Not long ago, the job-seeking process involved a lot of printing, and a whole lot of envelope-stuffing. But as the world moves towards a more mobile existence, hiring is turning into a paperless affair.
A 2015 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 28 percent of Americans have used their smartphones to look for a job and over half of the jobseekers aged 18 to 29 have pulled out their phones while job-hunting.
And there are many different ways to use mobile technologies to look for jobs. James Larkin, a recruiter for the Manhattan-based boutique consultancy group Marlin Hawk, thinks one of the biggest advantages of mobile and digital devices is how they allow everyone to be a networker.
“Previously there was a small percentage of networkers, but now you have the capability and services and solutions ahead of you to network. Using LinkedIn and Google+ you can get a good view of an organization and a basic understanding of who they are,” he said over the phone this week. “You can see who their alumni are, and get a good snapshot of the job from your cell.”
“Right now, you have a generation coming out of college pretty well connected to what they’ll be doing from the get-go,” he said.
The same Pew survey found that out of the two thirds of Americans who use social media, 13 percent attribute being hired to their social media presence. Some 34-percent of users have informed friends about available jobs via social media, and 21-percent have applied for jobs they’ve discovered through various social media.
The most drastic change since the proliferation of social media and mobile technologies, Mr. Larkin said, is the access to a much larger pool of talent. While mid-market businesses were previously stuck using recruitment agencies, applications like LinkedIn and other social and corporate networking media have allowed smaller companies to develop their own in-house recruitment platforms. While a large number of companies use LinkedIn recruiter, others have their own bespoke recruitment platforms, or use one of the many new mobile platforms available.
Beamery, a London-based company, is one such platform that is attempting to simplify the way online applications work.
“In simple terms, we’re trying to make the experience of looking for jobs online similar to other online experiences — that is to say, frictionless,” said Sultan Murad Saidov, co-founder and CPO of Beamery. What his company is attempting to do is to replace job applications with “more of a two-way conversation.”
Using Beamery, applicants can express interest, and then use their social media profiles to include more information about themselves. The key, Mr. Saidov said, is that Beamery keeps all candidates in a database, which enables companies to keep in touch with those who have previously applied or expressed interest.
Instead of writing and sending a cover letter immediately after seeing a job listing, Beamery first helps establish whether or not the candidate is actually relevant for the position in question. Mr. Saidov said a large number of available jobs are not even listed publicly anymore – and that many of those that are online are inaccurate. The new software allows companies to be in touch with a pool of relevant candidates even when there aren’t any current job openings.
Mr. Saidov attributes the popularity in mobile job hunting platforms to the fact that many job seekers are more likely to look for jobs at work using their phones than a desktop. Many other mobile recruiting platforms have seen their business expand almost exponentially in the past few years, including Greenhouse Software, which claims to be the leader in the world of recruiting and onboarding platforms.
Greenhouse, which last year signed on its 1000th client and quadrupled the size of its staff, facilitates the hiring process, by creating a more team- and objective-driven hiring process, according to their Director of “Buzz and Brand,” Erik Fabian.
“We help our users find better candidates, conduct more focused interviews, and make data-driven hiring decisions,” he said. While recruitment platforms like Hired specialize in hiring for tech companies, Greenhouse has recently expanded its focus to span all industries, including financial, healthcare, education, media and retail.
The business of recruitment and job seeking, Mr. Saidov said, is likely to change even more drastically in the coming years, and it looks as though mobile technologies will play a big role in those changes. So if you’re looking to hire or find a new job, pick up your phone and explore the ever-increasing number of opportunities out there.
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