Mobile-friendly career sites are more and more a necessity, but not all such sites are really candidate-oriented. Expert Matt Adam, speaking at the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Talent Management Conference and Exhibition, held recently in San Diego, debunked three myths of mobile recruiting and offered six questions to help readers gauge their mobile-readiness.
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Here are Adam’s three myths. (Adam is chief talent strategist, NAS Recruitment Innovation, in Cincinnati.)
Myth #1. No one searches for jobs on mobile devices.
Busted. For example, Google reported 300,000,000 job-related searches, and 50 percent of them were from mobile devices.
Myth #2. No one visits career sites from mobile devices.
Busted, says Adam. He is familiar with sites that get 25 percent of their traffic from mobile devices.
Myth #3. Candidates don’t want to be bothered on mobile devices.
False, says Adam. Candidates are willing (and some eager) to interact on mobile devices.
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It’s Search Mobilegeddon
The final piece of the puzzle is that Google has now changed its algorithm to favor sites that are mobile optimized. It demotes your site if it does not connect with mobile devices. (In other words, you have a loser site, says Adam.)
It’s also true that more people have access through their phones than have access through computers.
SEO/SEM
Adam talks of two types of mobile search results. First, there is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). That’s “organic” search results. Some employers boost their position in the results with SEM, that is, Search Engine Marketing, where you pay to gain a higher position in results listings.
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Candidate Experience
When designing mobile, says Adam, be sure to focus on the candidate experience. That means the site should be intuitive to navigate. You have to figure out how to convey all you want to convey in an easy way. Simplicity should be your mantra. Ideally, you can do all you need to do from the phone.
Don’t forget to consider geo-location. What jobs are open in the vicinity of the phone?
The Standard Search
Be sure that your Web presence will respond to the most common online search: type of job in the area. For example, a typical search would be “pharmacy jobs in San Francisco.”
Mobile Career Sites—Six Questions
- Does your site recognize that the user is on a mobile device?
- Is it easy to type your URL?
- Do users need to pinch and zoom?
- Can mobile users watch video?
- Can candidates conduct some sort of transaction?
- Can users find actual open jobs easily?
In tomorrow’s Advisor, more from Matt Adam on mobile recruiting, plus an introduction to the timely webinar, Get Linked! Social Media Recruiting Strategies for the Digital Era.