Are you struggling to attract and retain the highly-qualified employees that perfectly fit your company’s profile and goals? Talent recruitment and retention is a challenge that many businesses across various industries are facing. Research published by Willis Towers Watson reports that 73% of U.S. employers are having difficulties finding and keeping employees with the right set of skills. The figures collected by the British Chambers of Commerce are similar and point at 70% of UK firms facing recruitment challenges.
As this trend continues to rise throughout 2022, recruiters need to develop strategies to successfully track and attract talent globally. This is where mobile-first recruitment comes into play.
Why Is Mobile-First Recruitment Important?
It’s an effective way to expand your horizon and reach passive candidates globally. A study reveals that 58% of job seekers are looking for new career opportunities on their phones. Promoting a vacant position via mobile devices can increase the number of candidates by 11.6%. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of mobile-first recruitment:
- You can track talent from anywhere around the world, which increases your chances of finding the professional that best meets your requirements.
- Implementing a mobile-first strategy provides the flexibility of interviewing, thus speeding up the hiring process.
- It offers convenience for both recruiting teams and job seekers allowing them to be updated and responsive at all times.
If you want to keep up with the modern recruitment trends and avoid falling behind in headhunting, make sure to implement a mobile-first recruitment approach. We’ve collected seven tips that will help you get closer to potential talent and offer them the convenience of a mobile experience. Let’s dive in.
7 Mobile-First Recruitment Tips in 2022
1. Create a fast-running mobile-friendly site
Almost half of the mobile users expect that a web page loading time won’t exceed 2 seconds, and just a second delay potentially reduces conversions by 7%. Make sure that your website is fast-loading and easy to read and navigate. Implement responsive design to allow compatibility with all mobile devices and screen sizes.
Creating a dedicated career page will make it easier for job-seekers to check your job openings. Take care to ensure it’s readily located and update its content regularly.
In addition, you can consider creating a mobile app designed to enable candidates to apply for the desired position and streamline your recruiting process. A survey conducted by Capterra indicates that three-fourths of recruiters utilize a recruiting or talent tracking solution. Implementing such a system will automate the administrative tasks in your organization and boost your recruiting team efficiency while enhancing your candidates’ experiences.
If you don’t have the budget to hire a developer to create everything you need, consider using one of the popular web design platforms to do it yourself.
2. Harness the power of social media
Reportedly, social media is used by 79% of job hunters looking for employment and 84% of recruiters. You can use dedicated Facebook groups and LinkedIn followers and communities to search for candidates that match the specific requirements of your business. LinkedIn offers recruiting teams a great opportunity to track and engage with talent worldwide based on employment history, education, or job title. This is a great strategy to find passive candidates that are not searching for jobs actively.
Nearly two-thirds of HR leaders identify increasing visibility as the main lever to attract qualified employees by setting clear expectations about the career perspectives you offer. In addition, you can use Instagram, Facebook, or other social media channels to promote your company culture and let candidates get familiar with your organization’s values and atmosphere.
3. Let your recruiters go mobile
Respond to the modern mobile-first trend by letting the hiring specialists in your company leverage all available mobile technologies. Fast Internet connection, mobile devices, and dedicated applications will enable them to communicate with job-seekers and stay updated on any activities at all times.
4. Implement text messaging automation to communicate with talent globally
With an impressive open rate of 98%, text messaging is an effectively direct way to contact job-seekers. A dedicated SMS staffing solution can help you:
- Keep both your recruiting team and job seekers updated irrespective of the Internet connection availability and quality
- Announce your new job openings via mass and segmented messages
- Automatically send interview invitations and reminders
- Keep your candidates informed on their application status
Using SMS templates and automation is an effective strategy to streamline your staffing campaigns and boost the efficiency of your hiring specialists.
5. Streamline global candidate screening
Mobile screening strategies can help you assess the suitability of a job-seeker for your company’s needs and decide on shortlisting them. For this purpose, you can use video conferencing platforms, such as Skype, Zoom, and Teams. However, utilizing a dedicated recruitment mobile solution like Spark Hire offers special recruitment-focused features you can benefit from, including:
- Remote interviewing
- Flexibility for candidates to answer your questions at their convenience in a pre-recorded video interview
- More insight than a phone interview
- The option to review the completed video interviews later
- Time efficiency
- Structured video interviews for objective candidate assessment
Implementing specialized video interview software can help your recruiters enhance the efficiency of candidate screening procedures and identify your top talent.
6. Use some specialized forums, channels, and online communities
This is a cost-effective and efficient recruitment strategy that enables you to reach active job seekers.
Telegram has grown into a popular mass communication channel allowing subscribers to easily create career-related job-listing or freelancer channels and groups. Your recruiters can easily find such channels using keywords like location, type of employment, or industry. Utilizing the opportunities Telegram channels offer will enable you to contact individuals that are actively looking for employment directly on their mobile devices.
Online specialized forums and communities are platforms where you can find job seekers in a particular industry. Using StackOverflow, for example, you can search for IT professionals and developers or create your targeted job postings. This is an effective way to reach job hunters that match your industry and skill requirements.
7. Use freelance platforms and applications
With 30 million, 12 million, and 830 thousand registered freelancers respectively, the three most popular sites, Freelancer, Upwork, and Fiverr, offer a large talent pool. Such platforms offer dedicated mobile apps and allow you to refine your search and filter it by industry, area of expertise, proficiency level, availability, etc.
Moreover, a study reveals that due to the pandemic, 58% of non-freelancers that are new to remote work are now considering freelancing in the future. So, using a freelance platform increases the chance of hiring the qualitative talents you’re looking for.
Bottom Line
Implementing a mobile-first recruitment strategy is vital for the future-proofing of your hiring process and attracting qualitative candidates. It can help you overcome geographic and time distances, reach talent worldwide and create smooth experiences for your candidates. Following the tips above and staying abreast with the latest recruitment trends and technologies will empower you to face talent acquisition challenges and gain a competitive advantage in your industry.