Mobile jobseeking sees rapid growth

The number of people looking for jobs over a mobile device like a tablet or smartphone has seen dramatic growth in recent years, as more individuals than ever use these devices throughout the recruitment process. With these systems also opening up new staff arrangements like remote working, companies will be well-placed to achieve further growth.

In fact, the number of individuals using their mobile device has grown substantially, according to figures compiled by CareerBuilder.

The research tracked the number of online searches conducted for the term 'jobs' as a proxy for how many people are using their mobile devices throughout the recruitment process. Between November 2010 and the same month in 2012, the number of mobile searches for this term increased from 8 per cent to 31 per cent of total traffic.

With these figures only tracking up until 2012, the frequency of mobile searches will have likely increased since then, thanks to the growing importance of mobile devices in general. In fact, Cisco is predicting that mobile data usage in Asia Pacific will grow three times faster than traffic over a fixed line, achieving a 10-fold increase by 2019.

At this point, Cisco estimates that the region will see 114 Exabytes of data transmitted over mobile networks, compared to only 11.7 transmitted in 2014.

While many applicants will be using mobile devices to conduct research on a potential employer, there are also a growing number of individuals who are applying for positions through a mobile device. CareerBuilder went on to suggest that, in 2012, a fifth of companies were seeing at least 20 per cent of applications coming from mobile devices.

As these become more popular, companies are going to need to invest more in recruitment software that can streamline the hiring process. Not only will this save companies money, it can also help to keep recruiters in line with the growth of mobile technology.