Where should recruiters today look for top talent? Universities? On specialist job sites?
At their clients’ workplaces?!
According to a new report by Monster, half of all jobseekers look for a new job whilst working at their current one. And we don’t mean ‘whilst contracted to an employer but job-searching from home’ – we mean actually trawling through opportunities at their desk between 9am and 5pm.
Obviously, a position being digital and visible online is crucial to getting under these candidates’ noses, as you can’t walk up to these dissatisfied employees and scoop them up from their desks (which would be great, given that there are so many of them!).
The survey also found that, rather than dreary Monday mornings being the optimum time to have a crafty look at the job boards when the boss isn’t around, it’s actually Wednesdays that prove the most common day for employees hunting down new positions and uploading their CVs onto relative platforms.
The commute home is another opportunity for employees to search for a new job. Monster reports a 58% increase in the amount of people browsing job adverts whilst getting from A to B; most on the way home, between 5pm and 7pm. Perhaps a rough day at work prompts these searches?
Perfect for conducting searches during the commute, it’s perhaps no surprise that mobile phones are also used to apply for roles, which could suggest to recruiters that mobile-friendly websites and effective mobile application processes should be priorities. Monster goes as far as saying “recruiters risk losing the attention of the next generation of jobseekers unless they embrace a mobile first strategy”.
Those that do incorporate mobile applications into their recruitment web design approach may need to try harder in relation to the process. It appears job application journeys via a smartphone are not always easy or seamless experiences; their survey found that a whopping 50% of candidates abandon the job applications they make on their phone, citing broken links and too many screener questions as barriers.
It seems that those born after 1995 are the largest group to use their mobiles to search and apply for jobs – maybe because they’ve never needed to find alternative ways to access new opportunities. This generation has grown up with smartphones being the device that does everything. Says Sinead Bunting, Monster’s VP of Marketing in Europe: “Generation Z are a mobile first generation, that turns to their phones for dating, shopping, and now, to boost their careers. Today’s job seekers expect to be able to view jobs seamlessly on their mobile devices and to be able to apply for them quickly and easily.”
Experts state that, whilst most prominent job sites/recruiters have a mobile application process, few have actually tested their own system. Elements such as the speed at which pages load, fewer questions/filters, or just an ‘unfriendly’ process, can make all the difference to the people using their app. Whilst an online application process might warrant reams of pages, these won’t translate the same on a mobile; therefore, a completely different application process should be designed for the smartphone as a result – that is, if you don’t want to miss out on the 58% of job-seekers who use them.
A mobile app may not be part of your overall plans at the moment, but given how popular it is for candidates to search for opportunities on their mobile, at the very least, your website should be optimised and mobile-friendly.
It’s a competitive market for recruiters; if job-seekers (and clients) can’t access your company on their smartphone it will be even harder for you to reach them. It’s like going for a swim wearing concrete flippers...
