Mobile Recruiting: Not Just a Luxury Anymore
Today we’ll take a look at some findings from our 2013 North American Staffing and Recruiting Trends Report, focusing on staffing professionals’ thoughts about mobile technology.
On the subject of mobile recruiting, 83.9% of staffing professionals who took our survey thought mobile access to their ATS/CRM system was important (compared to 80% in 2011). The general trend is that salespeople are spending more time out of the office meeting with client prospects and other stakeholders. The data suggests that the reason for this is increased access to mobile technology, which allows salespeople to attend and be better prepared for face-to-face meetings at networking events.
72% of sales-focused respondents spent more than 10% of their time out of the office in meetings in 2012, compared to 58% who did so in 2011. That’s a sizeable increase. This is much higher than the average across all respondents (including recruiters), in which only 49% spent more than ten percent of their time outside the office, indicating that salespeople are taking advantage of advances in mobile technology that enable them to be both productive and untethered.
But the technology story for salespeople is a little more complicated than just that. The majority of executive respondents reported the most significant business improvement they made in 2012 as “increasing their focus on strengthening new and existing client relationships.” That makes perfect sense as focusing on retaining clients will at the very least prevent a loss of revenue. However, only 10.9% of salespeople spent more than half of their time actually attracting new clients, which is the lowest percentage of time in the past three years. So what does this mean? Salespeople are leveraging mobile access to their ATS/CRM to spend more time outside the office nurturing existing client relationships, but less time attracting clients. What’s important to note is that this doesn’t mean they’re attracting fewer clients.
Greater efficiency gleaned from using social media could account for this decrease in the time spent attracting clients, and we know that among general respondents, social media and networking events are tied as the best ways to win new business. Among salespeople specifically, “developing new client leads” was the second biggest benefit of social recruiting; it came in third when averaged across all respondents. This suggests that salespeople are getting value from social media. Additionally, being better prepared with mobile access to critical prospect information can set salespeople up to close deals more quickly.
On the mobile front, we know there’s a link between time spent out of the office and an appreciation for mobile technology. 100% of salespeople who spent more than half their time on the road considered “mobile access to ATS/CRM technology” important.
What we can see from this data is that mobile access to ATS/CRM is fast becoming a necessity as opposed to a luxury. Luckily, as Bullhorn customers, you already have access to the best SaaS ATS/CRM mobile solution on the market. Bullhorn Mobile lets you view candidates, jobs, contacts, placements, check out resumes, and track email and calendar activity. It even gives you driving directions for meetings. Why all these bells and whistles? Because you need to be able to review the latest company and contact activities while sitting in the parking lot prior to client/prospect meetings. You’ll be better prepared to win business, and that’s what we care about.
