Mobile is one of the biggest buzzwords in business today.  And organizations are trying to figure out how to leverage mobile not only to improve employees ability to do work better but also to better the overall experience for customers and other stakeholders.  However, when someone says you need to think about Mobile, this can mean a whole host of different things for the organization.  And there are a number of different touch-points where embracing mobile can make a whole lot of sense (or not make sense) for your business.

This is no more present than in recruiting.  Whether you attend conferences, network with colleagues, read industry blogs or talk with technology providers, more likely than not “mobile” has come up in the conversation.  And for good reason.  Your recruiting team is on the move more than ever and having tools in place to help them manage, capture and engage with candidates is very important.  On the flip side, candidates are also using their mobile phones in the job search more frequently making it incredibly important that your messaging, sites, communications and apply process are mobile friendly.

Let’s take a look at a few of the different areas where mobile can provide real value to your recruitment marketing strategy.

Career Sites

This is one of the first areas that you should think about when instituting your mobile recruiting strategy.   Your Career Site is in many cases one of the first places that candidates interact with your recruiting organization and due to this is where they get a first impression of your career opportunities.  If your Career Site doesn’t allow for candidates on mobile devices to access it or does it in a way that is difficult to navigate, you are more than likely missing a whole subset of your entire candidate population.  Here are a few other areas that are important to think about.

Mobile Theme:  When developing the mobile version of your Career Site, it’s important to understand the content that is important to highlight.  A great example of this is Bright House Networks.  They have lots of great content on their Career Site but focus on a mobile friendly format for candidates on mobile devices to ensure they can find the right content easily.  And if the candidates want to view the full site, they include a link to the full Career Site easily at the top of the mobile version.

Join our Talent Network:  Do you have a form on your site for candidates to join your Talent Network?  Is that form mobile optimized?  If the answer to both questions is “No” you may have a problem.  First, having a Talent Network form on your Career Site and in your apply flow can help you provide an option other than applying for candidates interested in your company.  Second, this form needs to be mobile enabled in order to make it easy for mobile users to fill out.  This is very important for mobile users because in many cases the application process is extremely difficult to finish on a mobile phone and provides a good way to remain in contact with interested candidates.

Mobile Apply:  One area that is getting some traction lately is making the application process mobile friendly.  When many ATS companies built out their application process, they didn’t take into account mobile devices as it was a small percentage of all candidates at the time.  With the growth of internet enabled mobile phones, it’s become apparent that mobile friendly apply is an area that is one that can be important to address.

Engagement

In today’s world, a candidate will have a phone on them at all times.  With this mobile represents a great opportunity to engage with these candidates immediately with content and job opportunities.  Here’s a few ways to think about mobile engagement:

SMS:  There are a number of studies that say text messages are read quicker than other message types such as email.  And with this, it presents a good way to get in front of candidates and get responses from them on job opportunities quickly.  The key here is ensuring that candidates opt-in to these mobile messages.

Notifications: If you build a recruiting App, it’s important to build push notifications into what you build.  These will provide candidates with updates on new positions that fit their interests and skills.

Event Management: Whether it’s getting candidates to watch your new employment branding video or having them sign up via a mobile Talent Network form, the mobile phone is something you should target for your teams that attend Career Fairs and especially for college recruiting.  By using mobile, you will be able to better engage, segment and ultimately capture candidates at these events for use in filling jobs post event.

Sourcing with your Mobile Phone

When you look at the mobile sourcing, there’s a few ways in which mobile helps your sourcers do their job better from where ever they are.  When you think about what you need to consider from a mobile perspective, here are a few main areas to ensure your process is mobile friendly.

Finding the Right Candidate: There are a number of apps and methods that can help sourcers search and find candidates.  Here’s a few different ways to find and source candidates via your mobile device.

Sourcing into Database:  Once a member of your team finds a candidate, how do they get it into your centralized Recruitment CRM database?  With any mobile strategy, you need to figure out the best ways for your team to not only find the right candidates online but also how they can bring them into your system to further capture more data on them and most importantly begin engaging.

Managing your Candidates:  The last integral part of this is having a mobile friendly technology to be able to search, sort and segment your database of candidates on the fly.  Whether you are searching for candidates that may be potential fits for an open position or moving candidates into pipelines so they can receive the proper communications, it’s becoming important to be able to manage your database via mobile devices.

What’s the most important?

Going mobile with your recruitment & sourcing strategy is something you need to start thinking about today but is something that really should be customized to fit your processes and strategy.  It’s all about understand how mobile fits and improves your current process and the value that can be seen from it not only from your team’s point of view but often times the candidates as well.  In the end, it won’t be a 6 month project that gets mobile into your recruiting but will be a continual and iterative process to incorporate mobile where it makes sense in your overall strategy.