Mobile candidates will continue to have an impact on the recruiting process, cost, & outcomes. 98% of candidates who start an application on mobile don't finish it, causing you to miss out on quality candidates and waste your recruitment budget on attracting people to those job postings. In this free whitepaper, we cut through the jargon and give a definitive assessment of what works for mobile recruitment, what doesn't work, and why. From our data-driven research on 250,000+ mobile applications, we will tell you: -How to convert more mobile applies -Industry benchmark mobile apply rates -The optimal mobile application process Download this whitepaper to learn how you can get your mobile recruiting model up to speed.

1. HOW TO IMPROVE
YOUR MOBILE
DEVICE RECRUITING

2. Consumers today use their mobile devices for everything; to check social
updates, verify their bank balance, talk to their kids and see how the
weather is going to be. It’s no surprise that consumers are using their
phones in their job search.
But there’s a problem. In every other interaction, the consumer touch
point has improved when moved to the mobile device. Processes have
been rethought, and they have gotten better. Right now, it’s a lot easier to
check your bank balance on your mobile phone than through a desktop
web browser.
That has not happened in recruitment. Our data, gained from a
longitudinal study of every major applicant tracking system in 15 different
industries, reveals a startling statistic. For every 100 candidates who click
through from a job advertisement to a recruitment portal on a desktop
device, eight will complete an application. For mobile click-throughs, the
completion figure is just 1.5%.
What this data is telling us is that while the rest of the consumer world
has kept pace with mobility, and changed with mobility, recruiting has
not. For hiring managers and recruiters, the mobile disconnect is costly.
Today’s advertising models charge recruiters each time an applicant clicks
on a job advertisement, regardless of what the job seeker does next.
When completion rates are low, applicant sourcing costs are
commensurately high.
The business case for improving mobile recruitment platforms is
compelling. Data hints at a growing wave of mobile candidates who want
quick, easy application processes. They are not finding them. The
purpose of this white paper is to cut through the misinformation and give
a definitive assessment of what works for mobile users, what doesn’t
work, and why.
In our conclusion, we provide guidance for you to make the necessary
changes to your own mobile recruitment processes and achieve a
measurable return on investment.
I do hope you find it useful.
Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
2
Chris Forman,
Founder and CEO
of Appcast

3. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
3
In 2014, 50% of job applicants
used their mobile phone to
search and apply for jobs.
Executive Summary
Introduction: Mobile is Changing
the Recruiting Game
Only 1.5% of job seekers who use a mobile phone to click through
from a job advertisement to a corporate careers site complete a job
application.
Lengthy, complex and time consuming applications act as a barrier to
mobile applicants. Applications that take more than 15 minutes to
complete experience a 365% degradation in completion rates.
Most of today’s recruitment advertising models work on a
cost-per-click basis. The low mobile completion rate means that
recruiters are paying for applicants who abandon their application,
driving up recruitment costs.
Considerable cost savings can be made by changing the application
business process to a “need to know” model.
Recruitment and advertising technology is swiftly changing to address
the mobile revolution.
The mobile explosion is changing the recruiting game. In 2010, only 10%
of job applicants used their mobile phone to search and apply for jobs.
By 2014, that figure had risen to 50%.
With the seismic shift towards mobile-savvy job-seekers, recruiters face a
stark choice. They must either strategize for radical change or
compromise their ability to compete for talent.
This white paper looks at the challenges faced by human resources
professionals in the wake of the mobile revolution. Using data gained
from studies of over 500,000 applicant tracking systems, it takes an
in-depth, data-driven look at the harsh impact the mobile application
process has on recruiting costs and outcomes. It then considers how
new technologies will help human resources professionals control
mobile sourcing costs while still recruiting with maximum efficiency.

