It’s no secret that in the modern world, people and mobile technology are inseparable. Mobile recruiting strategies employ mobile technology to attract, source, engage and manage your relationships with candidates seeking jobs in your company.

As of 2020, about 280 million Americans use smartphones to communicate, shop, watch videos, and look for jobs. In fact, nine out of ten American job seekers today search for jobs on their mobile phones. And interestingly, about half of these people apply for jobs right from these mobile devices whether they are looking for remote work or on-site jobs.

What that means for you as an employer, HR manager, or HR specialist is that, for you to stand a chance in the competition for the best talent, you need to ensure your recruitment process is optimized for mobile devices. Establishing an official mobile recruiting strategy should be your priority if you’re to attract digitally mature job seekers.

This article shares five mobile recruiting strategies for 2022 that you can incorporate into your company to make the process more convenient.

1. Enhance Social Recruiting for Mobile
Chances are high that you’re among the 90% of recruiters or hiring managers who are active on social media. But the question is, are you using this mighty tool the right way?

The truth is, most recruiters haven’t given the mobile experience a second thought. But let’s get practical and consider a typical recruiting email that candidates usually receive from LinkedIn. It’s normally a very long email detailing everything concerning the vacant job position and the application requirements.

Once a candidate opens it on their mobile device, it appears like a book, and they’ll not hesitate to delete it. Some may read several lines before getting bored and abandoning it. An even smaller margin of job seekers may read the email to the end, only to dismiss it after realizing the application process isn’t mobile-friendly.

As a recruiter, all you want is to succeed in mobile recruiting once you send that email. It was not the case. What should you do?

Tip:
You need to restructure your recruiting emails. Let them have a short introduction, not more than two sentences. Then, include a link to a landing page that’s mobile-optimized. That way, candidates can now access the job description, salary, and a brief description of your company’s culture. This will look more mobile-friendly to the job seeker.

Open-source software such as WordPress is all you need to create such a custom landing page. And the good news is the process is quite easy, and you need not necessarily have any knowledge of responsive web design.

With such a strategic shift, you’ll realize one vital aspect of the mobile recruiting process—ease of use. This is what candidates want. A simple process free of lengthy emails.

If you’re a recruiter, partner with your marketing partners to establish how you can simplify your messaging. Job seekers want simplicity, and it’s only by achieving it that you’ll be more successful at mobile recruiting.

2.  Optimize Your Careers Page for Mobile
It’s estimated that about 20% of traffic to employers’ career pages comes from mobile job seekers. Unfortunately, only a few employers have optimized their careers pages for mobile devices. Have you?

When a candidate opens these unoptimized pages on a mobile device, you’ll be surprised to learn what they see. The pages look disorganized and often lack key details.

With such an initial exposure to potential employees, you’re not inspiring the success of mobile recruiting. In fact, you’re messing up everything, and sooner or later, you may find yourself not in a position to compete for talent. 

Tip:
One recruiting strategy you need to adopt as an employer is optimizing your careers page. Ensure you bear in mind the candidates’ needs. Let it have two clicks directing job seekers to what brought them there in the first place—job application.

To avoid unnecessary confusion:

• Keep your message direct and as simple as possible.
• You need no large flash media.
• Make your graphics even simpler to enable faster page loading.

Remember, a slow and messed-up employer’s careers page can be a turn-off to mobile candidates. Therefore, if you want to succeed at mobile recruiting, you have no choice but to review this vital entry point into the recruiting process carefully.

3. Collect Profiles Rather Than Resumes
Another effective mobile recruiting strategy you should consider adopting is collecting candidates’ profiles instead of resumes.

It’s true that more than 70% of job seekers would prefer to submit their resumes to a job posting online. However, how many of these have their resumes on their mobile devices? And is there any willing to undertake the lengthy ATS process it takes to do that on their smartphone or tablet?

The answer is obvious; very few in both scenarios. Most of the candidates opt not to apply because the process is too painful on their mobile devices. 

Tip:
Luckily, you can create a solution by offering candidates the option to hand submit their social profiles rather than resumes. With an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), you can integrate it with social networks, making gathering jobseeker profiles easier.

Actually, this strategy has resulted in more candidates completing the mobile application process, so if you want a dramatic shift in your recruiting statistics, it’s time to change the way you do things.

4. Filter/Screen and Interview Through Video
One important aspect of mobile recruitment is the screening and interviewing of candidates.

Most employers embrace the need for interviewing via video, a move highly influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic that forced people to minimize moving around.

So even employers are recruiting online, and the new employees can start working immediately from home. In addition, the digitally mature job seekers out there looking for employment on their mobile devices find video interviews easier and time-saving. 

Tip:
Start by conducting an initial screening. You can do this by sending the candidates you’re interested in a link to record individual video interviews. Doing so allows the jobseekers to do the recording in their free time and send it to your recruiting team. That helps speed up the screening process.

Mobile recruiting would never be such a successful strategy without video interviewing. It speeds up the whole hiring process while enhancing flexibility on the employer’s side. Additionally, it saves candidates time and money because they would have otherwise traveled to attend these interviews physically.

If you’re yet to make this strategy right, you need to act fast. It’s a crucial step in the mobile recruiting process.

5. Launch a Referral Program
Employee referrals are one of the best ways of getting yourself quality hires from mobile recruiting. It’s a strategy that makes everything easier for the employer.

A referral program involves having your employees recommend suitable candidates from the jobseekers for the vacant positions.

Every candidate referred to you by any of your employees will indicate that in their mobile application. How?

You can include a space where they can state how they came to learn about the vacancy, and if it was through a referral by one of your people, then you can go ahead and consider them. After all, who better understands the kind of employees you’re looking for than your staff?

A referral program will benefit you by reducing the time you take to recruit, minimizing the turnover rate, and allowing better planning of your talent management and workforce. 

Tip:
To make the referral process for mobile recruitment easy, consider doing the following:

• In your list of jobs, place those requiring a referral in a different place on your career page.
• Provide your employees with canned content they can post on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms. In addition, prepare email templates with links that direct employees to your social media accounts and career page.
• Use an email dedicated to referrals that your employees can use to channel referrals to a specific hiring pipeline.
• Incorporate a referral tracking system. Especially if you can get one with gamification and automation features, it can make the referral experience more engaging and fun.

After you have implemented a referral program, remember to assess whether it’s benefiting your mobile recruitment process. Ask yourself questions such as Is it satisfying your digitally mature candidates? What about the referring of employees and hiring managers?

If it’s working well and the results are evident, then go ahead and retain it. Additionally, where necessary, make improvements.

Take Away
Mobile recruiting is now the current trend in employee recruitment. A few years back, we considered it the future of talent acquisition, but things have evolved, and that future we anticipated is here now.

Implementing the recruitment strategies mentioned above may feel daunting, but don’t worry, it’s incredibly simple. Just give it some thought, do some preparation, and you’ll be ready to change how you source, attract and hire job seekers. The outcome is you’ll stay competitive for top talent in the job market long-term.