6 Benefits of Text Recruiting

Kristine Le
Apr 28, 2021 1:25:45 AM

Texting is a great way to achieve high open rates and faster responses, making it a great form of communication — especially in the recruiting space.

Text Recruiting is growing in popularity in the recruiting space due to its flexibility, convenience, and versatility.

If your team is thinking about implementing Text Recruiting in your talent acquisition strategy but hasn’t quite committed to it yet, here are some benefits you can consider.

What is Text Recruiting?

Text Recruiting leverages text messages to communicate with job candidates before, during, and after the hiring process. Text message recruiting can be utilized in many different steps of the hiring pipeline. This includes candidate outreach, screening, interview scheduling, follow-up, and re-engagement.

The time these processes take is dramatically reduced when you make the switch to text-based hiring, especially when implementing a chatbot.

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

It speeds up your hiring process

Text Recruiting uses automation at stages that don’t require a 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.

It improves the candidate experience with faster communication

Instead of making a phone call or sending an email — both of which candidates can miss or overlook — texting provides a fast and easy way to stay in touch with candidates. As a result, you’re creating a positive candidate experience and showing that you respect job seekers’ time.

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

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.

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.

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.

Why should recruiters use Text Messaging?

1) Texting is fast

Texting is fast and simple — and candidates appreciate that. Not all job seekers are at their desk all day long, scrolling through endless job listings and checking their email — they have other things to do too! As a recruiter, responding in a timely manner is your way of saying that you value and respect their time.

Make it easier and more convenient for your candidates by providing them with an on-the-go communication platform, where they can find their dream job at the tip of their fingers.

2) Texting is personal, customizable, and versatile

Whether you’re targeting millennials or other generations of candidates, recruiting text messages can easily be tailored to your audience. Emojis can even be added to your text campaigns to showcase your employer brand and tone.

3) Pre-screen and schedule candidates with ease

Recruiters can pre-screen and schedule interviews with candidates using a text message chatbot — enabling candidates to jumpstart their job application process at any time, and from anywhere. You can also set interview reminders, and answer any questions in real-time. These processes can also be used at virtual job fairs, serving the same purpose. 

Automation saves recruiters a massive amount of time, as they will have a fraction of the resumes to look through, and most of them will be viable candidates. Not only that, implementing a chatbot provides constant response times around the clock, enhancing the candidate experience.

XOR Text Recruiting offers a variety of platforms that recruiters can use to screen and schedule candidates such as Facebook Messenger, Linkedin, WhatsApp, and more.

4) Onboard new employees quickly

Recruiters can also use SMS to speed up the onboarding process by sending out texts to new hires, reminding and informing them of any important information they may need to know for their new job. This could include your company location, business hours, phone number, or required documents.

5) The results are measurable

Text recruiting is effective because of its quantifiable results. Using SMS software, you can track your text campaign performances and build reports based on the number of successful hires, candidate drop-offs, and other relevant components. The results can be analyzed and used to improve your recruiting strategy for the future.

6) Text Recruiting is scalable

Whether you’re a small or large business, SMS recruitment can help you meet your hiring goals. Recruiters can choose to send out multiple text message workflows promoting either different or the same job listings. They can also create text message campaigns, and reengage passive candidates.

As you continue to grow and develop your talent acquisition strategy, you have a flexible tool that can be adjusted to meet your current business needs.

Who should be using Text Recruiting?

All small, medium and large businesses of any industry can make use of Text Recruiting.

If you’re a small to medium business, your team can use text recruiting software to automate some or all stages of the hiring process.

If you’re a large business, mass texting can definitely help you with your high-volume recruiting.

Many industries benefit from using XOR’s Text Recruiting solutions including retail, staffing, healthcare, and more.

Check out the case studies here.

Takeaway

Text Recruiting is beneficial for both recruiters and candidates in many ways. It offers multiple features that help recruiting teams promote job openings and hire top talent within less time — while making candidates feel respected and valued.

If you’re convinced Text Recruiting can be of value to your recruiting strategy, schedule a demo with us — we’d love to show you how we can help you achieve your hiring goals!

Tags: Text Recruiting