The number of people visiting Jobsite via a mobile phone has grown 200% over the past year, with 8% of the job board’s total visits now coming from a mobile device.

Significantly, Darren Sher, Jobsite senior marketing manager, innovation and mobile, told Recruiter that the ratio of people converting those visits into a job application is now higher than it is from the desktop. Ten per cent of mobile visits turn into applications, which accounts for 3.4% of total applications, while 7% of visits from the desktop site end in an application.

“More people apply for jobs via mobile than add them to their shortlist,” said Sher. “Originally we thought they would be more likely to ’add to shortlist’ and apply later via the desktop.”

Jobsite offers a mobile version of its site and also provides mobile apps for the iPhone, Windows Phone platform and an Android app will be launched within the next two months. Using the apps, candidates can perform functions such as searching for a job, filtering and adding to shortlist, and when they come to apply, the app switches them to the mobile site.

Candidates initially need to upload their CV at the desktop site but once they’ve done this they can apply to jobs via any of the mobile channels. “They can also write a covering letter from one they’ve saved previously or a new one. Anything they’ve saved on the desktop site is available on the mobile site,” Sher explained. Recent statistics show that other popular features include jobs by email, which he said is a bigger driver of traffic to its mobile site than the search engines.

The iPhone is still dominant among Jobsite’s mobile jobseekers with 46% of traffic coming from the device and 17% from Android, with Blackberry in third place at 12%. Although in second place at the moment, Sher said Jobsite is seeing a far sharper increase in traffic from the Android platform than the iPhone. According to findings published in January by Canalys, analysts for the high-tech industry, Google’s Android became the world’s leading smart phone platform in the final quarter of last year.

While the Windows platform lags behind the others in terms of the number of apps being downloaded from Jobsite, the recent announcement by Nokia that Windows Phone will serve as its primary smartphone platform is likely to boost this. Jobsite was one of only 21 brands approached by Microsoft last year to produce a launch app. Sher said it is currently using the app to trial its video-based BeMyInterviewer technique and advice service which features a panel of business people such as Duncan Bannatyne of TV’s Dragons’ Den.

Sher said that Jobsite wants to continue to improve its service for candidates but will also be exploring what it can do for the recruiter regarding mobile. One of its current frustrations is that for direct apply jobs on its site, the recruitment agency or employer can’t always support the mobile application process.

“In the majority of cases we handle the application but in the instances where we don’t it can be unfortunate as there’s little we can do if the agency doesn’t cater for mobile. Similarly, many applicant tracking systems aren’t catering for mobile.”

www.jobsite.com