Mobile apply has to be better – and we’re delivering

[former_member29697]

Social advertising is extremely prevalent, but normally very poor performing. When researching statistics about click-through rates on Facebook and Twitter, it appears that it performs better on mobile than desktop, so it prompted me to look into what may be causing this. I opened each site on my desktop, iPad and iPhone and then navigated around - then I found a very likely and straightforward reason:

How often did you accidentally click on something on your phone either by an errant thumb or by placing it in your pocket? Or when you have a list of links on your phone and you try to click on a specific one, you hit the one either above or under the one you meant?

So if the experience is not meant to be on mobile, why do companies try to jam in a poor solution? Because they need to check a box that they have it, regardless of the customer experience. This is very much true for recruiting. Many career sites and apply processes are a poor solution developed to “check the box” on mobile for companies, regardless of how good the candidate experience.

The candidates want it:

• 45% of job seekers say they use their mobile device specifically to search for jobs at least once a day²
• 89% believe a mobile device is an important tool for job searching²

Companies aren’t doing it right:

• 90% of the Fortune 500 company career sites do not support a mobile apply solution²
• 70% of job seekers are willing to apply for a job via smartphone, but more than a quarter of larger companies said that not a single part of their hiring process has been mobile-optimized¹

It is causing companies to miss out on candidates:

• 60% abandon the process if they have technical issues¹
• 55% if they can’t upload their resume¹
• 20% wont even apply if they can’t use their mobile device¹

So what can you do? I wish it was a single pronged answer, but there are many components. So let’s start with a pragmatic approach:

1. Implement a responsive career site and mobile apply process. Not a mobile site separate from your desktop site. You want to improve candidate experience and confidence while reducing your maintenance.
2. Ensure you can handle resume upload via mobile, cloud services (e.g. DropBox) or traditional desktop upload. If you can’t do all three, you need to rethink your entire mobile strategy.
3. Look at multi-staged applications that can improve candidate completion rates of applications, and allows candidates to complete stages regardless of desktop or mobile devices.
4. Use SMS notifications for the application process, especially when dealing with candidates outside of North America. Assume candidates who complete applications on mobile will communicate via mobile. SMS is easy and accessible all over the globe and nearly seen as a requirement in Asia and Europe.

Over the last two years, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting has been heavily focused on creating the best mobile candidate experience for our customers so you can hire the world’s best talent.

So the question to you is, what are you doing for your mobile strategy in 2016?

For more details on the 1511 release updates to SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, check out our Q4 2015 Release Highlights document and listen to David Ludlow in our release video on YouTube.

Sources:

1 2014 Kenton Global Recruiting Research

2 2015 Glassdoor