Recruiter Top 10: Mobile Recruiting Tools
Welcome to Top 10, Recruiter.com’s weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned.
This Week: Top 10 Mobile Recruiting Tools
At the risk of stating the obvious, the best way to recruit the talent you need is to find out where that talent hangs out. Chances are these days that, regardless of your industry, your potential hires are hanging out on their mobile phones. After all, mobile Internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet usage.
Recruiters and HR managers themselves have also grown increasingly dependent on their mobile devices. The pace of business has changed, and we can’t always afford to wait until we return to the office to extend that job offer or schedule that interview. If you don’t move quickly enough, your competition might just snap up that perfect candidate you’ve been dreaming of.
Given these conditions, mobile recruiting technology is critical to your hiring success. That’s why we took some time to round up some of our favorite mobile recruiting tools.
1. SAP SuccessFactors Mobile Recruiting Management
A lot of mobile recruiting tools are highly specialized, focusing on certain aspects of the recruiting and hiring process. That’s not necessarily a problem, but sometimes you need a mobile recruiting tool that lets you carry out almost the entire hiring process on your smartphone. That’s what SAP SuccessFactors’ mobile recruiting tool is for. Recruiters and hiring managers can use the tool to extend job offers, approve requisitions, access resumes, and make notes about candidates – all from the palms of their hands.
2. Switch
It’s been said more than once that recruiting is a bit like dating – what with employers and candidates trying to find their perfect matches – so why not make mobile recruiting more like a dating app?
The creators of Switch, which was brought to our attention by Capterra HR Technology Specialist Halden Ingwersen, seem to have asked themselves the same question. In Ingwersen’s words, “Taking after the swipe system of Tindr, Switch matches postings with interested applicants and notifies both sides when they’ve mutually liked one another.” So, there’s less chasing and more connecting in the recruiting process. What more could anyone ask for?
3. HR Virtuoso
Mobile recruiting is a wonderful concept, but it all falls apart if your candidates can’t actually use their mobile phones to apply. Sadly, that’s often the case: Think about how cumbersome most applications are on desktops. Not think about how much more cumbersome they must be when you try to fill them out on your smartphone. Yikes.
That’s where HR Virtuoso comes in: The tool allows employers to create custom, mobile-optimized applications that candidates can fill out on any device. It’s convenient for your prospects, and it makes sure you don’t lose top talent to competitors with less unwieldy applications.
4. Proven
Proven is a great mobile recruiting tool for small businesses in particular: Customers only pay when they use the app, which means none of the prohibitive subscription fees that often keep small businesses out of the mobile recruiting game.
Plus, Proven lets users post jobs to more than 15 job boards right from their mobile phones. I’m not sure if you’ll ever need to advertise a job opening while you’re on the bus or talking a nice postprandial walk, but just in case, Proven has you covered.
5. CareerCloud’s Recruiting News Feed
Less of a recruiting tool and more of a professional resource, CareerCloud’s Recruiting News Feed is still extremely valuable for the on-the-go recruiter. It creates an RSS feed of more than 30 recruiting blogs and websites that recruiters and HR pros can access anywhere, anytime. Professional development is critical if you want to stay competitive in this industry. Thanks to Recruiting News Feed, it’s easier to keep current on all the latest news and trends.
6. CareerCloud’s Talent Xray
Another CareerCloud offering – and another tool brought to our attention by Capterra’s Ingwersen – Talent Xray is a mobile sourcing app. The platform allows you to build queries according to job title, location, and keywords and then search Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ all at once. Wouldn’t you rather spend your next boring meeting covertly sourcing candidates on your smartphone?
(Okay, maybe don’t actually do that – but if you’re going to fiddle with your phone instead of paying attention, you might as well do something that benefits the company, right?)
7. SmashFly
If you’re going to launch a successful mobile recruiting strategy, you’re going to need a mobile-friendly career site for the same reasons that you need mobile-friendly applications: Your strategy isn’t worth a thing if your process inconveniences candidates.
To build a great mobile career site, look no further than SmashFly, which can help you create a beautiful branded career site and ensure that all your jobs are search-engine optimized for mobile searches.
8. LinkedIn Mobile …
… and Facebook Mobile, and Twitter Mobile – pretty much all the mobile apps of the big social networking sites.
Like it or not, social recruiting is here to stay. To integrate it into your mobile recruiting strategy, you’d do well to master the art of mobile social networking. As Hiretual cofounder Ninh Tran says, “If your candidates are using mobile to search for jobs on the go, you can do recruiting on the go as well.”
9. Loop
Let’s face it: Recruiting is pretty boring. Even when a candidate is being courted by their dream employer, the whole resume/application/interview process can be a downright snooze.
Spice it up with Loop, which injects some gamification into your mobile recruiting strategy. Through interactive surveys, quizzes, and competitions, you can finally make recruiting fun – and get top talent interested in your company at the same time. Plus, live leaderboards let candidates compete with one another for your affection – or, rather, for the top score.
10. Ark’s Mail App
With Ark’s mail app, you can turn your inbox into a talent pipeline. The app essentially overlays social media data onto emails from your contacts. Every. Single. One. So, when someone emails you, you can also see their LinkedIn profile, their Twitter account, the questions they’ve answered on Quora, etc., etc. Who knows? Your next great hire might be sitting in your inbox as we speak.