"The moral of the story is: I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way. I'll never make that mistake again. No more half measures, Walter." — Mike Ehrmantraut

A bit behind the zeitgeist here, but I couldn’t get through 2013 without at least one post inspired by the late, great Breaking Bad. In the third season of the series, likeable bad guy Mike Ehrmantraut gives the above piece of advice to high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin Walter White. [Spoiler Alert?] Despite the fact that Mike eventually gets whacked, I’m comfortable relaying similar considerations as it relates to mobile recruiting. *looks over shoulder for the approachingSalamanca cousins*

The bottom line here is, if you’re going to go mobile (and you should), then go all the way. No half measures, indeed. Dave Martin, aka “Mobile Dave”, has a great piece up on ERE titled, “I Know You’re Concerned About Mobile Recruiting, but You Need to Mo...” In it, he delves into some familiar refrains about why companies can no longer rest on their laurels about mobile recruiting. It’s time to take action. An excerpt:

“The journey for the candidate on mobile is broken. For example, the candidate may engage with an employer on social media (most likely from their mobile device), and click a link to a job, but the link will take the candidate to a career site that is frustrating to use on mobile. After putting up with the pain of using the career site on their mobile device, the candidate clicks to apply and is then the door is slammed in the candidate’s face as the site asks them to upload their resume/CV — something that is impossible from many devices such as an iPhone. This journey can be described as the “candidate conversion funnel” and it is broken on mobile web.”

We here at Jibe, of course, couldn’t agree more. It is a broken process, but fixing it isn’t as difficult as you might think. If you think your participation in the mobile revolution is done once you’ve mobile-optimized your career site, think again. While a majority of companies still haven’t even done that much, it’s still only a half-measure to stop there. It’s important to consider the entire candidate experience on mobile, which of course includes the application process.

Think your ATS makes it impossible to mobile-optimize the apply process? Think again. New technologies and solutions are available that allow you to implement a mobile apply process outside of the constraints of your legacy ATS. This next wave of solutions has been built with the mobile job seeker in mind, front and center.

Of course, even within this subset of next-generation solutions, not all are created equally. When researching companies that claim to specialize in optimizing the mobile recruiting and apply experience, feel free to use the following short list of ‘must haves’ as a best-practice guide.

• Application completion and submission via mobile
• Intuitive mobile user interface for ease-of-use
• Real-time synchronization with the ATS
• Up-front ATS profile creation to save application progress
• Multiple mobile-friendly resume-upload options
• Certified security and privacy policies in place
• Support for multiple languages and international compliance
• Real-time reporting of recruiting analytics

While all these points are important to consider, it’s the first and last that perhaps matter most. We’ve already covered the first, so let’s speak about the last – recruiting analytics – for just a moment. In today’s data-driven world, any new solution you employ should be delivered hand-in-hand with reliable analytics. It’s these analytics that will provide insight and allow you to truly fix the “broken” candidate conversion funnel.

A good analytics package will allow you to track candidate behavior throughout the entire funnel, allowing you to see exactly where they may drop off or run into difficulty. By identifying these pain points in your application and hiring practice, you’ll better be able to fix them. Not only can you make changes to improve your conversion rate, but also to create an optimal candidate experience throughout the hiring process, which serves to foster good will and bolster your employment brand.

Of course, with an increasing majority of job seekers engaging your company via mobile, you need to optimize the full apply process before you can begin to employ useful and complete recruiting analytics. It all ties together.

To truly fix this, and catch up to where your candidates have already gone, you need to go all the way. So listen to Mike and abandon the half measures. Your (recruiting) life may very well depend on it.