Understanding What Mobile Job Seekers Want From Companies


I presented a session yesterday at the Recruitment Agency Expo about “Why Recruiters Need To Go Mobile”

As a speaker it is always great to get feedback on your presentation and content, however this bit of feedback was rather unexpected!

So meet Charlette! Charlette was working at Olympia yesterday checking in delegates as they entered the meeting room. I had presented about why companies needed to go mobile quickly mainly because the demand from job seekers to use mobile is way ahead of what companies are actually offering by way of a mobile user experience.

Afterwards Charlette came up to me and said “Mike, what you said was SO true! I have been using my mobile to search and apply for jobs and the experience is horrible.” So I asked Charlette if she would like to do a video interview that I could share so that companies can see what job seekers are going through and she kindly agreed.

The main points of the interview are:

  • Charlette only has a tablet and an older type of smartphone
  • Charlette doesn’t have a desktop PC and has no intention of getting one
  • Charlette typically starts her job search on Google

These are Charlettes’s main areas of frustration when using a mobile device to look for a job:

  • Very frustrating experience as web pages are “all over the place”
  • It makes her think “I can’t be bothered” and move on to the next one.

In terms of feedback about the mobile job seeker experience:

  • Web pages are too slow to load
  • They need to be kept simple
  • Think about data connection and Wi-Fi speeds
  • Don’t use too many images as they can take too long to load
  • Make sure the text is readable on a mobile device
  • Make sure the web page adjusts for the size of screen (i.e responsive design)

My thanks go to Charlette for taking part in this interview which has some great feedback for Recruiters.

mike taylor - web based recruitment

Mike Taylor

Trackbacks

  1. […] In the video, the mobile job seeker, a woman named Charlette, described herself as only having access to a tablet. She went on to say that she usually begins her job search by querying Google, and often comes away frustrated at the large number of site results that are virtually useless to her as a tablet user. […]

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