How Do You Interact With Your Candidates and Clients Daily?

When was the last time you called a candidate on a land line? It is a simple question, here is another. What is the device that an average user picks up 1500 times a week to check? And finally. Which professional networking site we all use every day got 45 million unique visitors on these devices last quarter?

The answer isn’t a hard one is it? It is of course mobile phones and mobile devices.

It has got to the point now where they are intrinsically linked to everything we do, all day. They are never far away from us and for many of us it has become a habit to continuously keep picking up the phone - many times without even realising you are doing it! The fact that 48.3% of all LinkedIn’s traffic is via a mobile device demonstrates that we are all happy to use it professionally as well as for many other tasks:

Please note the top activities that people are using mobile devices for, and then consider how you interact with your candidates or clients every single day:

1. Accessing email. You send them job alerts by email, you send them InMails, you send them details of interviews  and prospective jobs and you send them your newsletters, all via email. These are all highly likely to be first viewed on a mobile device.
2. Text messages. You send them interview reminders, job alerts and ‘call me’ messages. They are read on a mobile phone.
3. Internet searching. We all search on our mobiles every day - for companies, location information and of course jobs. Did you know 43% of job seekers have used a mobile to search for a job.
4. Social networking. Whatever your social network of choice - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ etc - the chances are you will access them via your mobile phone. So if you are using social networks for recruiting (and of course you should) then the interaction will likely be mobile.
5. News alerts. You encourage people to sign up for your job alerts, to make sure they get access to the latest jobs. Depending on the process you use, it will be read by the job seeker on a mobile in one of these methods above. If you post jobs to job boards, and people have apps for them on their phones, then they will get push notifications.

There is absolutely NO ARGUMENT with this, is there? Your target audiences - applicants, candidates, clients and employees - are on mobile devices every day. So why then do companies still fail to embrace mobile technologies from a recruiting perspective? In my opinion it is absolutely crazy not to realise that you have to do something about it now!

So what can you do about it to make sure your company ensures you don’t miss out an opportunity to engage with candidates on mobile devices? Here are some ways you could be using mobile for recruiting:

1. Website/Career site is mobile friendly. Unfortunately this is getting repetitive now, but still companies choose not to do much about it. Even at the very least make it mobile friendly - then people can still read information even if they have to pinch and zoom. Ideally make it fully responsive and design a simpler workflow  that embraces ‘apply now’ and ‘apply when you get home to a laptop’ approach.
2. Ensure all emails look good on a mobile. It is important that they not only look good, but the links you include (i.e. to job content) are also mobile friendly. There is no point in sending a really good looking newsletter/job alerts only for them links of the jobs to take them back to an awful career page.
3. Make sure you LinkedIn Company page is excellent and current. LinkedIn looks excellent on a mobile device via their app. So if you have a really poor career site - you could (in the short term) send them to your LinkedIn Company Page or Career Page. Make sure you have your jobs showing there if you do this.
4. Embrace instant messaging. Aside from pure text messages, you should be looking at using tools like, WhatsApp, BBM (Blackberry Messenger), Facebook Messaging, iMessage, WeChat etc. These put messages on the home screens of people’s mobile devices so they see them immediately they next pick up their phone. But don’t waffle though, keep the message to the point.
5. Use video. There are many free tools now that enable you to have a video call with people, and as recruiters you should be using them every time. Facetime, Skype, Google+ Hangouts are three really simple tools to use If you are using video interviewing software, then mobile really comes into it’s own as many of the products have fully function mobile interfaces - not just for candidate interviews but for hiring manager review as well.
6. Visual job adverts. People look at images online A LOT!  Give them something to look at (and share), by creating picture job adverts.We are starting to see more of this now as sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and of course Facebook are displaying images better in their feeds. Tools like Jobgram and Instajob work well as do adverts like these by CloudNine:
7. LinkedIn Mobile App. Whether you love it or hate it, the LinkedIn app is damn good. For a start you can connect with people easily and for free on the app (as opposed to the desktop version), just by either clicking connect. The app also displays hyperlinks with text. So make sure add https:// to any WWW address, so that when someone sees that link within the app they can easily click on it. Simple yet brilliant! And of course it has the full search capability that you come to expect from the normal version.
8. Social media. This goes without saying, but with social media being on 24/7, using a mobile device to interact with candidates and clients allows you to engage with them at the hours they are available. This usually means outside work hours. Who said recruitment was 8-5 anymore anyway?

During the course of my consulting, I get to speak to many companies and recruiters. Mobile still seems to be a blind spot for too many of them. I hope this has helped you realise that you don’t have an option any more - mobile is well and truly now part of the recruiting landscape.

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