[author: Miranda Knudtson]
Throughout the day, how often do you check your personal email vs look at incoming texts?
If you’re like most people, you see the text within seconds or minutes of it pinging on your phone, while it may take a few hours to check your email.
As technology evolves, recruiters rely more on innovative and efficient ways to reach talent. Text recruitment provides a direct and personalized approach to engaging candidates that traditional channels cannot match.
The Power of Text Messaging in Recruitment
Email and phone calls can lead to communication delays. Text recruitment provides a more immediate and accessible communication channel. Recruiters can reach candidates where they are and engage them in real time through brief messages or updates.
Higher response rates facilitate faster decision-making to save time and keep the recruitment process moving forward. Customizing your text messages to candidates strengthens the relationships by creating a more positive candidate experience.
Texting Trends & User Behavior
Smartphones combine many technologies: calling, texting, camera, and web browsing. Because of this, and the cost, more consumers own smartphones than computers. Texting as a contact strategy is growing fast with higher engagement, faster response times, and less spam.
Texting is a live medium. About 74% of consumers prefer talking to a real person vs a bot. Text messages have a staggering read rate of 98%, compared to only 20% for emails! Users prefer text messaging because it is efficient for interacting with companies and organizations. Sixty-three percent of consumers say texting is their go-to method for talking to friends and family.
The main point here: we are building trust and a relationship with the end user. Whether it’s your organizational or personal brand, trust matters.
Text Recruitment Data
Three key words come into play: Short. And. Sweet, and the data here backs that up.
Messages under 100 characters perform the strongest. Specifically, texts between 0 and 50 characters have an 80% response rate.
Keeping the messages short with a clear call to action helps prevent engagement decay. It also keeps your contact from getting overwhelmed by too much information.
Overcoming Recruitment Challenges with Text Messaging
Texting can help recruiters overcome many challenges in the hiring process. It allows them to engage with candidates more efficiently, fostering quicker communication and response times. This is crucial for reaching passive candidates and meeting your hiring goals.
Recruiters and HR managers can significantly streamline recruitment efforts by integrating texting within their talent acquisition software, or ATS platform. This approach allows for timely updates, scheduling interviews and follow-up reminders, and engaging passive candidates while enhancing both the candidate and hiring manager’s experience. Achieving this within a single platform saves time and creates a seamless and centralized hiring workflow.
Coordinating interview schedules between multiple parties can be time-consuming. Automate texts to send interview invites, confirmations, and reminders directly to candidates’ phones, streamlining the scheduling process and reducing no-show rates.
Following up with candidates after interviews is essential to maintaining the relationship and providing updates on their application status. Personalize the texts and be proactive by scheduling reminders, feedback, and next steps in the process. Being proactive in your communication builds that trust and enhances your brand’s image.
Use texting to continue the onboarding process with a new hire. Communicate the date and time, parking information, and share images of the layout and where they need to go.
Passive candidates can be challenging to engage. Text recruitment expands the reach of recruiters by tapping into the candidate’s preferred communication channel. Texting is instant and direct. It captures their attention and makes it easier to start conversations and build rapport. Targeted text campaigns widen the talent pool by re-engaging passive candidates. It can also increase your likelihood of finding the right candidate for the job.
Utilizing Automation in Text Recruitment
Automation is key in text recruitment. For instance, use keywords and keyword responses as a quick and easy call-to-action to re-engage candidates.
In the image above, the keyword “PARTTIME” encourages the candidate to raise their hand and respond to request more information. After the initial response, you can tailor automated responses to that group. You can then continue the conversation and even direct them to talk with the recruiter or HR contact.
Additionally, you can create and automate SMS nurture sequences. Similar to an email drip campaign, these let you keep building relationships with your candidates.
Sequences allow you to keep it personalized for the candidate. You can enter contacts into specific sequences of texts they’ll receive based on time and response.
Taking advantage of automation can help increase your response rates and decrease response times. This helps organizations be much more efficient with high-volume hiring activities.
The rise of text recruitment signals a new era of candidate engagement and efficiency in the hiring process. As we’ve seen, text messaging offers advantages in reaching candidates where they are. Texting provides timely updates and fosters personalized interactions to build relationships and increase candidate engagement.
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