The US labor shortage has been impacting the construction industry since the pandemic, and in some instances even before, and it’s not getting better. According to McKinsey, the labor shortage will likely worsen, thanks in part to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs per year, on top of the 440,000 job openings that currently exist. That means it will be even more difficult to find and hire workers, especially when the competition is doing the same thing. If your recruiting practices don’t take advantage of mobile technology, you’re not reaching candidates where they’re at most, i.e., their phones.
Nearly all Americans own a smartphone, 85% to be exact, according to Pew Research. As the popularity of phone use grows, only 35% of Americans had a smartphone in 2011, job seekers will expect to search and apply for jobs from their mobile devices.
If you’re not taking advantage of mobile recruiting, you’re missing out on targeting and hiring from a huge pool of qualified candidates. A recruiting process that’s mobile, including the application process, puts your company in a great position to hire quality candidates. Need more reasons?
4 Reasons Mobile Recruiting is Important
A Mobile Process Saves Time
Time is something you can never make more of and a mobile recruiting process helps ensure you don’t waste it. Mobile recruiting reduces the amount of time spent creating, collecting and reviewing applications. Simplified processes let recruiters quickly post job descriptions and even watch candidate interviews. Mobile recruiting also saves the candidate time by allowing them to fill out their application in minutes from their phones. And those minutes matter. According to SHRM, 92% of candidates never finish online job applications. As a bonus, a mobile process eliminates paper waste.
Mobile Recruiting can be Managed from Anywhere
Smartphones are called mobile devices for a reason; they go where you go. A mobile process leaves you free to manage your recruiting process from anywhere – your house, care conference room and even your desk. Scheduling interviews, chatting with candidates, communicating with staff and updating job openings can all be done with a smartphone, freeing recruiters to handle candidates when they’re interested, without waiting to get back to your desk.
Mobile Recruiting Creates a Diversified Talent Pool
With the ability to reach a wide audience, mobile recruiting opens up your job opportunities to a diversified audience. Companies with a diverse workforce are 35% more profitable than non-diverse companies. A diverse workforce sparks innovation from multiple ideas, offers a wide variety of talents and skills, can even open the door to new business opportunities with companies that speak different languages or have different cultures and even attract a larger pool of candidates. Mobile recruiting allows you to post jobs on hundreds of job boards plus social media channels helping to reach a range of diverse candidates. And if you’re trying to take advantage of the millions of federal infrastructure dollars, you’ll need to make sure your hiring practices are inclusive and open to all races, colors, religions, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.
Mobile is a Preferred Tool of Younger Candidates—and Construction Workers
With all Baby Boomers reaching retiring age by 2030, recruiters need to focus their efforts on reaching younger generations and younger generations, like Millennials and Gen Z, use their smartphones for everything. Both were raised with smartphones, Gen Z got their first smartphones earlier than any other generation, at age 12 on average. And, 79% of Gen Zs say they can’t live without their smartphones. Without mobile-friendly job posting and application abilities, younger generations will be less likely to apply for jobs with your company. Most employees in the construction and trades are searching for jobs from a phone, so if your process isn’t mobile-friendly these potential new hires either won’t find you or won’t both to apply.
Adapting to mobile recruiting tools isn’t difficult. Arcoro’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) easily transforms your manual recruiting process into one that’s automated and mobile friendly. Arcoro’s ATS is a cloud-based solution that simplifies the functions of employment branding, job distribution, candidate management and reporting for efficiency and compliance. The result is a centralized, automated process that is completely mobile-friendly.
Contact us to ask how it can transform how you hire.
