Almost all CRAs now claim to have some sort of mobile solution that does everything from gather basic information, to drug screening scheduling and even allowing applicants to check status and see the results of their background check.

So it’s not enough anymore, to just have a mobile solution, you now need one that offers a variety of features and most of all that it works.

The new benchmark now is completion rate. In the overall market of mobile anything above 66.1% will put you in the top 10%.

The reason is the number of completions means the applicant has successfully gone through the process, entered the necessary personal information and initiated the background check without HR having to manually do the job. If mobile is not designed for completion, abandon rates soar, and it actually ends up slowing the process and increasing interaction with support and HR.

There’s a significant value to completions because it means HR is not spending time manually entering applicant data, which in turn improves accuracy as well as speeds up time to hire. It also provides a better applicant experience because they are able to enter data on the goal and have control of their information.

The Anatomy of a Completion Rate (CR)

The primary goal with every form is completion. Eight factors have a major impact on completion rates:

• Perception of complexity
  The first thing users do when they see a new form is estimate how much time is required to complete it. Users do this by scanning the form. Perception plays a crucial role in the process of estimation. The more complex a form looks, the more likely users will abandon the process.
• Interaction cost
  Interaction cost is the sum of efforts — both cognitive and physical — that the users put into interacting with an interface in order to reach their goal. Interaction cost has a direct connection with form usability. The more effort users have to make to complete a form, the less usable the form is. A high interaction cost could be the result of data that is difficult to input, an inability to understand the meaning of some questions, or confusion about error messages.
• Design for completion
  Less is better. Minimizing the amount of screens, speeds up the process and dramatically improves the possibility of completion. But to do this a lot of focus must be put into understanding who’s filling out the application, the position, what fields are needed, and what questions absolutely need to be answered and what can be excluded.
• Reduce complexity and number of fields
  When it comes to form design, the most important thing a designer can do is to minimize the need for typing. Reducing input effort is essential. Designers can achieve this goal by focusing on form field design.
• Minimize the total number of fields
  Every field you ask users to fill out requires some effort. The more effort is needed to fill out a form, the less likely users will complete the form. That’s why the foundational rule of form design is shorter is better — get rid of all inessential fields.
• Minimize Cognitive Load
  Cognitive load refers to the amount of brain power required to use the app. The human brain has a limited amount of processing power, and when an app provides too much information at once, it might overwhelm the user and make them abandon the task.
• Decluttering
  Cutting out the clutter is one of the major factors. Clutter is one of the worst enemies of good design. By cluttering your interface, you overload users with too much information: Every added button, image and icon makes the screen more complicated.
• Use familiar design and screens
  Familiar screens are screens that users see in many apps. Screens such as “Gettings started,” “Next” and “Results” results” have become de facto standards for mobile apps. They don’t require additional explanation because users are already familiar with them. This allows users to use prior experience to interact with the app, with no learning curve.

Again, it’s easy to say you have a mobile solution. It’s harder to build one that actually gets high completion rates. After processing more than 100,000 applicants with our mobile Swifthire, deverus has a completion an average completion rate of more than 74%, some weeks it gets to 76%. Our goal is 80%. But think about even 70%. That means 70% of the time, applicants are doing the work for HR, and getting the information faster and more accurately than ever before. The value is incredible because it actually gives HR more time to focus on the things that matter and not simple data entry. Contact to deverus to see how we can improve your completion rate, provide better value to HR, and improve the overall hiring experience.