Mobile recruiting is set to become mainstream in 2015. Surveys show that not just young jobseekers, but senior professionals in India are also increasingly using mobile recruiting services. The share of traffic from mobile devices has doubled in the last 12 months. At the same time, there is an ironic dichotomy in the mobile recruiting space in India. While the demand continues to expand, very few Indian companies have seriously worked to build mobile-optimized career sites. The outliers do stand out, but career portals in India have a long catch-up game to play.

Talent acquisition leaders have some serious thinking to do in the next few months to mobile-enable their career sites. Some of the common problems with Indian career sites are as follows.

Hidden information. Most career sites here have peripheral information, such as ‘About us’ on the landing page. The key information, such as jobs, roles, and positions are all hidden behind the peripheral information.

Lack of engaging content. Apple’s career site, probably, does not look anything like a career site, but still grips the visitor with engaging content such as multimedia and videos. Most career sites in India lack that.

Difficult navigation. Web analysts report that finding information in career sites, with too many clicks and user-unfriendly navigation capabilities. As a result, the rate of dropouts is high.

Lack of long-term view. What differentiates bad career sites from the good, is the fact that they lack the long-term view, and often do not have capabilities to engage with ‘potential talent.’ Many career sites even lack capabilities to allow visitors to ‘park’ their CVs in case there is no immediate fit.

Trends indicate that career sites will be a crucial contributor for companies in finding good talent. Studies from exemplary career sites across the globe provide some interesting lessons for talent acquisition leaders.

Interesting branding content. Talent acquisition leaders should consider employer branding as much a key responsibility as meeting hiring targets. To make the employer brand stand out, talent acquisition teams should consider how to post interesting content on their mobile sites as opposed to traditional text-based content. Videos have demonstrated great functionality as tools to engage a potential candidate with an employer.

Build long-term capabilities. Mobile career sites should build long-term engagement capabilities that can help the company build a talent pipeline. The content has to be dynamic and it should create capabilities for regular touch points with potential talent.

Apps are the way to go. Apps have demonstrated greater engagement capabilities as they allow users quick and easier access to what they require. It is important, however, to invest in building a good app and ensure adequate user testing to avoid glitches.

In the coming months, we will likely see a number of new innovations in mobile career sites in India and talent acquisition leaders will be watching this space closely.