Homepage PageUp newsroom

PageUp Finds Employers in Hong Kong Unprepared to Deliver Mobile Recruiting Experience

Announcement posted by PageUp 04 Jun 2015

Majority of Companies Unable to Meet Candidate Demand for Mobile Job Application

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, SINGAPORE, HONG KONG and KUALA LUMPUR (June 4, 2015) New research released today by multinational Talent Management Software provider, PageUp, reveals a significant lag in how top employers in Hong Kong are meeting demand among job candidates for a seamless, mobile application experience.

Hong Kong currently leads the world in mobile phone penetration, with an adoption rate of 237 percent. It also leads the rest of Asia in terms of smartphone use, which individuals leverage for shopping, entertainment, social networking and, increasingly, to search for and apply to jobs. Despite this growing use of smartphones among jobseekers, many employers in Hong Kong have been slow to address this trend and deliver a mobile-optimised recruiting strategy. The result is that today’s employers are diminishing their chances of hiring the best talent, as many candidates will not apply to a position if they are unable to do so on their mobile devices.

In the new white paper, “Mobilise Now: Hong Kong,” PageUp draws on its research into the recruiting practices of 50 of the largest companies in Hong Kong to identify how these employers are keeping pace with the growing use of mobile devices in the job search. Overall, PageUp found that a large majority, 70 percent, of the companies studied do not have a mobile-optimised career site, and 58 percent of career sites across Hong Kong lack a mobile-enabled online application process. This presents several challenges, as employers that fail to offer a streamlined, mobile-enabled recruiting experience will struggle to attract and ultimately hire the best talent possible.

PageUp’s research explores the challenges for employers in Hong Kong, identifying significant missed opportunities to enhance their recruiting practices to meet the needs of today’s jobseekers. Key findings include:

·         Whilst 80 percent of career sites studied provide candidates with a positive search experience, nearly two-thirds of companies do not allow candidates to submit an application from their mobile devices.

·         ·       Only 6 percent of Hong Kong’s largest companies use social referrals to reach untapped talent, and the same amount provide job seekers with the ability to receive job alerts, missing the opportunity to engage with passive candidates.

·         ·      The vast majority, 96 percent, of career sites lack the ability to pre-populate application forms from social media or resumes. As more than a third of job seekers will not complete an online application if the process is too much of a hassle, companies may be turning a great number of candidates away.

·        ·     Overall, 12 percent of career sites had an online apply process that was incompatible with a mobile device, and 6 percent of companies studied halve their candidate pool inadvertently by not being compatible with iOS devices. Through Android devices are in favour in Hong Kong, these companies are still alienating a large portion of the talent pool using Apple devices.

“As smartphone and tablet adoption continues to grow in Hong Kong, simply offering a mobile-accessible site is not enough; companies must adopt the technology solutions that enable them to deliver a seamless, mobile-optimised recruiting process,” said Karen Cariss, CEO and co-founder of PageUp.

“Our research shows a significant gap between what candidates expect from the recruiting experience and what companies can deliver. However, the companies that understand the importance of providing a mobile recruiting experience, and seek to transform their technology platform accordingly, will gain a significant competitive advantage in hiring top talent in Hong Kong,” she said.

The PageUp Research White Paper “Mobilise Now: Hong Kong” is available for complimentary download and can be accessed from the research section of the PageUp website: www.pageuppeople.com/research.

About PageUp

PageUp helps multinational employers strategically align their talent resources to execute corporate strategy across borders, business units, cultures and languages — maximising employee value and business results. The PageUp SaaS-delivered solution unifies Recruiting, Performance Management, Learning, Compensation, Career Planning, Succession Management and Advanced Workforce Analytics to help global employers overcome the talent management challenges that are inherent to operating across multiple geographies.

PageUp solutions support large multinational organisations, including several Global 500 employers and more than 100,000 HR practitioners operating across more than 180 countries from a broad range of industries, including financial services, retail, mining and refining, transportation and telecommunications. PageUp is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia with additional office locations in Sydney, London, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. Learn more about how PageUp can help transform your organisation’s multinational HR initiatives by visiting www.pageuppeople.com.