These days there are very few things you want or need that aren’t at your fingertips. With a smartphone you can order food, products or services, even buy a car or apply for a mortgage, without leaving your chair. ‘Signup Culture’ has changed our lives, providing instant gratification for every transaction. It’s spilling over into recruitment and hiring, as well – at least for tech savvy businesses.
When hiring you hope to attract candidates with a compelling posting. You want top talent to respond immediately, while their interest is piqued. If you’re not delivering on ‘signup culture,’ making it effortless and near instantaneous to apply, you may be missing out on some of the most dynamic applicants.
Meeting on their terms
Signup candidates are looking for their dream job and company with their smartphones.
Research published by Undercover Recruiter shows over 90% of applicants look for a job on their phones: 45% do so daily. They’re not just looking on job boards and your career pages: 79% look through social channels when searching for a job: for candidates newer to the workforce, that number rises to 86%.
Desktop job searches are on the decline. Appcast’s Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report for 2020 found almost 61% of applications were completed through a mobile device: less than 40% via desktop.
If your career and application pages are mobile-enabled, you’re already ahead of the competition, but don’t assume mobile-ready is the end of the story. Appcast reported most candidates – almost 60% – apply for jobs Tuesday through Thursday, so you’ll want to ensure your ads are posted early in the week. When bidding, set pricing lower for later in the week, when there’s less likelihood of a response.
Mobile candidate experience is key
Assuring you’re mobile ready means more than checking the boxes – it means actually checking the boxes. Try to apply for a job on your mobile-enabled app. Is it quick and painless, or lengthy and cumbersome? SHRM reported 60% of applicants will abandon an online application if it takes too long. If you’re requiring more than 15 or 20 minutes, you’ll likely lose more than half of candidates, so make sure it’s quick and efficient.
Text to me
To make the application process even easier, consider communicating in their native language – text messaging. Your mobile app should request phone numbers and ask candidates if they’re willing to receive text messages, versus phone calls or emails, in response to their application.
A recent survey found 75% would rather text than speak on the phone. They cite the ability to check and respond to messages on their schedule, and in private. Almost two-thirds consider text messages less disruptive than phone calls: almost 20% admit they never check their voice mail.
For business, texting is the way to acquire talent. One report found text messages have a 99% open rate: 95% will be read within 3 minutes of being sent. With an average response time of 90 seconds, 45% of texts are answered. The same report found the average email has only an 18% response rate.
Another survey found texting is not just for millennials and their juniors. Nearly 25% of Baby Boomers are anxious about taking phone calls: 52% of millennials. For millennials, 88% report they’d rather text than call. Texting is the newest tool for business and recruiters.
Signup scheduling
Scheduling software is the next step in meeting the needs of the signup candidate. If their completed application has made it through screening, a pop-up should immediately appear that allows them to self-schedule an interview. Getting them on the books, quickly, while their interest level is high is key to acquiring talent before the competition.
Make sure your schedule is as open as possible as soon as your job is posted. New data from Indeed found a disturbing new trend: more than a quarter of job applicants are now ghosting prospective employers. Twenty percent report they’ve disappeared from the hiring process because they received another job offer. Bringing them in for an interview, and potential hire, quickly may be key to avoid being ghosted.
Signup success
Finally, you’ll want to make at the very least a conditional offer of employment quickly. The best candidates are not waiting weeks for an offer. In today’s challenging market, Indeed reports almost half of candidates are getting feedback (or an offer) within weeks of their application, with 37% within one week. If you’re not making hiring decisions quickly, your competition probably is.
Hiring authorities that work with today’s signup culture are finding more benefits than drawbacks. Leveraging technology to ease application and scheduling tasks gives the ability to meet job seekers on their terms, and provides recruiters with more time to work on high-value tasks, like interviewing. Human Resources can get instant gratification in hiring too, when they align with signup culture.