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You’ve decided you need a better mobile application experience, have your employee branding and job ads where you want them, and have a good social media recruiting and sourcing strategy. Now it’s time to build your site and make sure you’re ready to process mobile applications.
If you want to attract mobile candidates, your site needs to work well. The 43% of job applicants looking for work on mobile don’t want to find a computer to apply; 27% of them expect to apply directly from their mobile device. If you want the mobile candidates you’ve attracted to stick around long enough to apply and (hopefully) become your next employee, make it a no-brainer to apply.
Those Who Can, Use an ATS
Perhaps the easiest way to manage your mobile applicants is with an Applicant Tracking System, ATS. An ATS allows you to manage all of your applicants in a single place, leading to a more streamlined experience on your end. With a more approachable applicant queue taking up less of your time, you’re free to be more responsive to applicants, sending them better response emails, nurturing them through candidate workflows and screening more applicants at a time. Only 26% of small to medium sized companies use an ATS to manage their applicants, but those that do are 40% more likely to be “best in class” companies in their field.
A few of the things to focus on when building a better mobile site include transferring the smaller amount of data, preloading feature of your site, and using mobile-only APIs. Focus on text over pictures, and make it easy to apply, whether that’s allowing uploaded resumes from cloud-based services like Dropbox and Evernote or having a one-click apply process.
Those Who Can’t, Also Use an ATS
Some of that programming language may have gone over a few heads, but don’t worry: you don’t have to be a programmer to make it easy for people to apply from mobile. Outsourcing can help you look like a master of tasks you may not be able to handle on your own, and mobile site development is no exception. Paying someone else to do the heavy lifting on tasks you may not be able to do saves you time and money, lets you work with people who know what they’re doing, and allows you to focus on your own core competencies. Luckily, many ATSes provide these tools already, whether through software or through the help of a support team.
When leading your team on what you’d like your site to be, “seamless” is your go-to word. You want applicants to never feel as though they’re stopping, to make them feel like their application process won’t take them too long. If you bog them down with page after page of questions and forms, 42% of frustrated job seekers are just as likely to give up as they are to finish the application. If they can get in from the social media posting, see the opening, apply, and attach their resume in under five minutes, you’re all the more likely to get candidates to apply. As always, have someone you know go through the process. If they hate it, you still have work to do!
Efficiency is key when building a mobile website, but there’s more to the mobile application process than a good website. In the next couple parts of this series, we’ll take a look at how to conduct a job interview with the mobile job applicant, and how mobile can help you onboard a new hire.
