This year’s Spring ERE Conference & Expo yielded a lot more than just wicked tan lines and tasty burritos. In addition to the great content presented at the show, we also managed to dig up some good information from our onsite snap poll, which we’re more than happy to share with you today. Our quick survey asked attendees about mobile recruiting and apply, as well as candidate engagement. Let’s look at mobile first.   

There has been so much talk over the past few years about the rise of mobile recruiting. Encouragingly, we seem to have moved beyond the “talk” phase and are now starting to see serious traction in terms of actual implementation of such solutions. But there still seems to be a bit of a disconnect in terms of what optimal mobile recruiting actually means. The results of our snap poll at ERE seemed to support this:  

•  88% say it’s very important to provide the ability for candidates to apply via mobile
•  Yet only 43% say their company allows candidates to do so

That’s actually a pretty big improvement over where we were just a year ago. Still work to be done, but it’s clear that enabling mobile apply has climbed the priority ladder, which is great. But then we asked respondents if their company’s career site is “mobile optimized,” and we got this: 

• 63% say their careers site is mobile optimized

Numbers are funny things of course, and can be interpreted in any number of ways, but there does seem to be a disconnect in the fact that some still believe that a career site can be mobile optimized without allowing candidates to apply from their mobile devices. As we have before, we would argue that true optimization is only achieved with that ability enabled. 

That said, the gap of understanding is narrowing, which is a very good sign. 

We also asked attendees about candidate engagement and their thoughts on the accuracy of candidate data residing within their systems, whether a CRM, ATS or some other talent network solution. Only 29% of respondents said they currently use a CRM in their talent acquisition operations, with a strong majority saying that was the most desired tool currently missing from their arsenal. 

And what about candidate data? Well, we have a crisis of confidence in that area. Here’s what came back when we asked how confident they were about the accuracy of candidate data their organizations maintain:  

• Nearly half (44%) say they are “not confident” the data is up to date
• Only 6% say they are “very confident” the data is up to date

That’s a problem. If the data in your systems isn’t up to date or accurate, how can you have a good read on your current talent pipeline and maintain a level of engagement that shines a positive light on your employer brand?

Well, this is more ground we’ve covered before. Similar to other aspects of the talent acquisition and sourcing game, there is a wave of next-generation solutions available today or coming soon that are designed to ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date, as well as providing the means to foster better, more consistent candidate engagement.

While our spot survey at ERE was not necessarily scientific, it does support much of what we learned from our more comprehensive Talent Acquisition Survey (download here) conducted last summer. We intend to publish another survey in the coming months, and would be interested in learning more about the topics you’d like us to explore. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments here, or send us a note at info@jibe.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks to all who participated in our snap poll at ERE. And thanks for keeping it classy, San Diego.  

We’ll see everyone in Chicago for ERE Fall.