Mobile Recruiting … Finally Takes Off

Mobile …finally! DNA footprints in the cloud; recruiting back to basics: getting to know the candidate; the end of the traditional ATS; emerging markets dominate; augmented reality; disruptive marketing and stunt PR; the end of social media; candidate cloning and the end of recruiters as we know it!

The impact and level of debate created by Recruitment 3.0 & 4.0, certainly took us by surprise. Based on feedback, it is clear that there has been healthy discussion and many companies have re-appraised/reviewed their recruiting strategies.

Recruitment 5.0 is the final paper in the trilogy.

3.0 was all about building.

4.0 all about driving value.

5.0 is all about … Personalization, self-sufficiency, predictability, big data, and back to basics.

The defining features of Recruitment 5.0:

  • Mobile recruiting finally takes off and becomes the dominant channel.
  • Recruiting gets back to basics and focuses on building relationships. Included in this is a focus on personalization/humanization and dominating/driving communications.
  • Footprints in the cloud. Companies obsessively get to know their customers/consumers, and recruiters do the same with their “corporate” talent pools
  • Data DNA: Companies draw data to profile candidates based on online habits and trends.
  • Technological developments bring an end to the traditional ATS.
  • Emerging markets emerge and dominate.
  • Augmented reality and disruptive marketing dominate recruiting marketing.
  • As companies seek to attract the best talent in a candidate short market, they set up their own courses, universities/academies, and “clone” future employees.
  • As talent becomes more scarce, talent becomes more contract by nature and more flexible.
  • It’s the end of recruiters as we know it … the death of the recruiting profession?

Some meaty stuff.

Reviewing these bullet points, some companies are already experimenting and executing on elements ,but as time passes, these will become dominant in our thoughts, plans and strategies.

Let’s explore in more detail.

Mobile Recruiting … Finally Takes Off

This may seem rather surreal to include mobile under Recruitment 5.0 Many would include it under Recruitment 3.0. But adoption of mobile has been super slow in adoption by recruiting, thus the placement in 5.0. There is a definite time lag in mobile adoption for recruiting purposes. (Embarrassingly, this problem is thanks to us in that we are not providing candidates the tools to look and apply for jobs on mobile and not the other way round, as candidates are wanting to use their mobiles to try and look for jobs).

The demand is there for mobile job search but the supply isn’t. In a recent study, Dr. John Sullivan & Associates, found that only 8% of Fortune 100 company careers sites are mobile enabled. Further analysis showed that of the largest 35 companies in the U.S. and UK, only four had mobile-enabled careers sites, with only one having a mobile recruiting app. That hardly screams mass adoption. That shouts of delay and skepticism and laziness in adoption.

Mobile is not the silver bullet of recruiting that many proclaim but it will become a key channel in the recruiting mix and arguably THE key channel. It cannot, as it is now, be ignored.

Mobile recruiting is not new. Five to ten years ago companies were experimenting with SMS messaging campaigns. That’s a long way from today. What is pushing mobile adoption and stimulating recruiting’s interest in mobile is the rise of the smart phone which is really making mobile a mass market medium. Based on current projections by Morgan Stanley, within the next three years, mobile Internet users will exceed desktop users. Some predict that this may even happen in 2013.

These final stats are powerful:

  • Mobile now accounts for 10% of Internet usage worldwide (this has more than doubled over last 18 months) (The Next Web)
  • 1.08 of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones
  • Apple and Android represent more than 75% of the smartphone market
  • 7.96% of all web traffic in the U.S. is mobile traffic. That number skyrockets to 14.85% in Africa, and 17.84% in Asia — up 192.5% since 2010
  • 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get coupons
  • 39% of instances where a consumer walks out of a store without buying were influenced by smartphones
  • 91% of mobile Internet access is for social activities, versus just 79% on desktops (Source: Hubspot)
  • Over 1/3 of Facebook’s users access Facebook Mobile; 50% of Twitter’s users use Twitter Mobile

Facebook said at the last GigaOM Mobilize Conference that mobile was its key growth area. It stated that it has more than 320m active mobile users who log into Facebook twice as often as desktop users. The CTO then said that “within 12 to 18 months you will consider Facebook a mobile company and not a social company.” That’s a bold statement.

Let’s turn now to recruiting and mobile.

Research is showing us that people are actively searching for jobs on their mobile phones. Interesting, while people are looking at jobs throughout the day, they wait until they get home and apply via desktop. The technology for applying and linking resumes/CVs is not quite there. Mobile Internet research shows us that the heaviest usage of mobile Internet is between 8 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Comscore estimates that the UK has 2.8 m job-seekers a month accessing job listing from mobile devices, with 67% looking every day. PotentialPark research that 88% of job seekers are or would search for jobs via the mobile Internet, with one in three job seekers wanting to actually apply from their handset.

Mobile offers great opportunities to build trust and brand awareness and engage with talent. In India, consumers are leapfrogging traditional media and the PC to embrace mobile devices, while low literacy rates spur the development of voice activated web sites and services.

Perhaps one of the reasons for low adoption of mobile is confusion over what to do. Go for a mobile-enabled site or create a mobile app

This article was co-authored with Amy McKee, Sr. Director, Global Talent Acquisition, at Autodesk.)