With the rise of cloud and mobile computing technology and the software development supporting its functionality, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that mobile apps are the future for the recruitment industry. How this will play out in the near future is more of a mystery, yet emerging trends are shedding light on the process. Highlighting some of these trends, let’s examine whymobile apps are the future of job board recruitment.
The Evolution of Job Recruitment
For the last decade online applications have become the norm, while online job boards have played a dominant role in the recruitment process. Over the last few years, the functionality of mobile devices and its subsequent popularity has been morphing recruitment and application processes toward mobile accessibility.
Validating this, let’s look at an article found atHRDIVEcalled:“Mobile job apps continue to outpace traditional job boards”, written on Oct. 27, 2016 by Tess Taylor. The article quotes from industry expert, Howie Schwartz:
“Schwartz predicts that ‘mobile job board traffic will overtake desktop in the next 12 months.’ The thing is, ‘only around half of the desktop job applications are mobile friendly today, and only a handful are mobile first.’”
We gain further insight with an article fromBlogging4Jobs, called:“Recruiters Not HR Tech Companies Drive Change in Mobile”, written on Oct. 14, 2015, by Jessica Miller-Merrell – this article states:
“Job Boards Must Be Mobile Enabled…Candidates expect that job boards will also be mobile enabled to assist with mobile searching as well as application…As job aggregator sites like Indeed continues to grow in use and popularity, other job boards aren’t following suite…They don’t want to invest the money in the tech to be mobile enabled because it’s not impacting their revenue.”
This observation from a year ago is describing a sentiment from job boards that’s rapidly changing, as mobile apps increasingly become the preferred medium for applicants. As the article points out:
“Seven out of ten people searching for jobs, use mobile technology to do so while only 13% of employers have mobile friendly application options.”
These informative articles describe the trend over the last year, specifically, of the rise of mobile technology in recruitment, application, and interview processes. This is a trend job boards and employers are taking note of, in order to stay relevant to a “mobile first” generation of candidates.
3 Reasons Why Mobile Apps are the Future for Job Board Recruitment
- Real-Time Push Notifications:Mobile apps give push notifications to users with real-time, location sensitive messages. This is a tool job boards can take advantage of by offering users mobile app accessibility. Temporary or permanent employment opportunities may be appealing to an applicant while they’re traveling, or easily communicated to them while their at home with real-time push notifications.
- Mobile Accessibility: Recruitment, application, and interview processes, are streamlined when candidates have mobile accessibility. This expands the candidate’s ability to: search, apply, and interview for jobs — anytime, anywhere, and with any mobile device. Mobile accessibility is also simplifying the process and cutting out redundancies for both applicants and employers, by using automation and big data to filter and pin-point relevant matches.
- Personalized Recruitment Process with Automation:Integrating job boards into mobile app technology transforms the process into a personalized experience. Intelligent outreach through automation, based on preferences and applicant/employer information, simplifies and streamlines the process with more relevancy. With mobile apps, recruiting, applying, and interviewing processes are: less complex, more integrated with social media, and more adaptable to on-the-go lifestyles — personalizing the experience.
Mobile technology is changing many aspects of society, including the recruitment industry. While job boards have been the dominant force in facilitating recruitment and application processes for the last decade, technological trends are pressuring them to adopt “mobile first” strategies for the future. The good news is, this transition promises to be a positive development in the industry for everyone involved.
Global recruitment will, especially, benefit from job boards offering candidates mobile accessibility for these processes, because job boards are, mainly, how they connect with a global market; also, mobile candidates are more likely to be interested in remote work possibilities. Indeed, cloud and mobile computing technologies are (and will continue to be) an integral part of businesses’ global recruitment strategies.
The Network understands how important these mobile trends and developments are to the global recruitment industry, and we’re excited to partner with forward thinking job boards around the world who understand this as well, such as HeadHunter Russia, StepStone Belgium, Infoempleo Spain, Naukri India, Rozee Pakistan and OCC Mundial Mexico, just to name a few.