4. In the retail, sales and technology sectors, just 1% of mobile
applicants complete a job application.
In the aircraft manufacturing, consulting, staffing and insurance
industries, the mobile click-to-apply ratio drops to 0%.
Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
4
The advent of mobility means
that applicants can apply for
any job, from anywhere, at any
time.
Job Seeker Attitudes Toward Mobile
Recruiting
Figure 1: Click-to-apply ratios by device
30 employers, mixed ATS. April/March 2014.
The advent of mobility means that applicants can apply for any job, from
anywhere, at any time. With new technologies, candidates are able to
click through from a job advertisement to the recruiter’s careers portal,
apply to that opening and receive confirmation of the application from a
single mobile device.
Yet job seekers clicking through on a mobile device are far less likely to
complete a job application than those applying on a device with a built-in
keyboard, as Figure 1 shows.
8.25%
ALL DEVICES
1.50%
MOBILE DEVICES

5. 10.6% of people complete a job application that asks fewer than 25
questions, as Figure 2 shows.
That figure drops by half (5.7%) when the application asks 50
questions or more.
9.8% of people complete an application that is shorter than five pages
in length.
The ratio degrades to just 5.8% when the application is longer than 15
pages.
Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
5
67% of job seekers
do not apply from mobile
because they can’t upload or
edit a resume from their
phone.
Barriers to Mobile Completion
Figure 2: Click-to-Apply Ratio: # of Questions
Mobile applicants experience a number of barriers that lead them to quit
before completing a job application. Some of these barriers are platform
issues. Without a radical change in technology it will remain almost
impossible for candidates to upload their resumes via a smart phone.
But even if recruiters circumvent the platform limitations, for example, by
giving candidates the ability to link their application with their LinkedIn
profile, mobile click-to-apply degradation would not be solved.
One-form information requests, which collect every piece of data a
recruiter might potentially need, regardless of the requirements of the
job, are the primary cause of job seekers quitting part way through an
application.
12.00%
14.00%
# of Questions
1-25 26-50 50+
10.00%
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
10.60%
7.51%
5.68%

6. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
6
Applicant rates drop by a
staggering 365% if an
applicant takes more than 15
minutes to complete.
Figure 3: Click-to-Apply Ratio: Time
The most significant metric is the time it takes a candidate to complete
an application. Application rates drop by a staggering 365% if an
application takes more than 15 minutes to complete.
Fundamentally, the small screen exacerbates existing problems within
the application business process. Recruiters must streamline the way
they ask questions and the questions they ask job seekers in order to
keep abreast of the demands of mobile users.
Why Mobile Completion Rates
Matter
Shifting toward a “need to know” process model, where only essential
questions are asked of job-seekers, will impact two areas: talent and
cost.
Talent
Speed of hire processes are essential if the employer is to remain
competitive in today’s aggressive job market. In theory, comprehensive
data collection allows human resources professionals to quickly screen
out individuals who do not have the required skills and experience.
12.00%
14.00%
# of Minutes
1-5 6-15 15+
10.00%
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
12.47%
3.61%
6.97%

7. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
7
“That’s okay. We save money in
the long run. It’s more efficient
to screen people out up front!”
Hiring managers report administrative efficiencies when adopting
application processes that pre-screen candidates. In some industries,
this argument is fair.
Compare these figures with data from the healthcare and technology
sectors:
In retail, the number of mobile job applicants is NOT sensitive to the
complexity of the job application. However, significant drop off does
occur in the healthcare and technology sectors. In today’s job market,
does anyone want to screen out applicants in healthcare and
technology?
One application we reviewed in the retail sector requiring the
completion of 25 fields experienced a similar click-to-apply ratio
(3.75%) as an application requiring the completion of 108 fields
(3.70%).
Also in retail, an application that took just 7 minutes to complete
experienced an almost identical click-to-apply ratio (3.75%) as an
application that took 30 minutes to complete (3.72%).
In healthcare, one application comprising 81 fields set out over nine
pages achieved a 2.81% click-to-apply ratio. A second mobile
application comprising just 23 fields set out over two pages achieved
an 8.28% click-to-apply ratio; almost a three-fold increase.
Technology follows a similar pattern to healthcare, as Figure 4 shows.
Figure 4: CTA ratios by application length
Industry # of fields # of pages Time (mins) CTA
Technology 146 9 21 3.70%
Technology 16 1 7 4.71%
Technology 10 1 2 7.53%
Technology 10 1 2 8.00%

