Part 2: Can you pass the mobile site performance test?

Last week, we established the primacy of mobile recruiting. This week, let’s look at what it takes to serve up a great mobile experience on your career site.

Ready or not, candidates are coming to your site via their mobile devices. If they don’t find a good experience or locate what they are looking for quickly, they will bounce. Here is the problem. Most sites are not “mobi-enabled.”

Would you like to see if your career site passes the mobile performance test? Pull up your own company’s career site on your phone and answer the following questions.

Does your phone serve you up a custom experience for mobile users?

Or does your site look exactly the same as if I would pull it up on a desktop, only smaller? Candidates behave much differently when interacting with their mobile device, so the experience you serve should be custom to the screen it’s being viewed on. It should also load fast, as research shows 57% of mobile users abandon your website if it takes more than just three seconds to load. Considering that only 6% of small businesses have a mobile-optimized web experience, companies who still do not delineate their treatment of candidates from mobile versus desktop computer are putting themselves at a severe disadvantage.

Expectations for content, speed and design are all completely different than on a computer. Most organizations are incorporating responsive design, with specific mobile parameters, into their sites, in order to serve an experience that is tailored for people’s mobile expectations.

Does your site have an easy to type URL?

In other words, can candidates get to your site quickly and easily? Typing with thumbs can be burdensome, and mistakes are easy to make. Something as simple as a short/straightforward URL starts the experience off right. Something like: abccompany.com/careers or abccompany.jobs.

Do you need to pinch and zoom to read the text on your site?

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Anytime a candidate needs to stop and zoom to search for content, you are dramatically slowing them down. And as we discussed above every second you waste of their time increases the chance they are going to get frustrated and bounce.

Can candidates watch video on your mobile site?

First of all, short video clips are ideal for mobile devices, so if you’re not incorporating it, you should. It is an excellent way to convey your employment brand and give candidates that peek under the hood as to what it’s like on the inside of your organization. Second, if you do have video, make sure that it is in a format conducive to viewing via mobile. Not all are.

Can candidates complete some type of conversion?

Can they apply to an open position, sign up for your talent network or send the job to themselves so they can respond later when at a desktop? One large client I’ve consulted with had over 150,000 visitors to their mobile site and converted 1/3 of those to apply last year. That is a huge number and a better conversion ratio than most companies get on their regular site. Can you imagine if candidates weren’t able to complete a transaction on mobile? They would have had to work a lot harder to find talent and fill positions. Make it easy for them to convert.

Can you find actual, open jobs easily?

Remember…candidates want to know what’s in it for them. Being able to find real, actual openings in a timely manner is critical. This will most likely require some integration with your ATS and an interface that makes it easy to find jobs. One thing to remember is that your site may be mobile friendly, but your ATS may not be. You’ve got to be cognizant of the entire candidate experience from beginning to end.

After completing that assessment, how would you grade your mobile site experience? If you’re not satisfied, your candidates won’t be either.

Next week: mobile strategies to connect with candidates

• Part 1: Three Common Myths about Mobile Recruitment: Busted!
• Part 3: Simple Mobile Strategies to Connect with Candidates