Mobile Recruiting Drowned Out By Social Recruiting?

By Tony Restell

Some ideas gather a powerful momentum all of their own, while others seem to take an age to even register. Such is the case with social recruiting and mobile recruiting. Collectively, recruiters are throwing all their investment into one - when the other may prove to be just as important in the ever-present struggle to attract top talent.

On the one hand, survey after survey shows us that 90%+ of recruiters are now investing in social recruiting to meet their organisation's hiring needs. While direct marketing to candidates on LinkedIn is proving to be an effective strategy for many corporate users, the returns from other social recruiting activities are far harder to quantify - and in many cases will be only be reaped years after the initial time investment was made. Yet it'd be a brave soul indeed who put forward the notion that their organisation didn't need to bother with social recruiting.
 

The contrast with Mobile Recruiting is stark. As the infographic below shows, only 13% of the world's top companies have invested in having a careers section of their website that's optimised for mobile. Worse still, barely 2% have reworked their online application processes to make them mobile-friendly. Yet unlike social recruiting, the financial case for taking action can be much more easily made. Hiring via corporate websites and job boards has, over the last decade and a half, allowed companies to dramatically reduce their reliance on costlier recruiting options (think newspaper advertising, industry supplements and recruitment agencies). If the internet disappeared overnight, there'd be a mighty big talent attraction hole for recruiters to fill!!

But now take on board the fact that mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage sometime around 2014. Add to that the fact that companies and job boards alike confirm a growing proportion of their visitors are people browsing their sites from a mobile device. Plus the fact that mobile visitors are shown to be less likely to apply for roles they find. It's like we're all on board The Titanic and no-one can make out the iceberg on the horizon.

This is both an opportunity and a threat. Those companies that step back from the social recruiting frenzy will find themselves able to invest in something that is proven to increase the conversion rates of every other recruitment branding and advertising activity they undertake. The potential to gain an advantage over rival employers and recruitment agencies is clear. Yet if we all continue to ignore the changes that mobile recruiting necessitates, the outcome will be a global economy where it's more costly to generate a candidate application - and therefore to make a hire.

So the question I ask is "Why aren't you investing in Mobile Recruiting? Is all your attention and resource simply being hoarded by the social recruiting bandwagon?"

Maybe it's time for a re-think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below - and our thanks to HireRabbit for granting us permission to reproduce their mobile recruiting data below.