How a Mobile-First Automated Strategy Can Transform Your Recruitment

Finding and retaining high-quality employees is the most significant HR challenge companies face these days. Othamar Gama Filho, CEO at Talentify, says, Instead of relying on outdated strategies to achieve that, why should you switch to a mobile-first automated approach?

If your company is having trouble finding and retaining workers, you’re not alone: Employee recruitment and retainment remain a significant challenge for companies across industries. According to CareerBuilder, 50% of human resources managers say they currently have open positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates.

But this is hardly the only difficulty: With a globalized workforce and features such as “easy apply,” companies need to identify which candidates are worth pursuing. One of the main goals is to have more quality applications in the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and a healthy pipeline of candidates for each position or company location.

Cumberland Farms, a major US convenience store chain with over 550 locations, was looking to achieve this goal. They were aiming to create a robust and brand-leveraged foundation from organic channels and then see whether they needed to top up through traditional job boards and paid resources. By turning to an AI recruitment marketing platform, Cumberland leveraged a mobile-first engagement strategy that brought a record conversion rate on mobile, over ten times the industry average.

What were the main aspects of the strategy, and what valuable lesson does this case offer to anyone looking to streamline their recruitment? 

Organic job optimization to the forefront

Like many other companies, Cumberland’s past approach was to advertise on third-party recruiting sites – something that didn’t prove cost-effective. The new strategy instead prioritized an attraction model built on a strong online brand presence and in-store marketing to secure interest from walk-in applications and local footfall traffic. 

All of this had to be centered around mobile users. More people, and especially younger generations, are on-the-go and want to have comfortable and flexible access from their devices. Even people who apply via desktop tend to conduct a preliminary search on mobile. So, in short, a mobile-first strategy is fundamental when attracting people to apply to your jobs. 

Then, you should take your mobile-first experience and focus it on both online and offline organic job optimization and enhance it further with different, innovative features. In the case of Cumberland’s, this included three main aspects:

1. Increased reach

Cumberland’s open positions were distributed on online channels such as Jobs on Facebook, Google for Jobs, and natural search engine optimization (SEO). This is the key to success in a world increasingly driven by social media and online interaction. Jobs on Facebook, with over two billion unique users per month, and Google for Jobs, search engine icon, and the king of data, are both in a unique position to access new talent.

To streamline the offline experience, it was ensured that all store marketing and walk-in applications were supported by a text to apply knowledge, allowing anyone to use with unprecedented ease. 

2. Higher quality of candidates

By changing the way that candidates read job descriptions, it was assured that potential candidates were interested in the specific position and that they met the necessary requirements before being allowed to apply. 

Those who most closely matched the criteria provided their name, email, and phone before being redirected to the ATS to complete the full Cumberland Farms job application. Those who didn’t match the requirements were redirected to different positions: This innovative feature guarantees that applicants weren’t wasting their time and that companies could reutilize those resources, maintaining a healthy conversion rate. 

3. Geofencing to drive ROI

Without accurate geotargeting, the number of applicants could be higher – but less relevant. Added to that, workers with shorter commutes tend to stay in their jobs longer. So by using GPS and radiofrequency to set up a virtual perimeter, extremely precise targeting was ensured.

For difficult markets, Cumberland Farms learned to leverage optimized programmatic job advertising to augment the organic strategy and drive down the typical costs associated with paid-for channels. An AI-driven technology automatically adjusted bids and diverted budget to focus spend on the job boards that found the highest quality candidates, issuing stop click on spam applications and low-quality sites. At the same time, it capped the spend whenever the minimum number of high-quality candidates had been found, and the desired results had been achieved.

Learn More: 5 Reasons Workplace Technology Impacts Recruiting & Retaining Talent

Jobs on Facebook as (un)surprising frontrunner

Through organic job optimization, Cumberland Farms reached more quality candidates at a lower cost. Filters and geolocations served as the applicant quality safeguards, and the collected data further suggested which candidates to prioritize. And through constant optimization, bid adjustments, and budget diverting, the same resources were utilized to their best potential. But what specific improvements did the strategy bring?

• 60% increase in the volume of quality candidates per month from organic sources;
• 52% increase in mobile conversions (as compared to a market average of 2-10%);
• The diversification of natural channels (automated remarketing, Facebook, SEO), creating a more substantial online presence for the brand. 

Interestingly, perhaps the most distinctive achievement of the strategy was the overwhelming results of Jobs on Facebook. Within just four months, Facebook became the company’s number one source of candidates. Thanks to the lightweight application form that required only a few inputs, applicants on Facebook were twice as likely to complete the entire application than candidates on Cumberland Farms’ best-performing paid job board. 

The lesson on recruitment in the 2020s

So what can other companies do to follow in the steps of Cumberland Farms and turn their recruitment strategies around? They must prioritize a mobile-first approach. According to 2019 statistics, 85% of applicants used the mobile experience to apply for jobs. Mobile conversion rates were also double that of the desktop. The lesson is simple: If your career site isn’t optimized for mobile, then you’re missing out on some substantial human talent. 

Recruitment advertising shows little difference from any other digital marketing. This means that the more roadblocks you put in the way of your target audience, the fewer of them will convert into the leads you’re looking for. It’s believed that slow pages can result in up to 40% fewer conversions from applicants. That’s why companies should use software that engages the visitors quickly, offers a seamless experience (with fast pages and without the need to repeat information), and enables recruiters to receive real-time notifications. 

Learn More: 3 Creative Ways to Recruit Tech Talent

Companies also need to target appropriately and ensure that click and apply bots are filtered to drive more efficient mobile-first strategies. Companies can then use pre-screening to focus on those candidates who meet the job criteria and make sure to establish strong and engaging interactions to keep them interested. 

To enter the future of recruitment, companies need to leverage innovative technologies such as geofencing, SEO, candidate quality screening, and Jobs on Facebook, to name just a few. Ultimately, all these should come together into a powerful mobile-first automated strategy that engages the right candidates and provides a seamless experience from start to finish.

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