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Recruiting in the Staffing Industry: Candidate Intake Best Practices (Part 1)

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Earlier this year,  we conducted our 2016 Staffing Industry Sales, Marketing & Recruiting Survey of over 500 staffing professionals. Our goal was to answer one simple question:

What works best in recruiting, sales and marketing?

Today, I’m continuing my series of posts, by sharing smart strategies to improve your candidate intake process – and keep your recruiting funnel full!

Related posts:
Biggest Recruiting Challenges in the Staffing Industry
Bridging Technical Skills Gaps in the Staffing Industry

The Data: Candidate Intake Best Practices

Q1: “Does your website allow candidates to search jobs?”

Q2: “Is the job search optimized for mobile job seekers?”

Q3: “Is your application process optimized for mobile job seekers?”

Data from this series of questions taught us about the state of staffing and recruiting firms’ website search and apply features. We found that, surprisingly, essential job search capabilities are still missing for some.

Despite the fact that nearly half of job seekers say they use mobile devices to search for jobs at least once a day – and that nearly 9 in 10 candidates believe a mobile device is an important tool for job searching:

  • Over 15% of respondents’ websites do not even allow candidates to search jobs.
  • Nearly 1 in 5 (18.5%) of respondents’ websites do not optimize the job search process for mobile job seekers.
  • Nearly 1 in 3 (32.7%) of respondents’ websites do not have a mobile-optimized application process.

recruiting-website-search-and-apply

Recruiting Takeaways

Candidates love using mobile technology in their job hunt. And a recruitment process that doesn’t work well on a smartphone or tablet frustrates job seekers – causing as many as 40% of mobile candidates to abandon the application process.

To keep more promising candidates in the top end of your recruiting funnel:

  • Critically examine every aspect of your job search and application processes to ensure they are simple and welcoming for job seekers.
  • Invest in mobile technology to create a seamless job search experience for job seekers – no matter what type of device they use.
  • Develop a mobile-optimized version of your application that loads in 3 seconds, has large buttons (that are easy to use on mobile devices) and doesn’t require scrolling or zooming to read.
  • Make sure that your application takes no more than 20 minutes to complete.

Up Next: Candidate Intake Part 2 – Job Posting Solutions

In my next post we’ll take a look at what works best with job postings and share more tips for keeping your recruiting full. And if you don’t want to wait, you can access complete survey results and insights here:

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About our 2016 industry survey:

In July and August 2016, we conducted an online survey of staffing industry professionals to find out what works best when it comes to their firms’ sales, marketing and recruiting efforts. The survey was completed by nearly 500 individuals located throughout the U.S. representing a wide range of staffing specialties and company sizes.

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