In an increasingly competitive, fast-paced and tech savvy job market, high tech recruiting methods, particularly social media recruiting, have become an integral part of the overall recruiting strategy at many organizations. The majority of participating organizations in the 2013 ERC Hiring Trends & Practices Survey indicated that they are staying on top of the social media trend, but still fall short when it comes to an even more recent development, i.e. mobile recruiting.
Employer/Applicant Gap
Currently, a clear gap exists between the mobile recruiting offerings put forth by local employers and the mobile device habits of potential applicants. According to the 2013 Global Recruiting Trends Survey, when given the option to do so:
- 59% of potential job candidates use mobile devices to learn about job opportunities;
- 53% actually apply for jobs on such a device.
Locally, only 10% of organizations have a recruiting website that is optimized for mobile viewing and 10% allow job candidates to upload/edit resumes via mobile devices. Currently, these figures are very much in line with national numbers as only 13% of recruiters nationally feel that their organizations are making a sufficient investment in mobile recruiting.
Mobile Recruiting
Mobile recruiting is the next hurdle that organizations looking to recruit top talent may need to conquer both nationally and locally. A key piece of attracting, recruiting, and retaining top talent is to ‘meet them where they are.’ Candidates designated as ‘top talent’ are option well-networked and resourceful. They work with the people and tools available to them to make things happen, often in less traditional or standard ways. Companies that want to find, attract, and hire top talent need to make it desirable and easy for such candidates to learn about their organization and apply to work there.
It should be noted that in 2013 local organizations are already making plans to expand their investment in the realm of mobile recruiting. Double digit growth is projected for 2014 as another 10% of organizations plan to optimize the recruiting area of their website to be mobile friendly and 12% plan to add the resume uploading/editing functionality to their mobile recruiting infrastructure.
Sources: ERC (2013). Hiring Trends & Practices Survey; LinkedIn (2013). 2013 Global Recruiting Trends Survey
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