others will be on the move and using a mobile device. It’s important that candidates can apply on mobile but also that they can save their applications if they’ve only got part of the way through and finish up later on. The most intuitive application forms will allow candidates to create a profile and be able to save that before moving on to answer any specific questions.

Easy Upload of CVs

Even if your website does allow for job applications to be made on mobile, many sites suffer one big pitfall here - the CV upload doesn’t work properly. Check that your CV upload function works so that candidates aren’t left frustrated at the last hurdle. Many candidates expect to be able to upload their completed CV from Dropbox or Google Drive straight onto the site. Another smart option is for applications to connect directly to online social media applications, allowing the site to pull a candidate’s LinkedIn profile information and auto-fill the CV information fields.

Geo-Located Users

Frequently websites take advantage of mobile’s GPS capabilities so that they can know the location of a candidate and filter the search results accordingly. This strategy can be hugely beneficial to job boards and listing websites, as they could produce more relevant, location-specific search results for candidates. Tailoring results to each candidate, rather than relying solely on a keyword search function, will definitely improve the mobile experience and increase applications.

How many of these issues do you need to improve on your website to make your mobile recruiting experience the best that it can be?

About the Author: Ron Stewart has worked in the recruitment industry for 30 years, having owned companies in the IT, construction and medical sectors. He runs the Jobs4Group, and is CEO of Jobs4Medical.