Text Recruiting Candidates - What is the Big Deal Besides the 97% Open Rate?

Text Recruiting Candidates

 

Anytime I want to connect to someone who has applied to my open job, I text them. The day of the phone call or email for the initial reach out to a job seeker is over. Job seekers in the middle of a job search still will not listen to voicemails.

So, how will texting take over the recruiting process? Text messages have a 97% open rate so you know when you text someone that they will look at it within seconds and respond. I am amazed at how quickly I can set interviews or ask additional questions via text.

 

“Text recruiting makes your organization cool.
Millennials and Gen Xers love to text!”

 

For small companies that are not hiring many people, it allows whoever is doing the direct hiring to immediately contact the job seeker. For large companies, texting is still out of the question for many reasons but this is changing at a fast pace. Texting people individually doesn’t work. However, with tons of money pouring into text recruiting products and many already online, you have to know what is out there and if it is making a difference in hiring the best candidates.

 

Here are two texting applications being used today:

  1. Text Recruit (TextRecruit.com) - They have created a platform that sends texts via a desktop/mobile application via a unique phone number to candidates. If you are looking for a worker’s compensation claims adjuster, you can go to your database, pull potential candidates and text them (all at the same time) your current job. With a substantial open rate (97% vs. 9% for email), this is very powerful. Text Recruit can manage all your tasks and provide your team reports.
  2. Chatbots (Mya, HireMya.com) - Chatbots use SMS messaging to “talk” to potential candidates and schedule interviews with no human interaction. What I like about this product is that in many cases, it eliminates the worst part of recruiting; qualifying all the people that applied for your job. Mya uses natural language understanding (NLP) to communicate with potential candidates via text messaging. Mya will talk with every candidate, hold a great conversation, then ultimately determine if the job seeker is qualified based on their answers. If qualified, they will automatically schedule an interview with a recruiter. Mya “learns” your company and over time it will give everyone who applies for your job a chance. I like Mya because if 100 people apply to your post, all 100 will be reached out to by Mya. Very powerful. Chatbots are being built to integrate with your ATS system.

 

Here is a list of why text recruiting is something you should consider:

  1. Schedule interviews based on your recruiter’s availability.
  2. Automatically update pending candidates on next steps.
  3. Chatbots can’t discriminate. They are asking questions based on the job qualifications through text messaging applications.
  4. It can give your applicants a much better candidate experience. This is huge since the number one complaint from job seekers (qualified and not qualified) is they never hear back from the employer.
  5. Response time to text is very short. I am sure most of you received a text today and read it within a couple of minutes (even if you were in a meeting). A well-constructed text recruiting message is read right away and if the person is interested, their response time will almost be immediate.
  6. Texting is preferred by most and is no longer regarded as unprofessional.
  7. Reduction in time to hire. Speeding up the recruitment process (especially in the beginning) means a faster road to hires.
  8. Competitive Advantage: In low unemployment, being able to quickly reach out to a large pool of candidates while simultaneously qualiingy them all that the same time (Chatbots) will leave your competitors in the dust.
  9. Allows you to reach out to passive candidates in your ATS and text them your opening.
  10. Makes your organization cool. Millennials and Gen Xers love to text.

 

What are some of the drawbacks? Humans like to be recruited by humans and sold on why they should work at your organization. For a lower level position, chatbots work very well. However, for extremely competitive jobs, nothing will ever be more powerful than a phone call. Another drawback may be someone who doesn’t text or sending out your company information to the wrong number. Alternatively, it could cost job seekers money if they don’t have unlimited texting. All of these things are valid, but they said the same thing about emails years ago.

 

 

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