3 Things to Consider Before Text Recruiting
Kristine Le
Apr 28, 2021 1:25:31 AM
If you’re looking to adopt text message recruiting into your talent acquisition strategy, you may have a lot of questions — especially if you’re new to the recruiting software space. It’s important to break down your company’s needs and hiring goals to ensure that you’re getting the most out of Text Recruiting.
Let’s take a look at some components to consider before adopting Text Recruiting for your business.
1. What are the pros and cons of texting?
While the benefits definitely outweigh the negatives, your team should still consider both pros and cons of using text in your recruiting strategy.
Pros of texting
A. It speeds up your hiring process
Text Recruiting uses automation at stages that don’t require a job candidate to recruiter interaction. This means screening, interview scheduling, follow-ups, and more can be handled by a chatbot in lieu of a recruiter — resulting in a lot of saved time that your team can use for more important touchpoints.
B. It improves the candidate experience with faster communication
Texting is known to provide higher open rates and lower response times. Instead of making a phone call or sending an email — both of which candidates can miss or overlook — texting provides a fast and easy to stay in touch with candidates. As a result, you’re creating a positive candidate experience and showing that you respect job seekers’ time.
C. It makes a good impression on your organization
With SMS Recruiting, your organization will appear more approachable and communicative, which leaves a great first impression on top talent.
Even if you don’t end up hiring a particular candidate, they can still speak positively about their experience interacting with your brand. In the future, it may be easier to re-engage these candidates if they know how efficient your recruiting process is.
Cons of texting
A. Email is still important
Text Recruiting can make your recruitment process more efficient, but it can’t and won’t entirely replace email.
Email is still necessary for exchanging important data, such as legal documents or other sensitive data that may not be appropriate or secure over text.
B. Not everyone texts
While most Americans do own a mobile device and text on a daily basis, there is still a minority that is unfamiliar with texting.
This could affect your response rates, as these potential candidates don’t check their messages as often. Therefore, it’s important to be mindful of your audience and tailor your recruitment strategy based on whom you’re trying to reach.
C. It’s another channel to manage
Depending on your other current communication channels, adding in an additional SMS channel may affect your team’s ability to organize and stay on top of every candidate profile.
If this is of concern, discuss how you should go about using text recruiting software in an efficient and effective way. Many recruiting software companies integrate with your current applicant tracking system, so you don’t have to manually create or update your candidates’ profiles.
2. What is the most popular text recruiting software?
When selecting a recruiting software for your team, it’s important to do your research and decide on which platform best fits your hiring needs. Below are the top 3 text recruiting software platforms that you can consider:
XOR
XOR’s Text Recruiting is an all-encompassing platform that allows recruiters to create text message campaigns, pre-screen and schedule candidates, follow-up, and track performance. Not only that, but teams can also utilize these solutions for internal HR purposes, such as employee engagement, pulse surveys, and more.
Recruiters can choose from a large variety of different text messaging platforms including SMS, Facebook Messenger, Linkedin, WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram.
With their leading AI chatbots, recruiting teams can choose to automate any stage of recruiting process, including screening, scheduling, and asking for feedback. Recruiters can jump in at any time to speak with candidates or answer questions, ensuring that human interaction is still at the forefront of the candidate experience.
If a candidate is qualified to proceed onto the next steps of the hiring process, recruiters can easily transition from SMS to a phone call within seconds. Once the candidate receives a job offer, follow-up and onboarding can take place immediately — ensuring that there are no gaps nor long wait time between responses.
XOR also integrates with plenty of applicant tracking systems (ATS), CRM, and job boards, including but not limited to Avature, Beamery, Bullhorn, CareerHarmony, Zoho, Taleo, and more. View the rest of their integrations list here.
XOR’s clients have achieved an average of 33% faster time-to-hire, 50% lower hiring costs, and a 90% net promotor score from candidates.
You can request a demo of XOR’s Text Recruiting platforms here.
iCIMS / TextRecruit
Text recruiting is part of the mobile-first communication platform, which also includes live chat and an AI-powered chatbot. TextRecruit also includes an internal texting tool for employees to communicate with HR and for teams to collaborate. However, their reporting feature is still lacking the complexity and analytics recruiting teams need to analyze their text recruiting performance in-depth. Clients have also commented on the bland design of their platform.
TextUs
TextUs is primarily focused on staffing firm customers. They offer mass text broadcasting and integration with an ATS, and their platform allows users to quickly and easily add a new number and use pre-created templates for outbound messages. However, they are lacking drip campaigns/sequences capabilities.
3. How much does Text Recruiting cost?
Text Recruiting software can be priced based on the number of text messages sent out or a fixed annual subscription.
Factors typically involved in pricing include:
1) How many text messages are being sent out?
2) How many recruiters are using the platform?
The best way to find out how much Text Recruiting would cost is to request pricing. You can request a quote for text recruiting here.