8. The sourcing cost-per-applicant is $5 when 10% of click-
through candidates complete an application;
It follows that:
A fifteen minute apply process would cost the recruiter
$43,000 in advertising spend.
A five minute apply process would cost the recruiter
$24,000 in advertising spend.
The sourcing cost-per-applicant is $50 when only 1% of
click-through candidates complete an application.
Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
8
Every question eliminated from
the application reduces
applicant sourcing costs.
Cost
Today, most recruitment advertising platforms charge on a pay-per-click
basis. Under this model, recruiters pay each time a job-seeker views their
job advertisement and clicks through to the employer’s recruitment
portal, regardless of what the job seeker does next. If the application
process is not optimized for mobile use, and the job seeker abandons
the application, the recruiter experiences zero return on their
investment.
If we assume that:
The business case for improving the mobile candidate experience is
compelling. Figure 5 shows how sharply the cost-per-applicant rises, the
more time the application takes to complete. The cost hike is entirely due
to rapid drop off in completion rates.
Bluntly put, every question eliminated from the application reduces
applicant sourcing costs. Using the average sourcing costs per applicant
specified by our research (as shown in Figure 5), and assuming 200 hires
with 30 applicants per hire, we can extrapolate that:
Recruiters can achieve $19,000 in direct savings, simply by reducing the
mobile application time from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.

9. Figure 5: Long applications = Higher costs
$12.00
$14.00
$16.00
# of Minutes
1-5 6-15 15+
$10.00
$8.00
$6.00
$4.00
$2.00
$0.00
$4.01
$7.17
$13.85
Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
9
Rules-based media buying lets
the recruiter specify their own
financial parameters and
smartly engineer the allocation
of job advertisement spend.
The Future for Mobile Recruitment
Recruitment media is changing and this will have a profound impact on
hiring managers, and their budgets, over the next few years. In the future
we expect to see greater partnership between employers, job boards
and technology providers to improve recruitment outcomes and yields.
Attracting Candidates: “Rules-Based”
Buying Versus “Site-Based” Buying
Recruiters are still making strategic decisions about where to place job
advertisements to attract the best candidates. This is out of kilter with
consumer advertising, which has embraced the efficiencies and
transparency of big data.
Big data and its companion, big analytics, keeps tabs on web users
through their dialogues within the digital ecosystem. By tracking their
browsing preferences across a range of sites, advertisers can target
advertising to and for the individual consumer, ensuring relevance for
the consumer and revenue for the advertiser. The key idea here is that
artificial intelligence makes better placement decisions than people to
improve marketing ROI. It is predicted that programmatic media buying
will have a profound effect on the way that hiring managers advertise
and track applicant sourcing spend.

10. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
10
Programmatic ad buying puts the right advertisement before the right
audience at the right time. This brings tight focus to recruitment
strategy and high yields on advertising spend.
Big data can target or retarget the desired audience across the web,
wherever they may be. Facebook, for example, has unveiled plans to
harvest the bountiful data it holds on account holders and sell
personalized advertising based on the recipient’s information. Web
users will receive targeted ads whether they are checking their social
media updates or checking the weather.
Thus, job advertisements will have a wider reach, attracting a passive
audience who might not actively search job boards. In an aggressive
job market, smart data lets recruiters renew their focus on targeting
the already employed to provide them with a competitive talent
advantage.
Rules-based media buying lets the recruiter specify their own financial
parameters and smartly engineer the allocation of job advertisement
spend. For example, the recruiter could set a rule that shuts down job
advertisements once they attract a certain number of applications,
and redirect the advertising spend toward the jobs that have too few.
This ensures that budget dollars are focused on hard-to-fill vacancies
that need applications.
The cost implication is significant. We looked at over 211,000 applications
across 15 companies and grouped the jobs by the number of
applications each job received. As you can see from Figure 6, the jobs
openings in Group E received an average of 72 application per job.
Despite there being more than twice the number of jobs on offer in
Group A, that group received no applications. This equates to a zero
return on the recruiter’s investment for jobs advertised in Group A.
Rules-based buying hones, quite precisely, what is done with the big data
and lets recruiters retain tight control over their inventory. The inherent
efficiency of the system means less cash output in terms of advertising
dollars for greater reward.
Rules-based buying lets
recruiters retain tight control
over their inventory.

11. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
11
A 0 - 5,754 12.5%
B 146 9 13,517
Figure 6: Employers will benefit
GROUP APPS/JOB APP COUNT JOB COUNT % AVE APPS MEDIAN APPS
29.4%
C 16 1 8,239 17.9%
D 10 1 15,506 33.8%
E 10 1 2,925 6.37%
0
2.32
6.34
17.00
72
0
1
6
15
58
Measuring ROI: Cross Platform
Tracking
Currently, a job seeker who views an advertisement on their mobile
device but applies for the job later that day through the recruiter’s career
portal from their desktop will have their application tracked as originating
from the corporate careers site rather than the original source. This is
because applicant tracking systems cannot associate the multiple
devices a perpetually connected job seeker might use during their job
search.
Analytics platforms are now tying together the various devices people
use to browse the web. Rather than being logged as a unique visitor on
each device he uses, the job seeker will show as a single user and their
progress tracked through the application process from device to device.
It is expected that cross platform tracking will raise the low click-to-apply
ratio for mobile devices and dramatically improve the return on
investment of job sites.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the mobile explosion does, and will continue to,
have a profound impact on the recruitment process. The challenge now
is for recruiters to provide a seamless application experience between a
mobile device and an online recruitment portal.
The analytics and ‘rules based’ buying that comes with these new models
will preclude 36% of applies going to 6% of jobs... while 12.5% of jobs
don’t get a single apply.

12. Mobile Recruitment Strategy 2015
12
The challenge is not just a technology issue. Complex recruitment
processes deter mobile applicants. The data shows a built-in business
case for streamlining the questions asked of job applicants, and the way
that recruiters ask them. In a low supply/high demand recruitment
environment, where the talent pool is mobile-centric, recruiters can
double applications and slash recruitment costs by creating a better
mobile apply process across the board.
In the future we expect to see greater partnership between employers,
job boards and technology providers. As recruiters look to implement
more focused advertising delivery strategies, big data and analytics will
be used to create personalized experiences that will yield significant
lifts in conversion.
Recruiting with Appcast
On January 1, 2014, StartDate Labs launched Appcast™, the industry’s
first pay-per-applicant job ad exchange. Appcast allows talent acquisition
leaders to focus their recruitment advertising budgets more efficiently by
charging only when a job application is completed on an employer’s
corporate career site.
Appcast brings advanced programmatic online ad buying to the human
recruitment capital market. Above and beyond the pay-per- applicant
pricing model, Appcast’s ‘rules-based buying’ engine delivers great
applicants to the recruitment portal and ensures budget dollars are
focused exclusively on hard-to-fill or critical vacancies that need
applications.
Already utilized by many leading companies, Appcast is focused on
maximizing the efficiency of recruiting ad spend in a streamlined, user-
friendly way. Hiring managers set the rules on how they wish to sponsor
jobs and how much they are willing to pay. There are no minimum
budgets or long-term contracts.
To learn more about Appcast and sign up for a demo, visit:
http://www.appcast.io
In the future we expect to see
greater partnership between
employers, job boards &
technology providers.