4 Ways Providers Can Use Mobile To Recruit Quality Candidates

Look around you. Smartphones are everywhere. They’re in the hands of people walking down the street, propped up on every treadmill at your gym and even sitting on the table during your morning team meeting. It’s a fair assumption that most of us have our mobile devices on us at all times.

According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans own smartphones. Another stat shows that 57% of all web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets.

Still, many recruiters appear to have missed this memo. According to a Human Capital Institute study, 70% of job seekers said mobile technology plays a vital role in their searches, while only 33% of recruiters utilize mobile for online recruiting. The growth of mobile devices allows job seekers more agency in finding the job that is best for them right on their phones.

Companies behind the curve on mobile recruitment should consider these four best practices to land better candidates.

Start by studying the competition

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Recruiters should study how their competitors are optimizing their recruiting process for the web and apply what they do best to their own sites. Mobile users crave simplicity and efficiency, and mobile technology emphasizes speed.

Optimizing your company’s website for mobile devices, including your career website, is essential to attract the best candidates. Your company’s career page should be as responsive as the corporate website, and simple to navigate.

Keep your posting's pitch simple

The best mobile recruitment strategies can be dead on arrival if a job posting uses an antiquated boilerplate and talks too much about the company. Lars Schmidt for Fast Company recommends writing the job posting directly to the candidates you want to apply, in the second person, to emphasize what the candidate should bring to a position: it should ask for “your track record,” for example. 

Take that informal approach with the job description, as well. A company stating it is hiring dozens of new caregivers to fill open positions might be intended to highlight job security, but it says nothing about the company’s culture and philosophy. Job seekers want to see if their skills are a good match for the job posting. By making a job posting personal, a hiring manager stands a better chance of landing a deeper pool of candidates.

Go social with your job postings

Social media and mobile web technology share synergies in instant response and efficiency. So it is a essential that recruiters can, and should, use social media to promote job openings. Whether posting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or even Snapchat, the application is primarily associated with mobile tech. Blending the experience to attract candidates via social to lead them back to your optimized corporate mobile site is the pathway to attracting more qualified candidates.

Do not make the mistake of posting the same message on all of your company’s social media channels. Be strategic in your approach. Use Facebook to highlight company culture, Twitter to be brief and personal about the job posting, and LinkedIn to describe the ideal qualities of a candidate.

Use mobile recruitment software

Don't give candidates an awesome mobile experience only to pick up the phone and call them to set up an interview. Use today's workers' preferred method of communication: text messaging. We did some market research and found that using mobile recruitment software to reach out to applicants leads to two times the hires in half the time.

Leveraging artificial intelligence, OnShift® Text2Hire™ automates interview scheduling and helps providers reduce interview no-shows with day-before and day-of reminders. Plus, recruiters that use Text2Hire have access to reports with real-time hiring metrics: contact rate, interviews scheduled and job offers made.

Simplicity is key when it comes to mobile recruitment, and these four steps allow even the most inexperienced recruiters to get up to speed and recruit qualified candidates like a pro.