Mobile devices are the next big thing in recruitment, recruiters have heard.

Glenn Gutmacher, vice president of JobMachine, a social networking consultancy told the Recruitment Community Europe Conference 2008 in Amsterdam that 2.6bn mobile devices would be sold this year worldwide. “This was more than the total number of existing PCs,” said Gutmacher.

“Recruiters really need to realise that young people are using mobile devices more than using their PCs,” he said.

Gordon Lokenberg, a recruitment blogger and consultant on the use of technology in recruitment, said that one way recruiters could take advantage was to send out a link to candidates so they could complete pre-application screening tests while they were travelling.

There were benefits to recruiters too Lokenberg claimed.  “You don’t need to go to your office. You can lie on the beach. and start screening your CVs.

An De Jonghe, chief executive of Belgium-based IT recruiter Ulysses Consulting, and a social networking expert, said that mobile phones were already heavily used by jobseekers and employers in Eastern Europe. These countries “were ahead of” Western Europe in this respect, she said.