Optimizing the Recruitment Process for Mobile-Enabled Job-Seekers

Dermot O'Brien, Corporate VP & CHRO, ADP

Dermot O'Brien, Corporate VP & CHRO, ADP

Shift to Consumer-Style Job-Seeker Experience

Changes in talent management are driving the next big transformation in human capital, and the tools recruiters and jobseekers use to find each other are the keys to this evolution. Yet, recent research conducted by ADP Research Institute reveals a growing disconnect between the tools recruiters and job-seekers use to find each other.

For example, the research found that 44 percent of recruiters listed LinkedIn as “extremely” or “very” useful in their pursuit of new talent, yet only 19 percent of job-seekers felt the same when looking for a job. Recruiters’ and job-seekers’ perspectives on the usefulness of other social media sites during the recruiting process, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+, showed a similar disconnect, with recruiters consistently viewing the social platforms as more useful than job candidates did.

In addition, while mobile job-seekingis gaining in popularity, many corporate career sites are still not mobile-enabled.

According to the research, job-seekers increasingly want the ability to receive job alerts, view job postings and track the progress of their job applications on their smartphone or tablet.

As social and mobile technologies continue to impact jobseekers’ expectations, attracting top talent will require HR leaders to move their organization towards a more consumer-style jobseeker experience. This includes optimizing their recruiting process for today’s more mobile-enabled job-seeker by providing mobile access to their career site. It also requires tracking metrics that shed light on the candidate’s experience— and then leveraging those insights to refine the recruiting function to better meet candidates’ evolving needs. Finally, investing in online talent communities will help HR leaders build pools of prospects for hard-to-fill job categories that they can nurture through regular communication until appropriate positions open up.

"The HR systems of the future should empower employees with visual, personalized dashboards that give them a single point of entry to their benefits"

As we’ve grown accustomed to the simplicity of online shopping, we increasingly demand a similar experience from the systems we use at work. Yet many core business systems, including human capital management (HCM) platforms, haven’t kept pace with the trend toward more consumer-centric user interfaces. Meeting this growing employee expectation is critical to engaging and retaining top performers because it makes it easier for them to do their jobs and manage their HR information anytime, anywhere.

For HR leaders, this requires modern HCM systems that leverage the latest technology innovations to deliver a highly intuitive user interface a kin to the mobile apps we use in our personal lives. The HR systems of the future should empower employees with visual, personalized dashboards that give them a single point of entry to their benefits, payroll and other HR information. They also should include built-in decision-support tools tailored to both employees, such as for annual open enrollment, as well as managers, to drive better decision-making based on actionable insights regarding talent and performance. The end result will be a more satisfied, engaged and productive workforce.