Text Recruiting Best Practices for 2022

Text Recruiting Best Practices

In our day-to-day lives, mobile technology plays a huge role. From communication with friends and family to entertainment, work tasks, and even job searching, smartphones are central to most people’s lives. In fact, current research shows that 97% of Americans own a smartphone, with 90% of job seekers using their smartphones for job-searching tasks such as filling out applications, submitting resumes, and following up with recruiters. That means there are a lot of opportunities for your talent acquisition team to leverage texting as a powerful recruiting tool. Our recent 2022 Hiring Trend Survey showed text recruiting as a top trend for 2022 as well as placed it at the top of the list of things recruiters were most interested in learning and adopting this year. But, before we get started, let’s look at some important text recruiting statistics:

Text Recruiting Stats

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What Is Text Recruiting?

Text Recruiting leverages SMS text messages to communicate and maintain contact with job candidates before, during, and after the hiring process. Text recruiting can be utilized in many different stages of the hiring journey to inform users about job positions or hiring events, encourage candidates to apply, schedule interviews, and even prescreen applicants. And a solid text messaging strategy can be used to dramatically reduce time to fill particularly when done through automation. To help you better understand the benefits of this powerful recruiting tool, let’s dive in.

What Are The Advantages of  Text Recruiting?

It’s more likely than not that you already use a variety of channels in your recruiting process such as email, social media, referrals, and maybe even good, old-fashioned phone calls or ads. However, there are some powerful arguments for adding text recruiting to your existing strategy So, why bother with texting? Is it more beneficial or easy to use? Mass texts can help to make recruiters’ lives easier with the following advantages: 

It Has a High Open and Response Rate

Candidates can’t always accept a phone call or have time to access and read an email. However, most people carry their phones with them on a regular basis and can glance at a text quickly and easily. As mentioned above, SMS text messages have a 98% open rate with a 45% response rate vs. email with a 21% open rate and a response rate that ranges between 5% and 10%. 

It’s Built for Speed

Best practices say that you should respond to a candidate within eight minutes of a query. A quick response time indicates to an applicant that you value their time and improves the overall candidate experience. Texting is a fast and easy way to speed up numerous steps in your hiring process, particularly when automated. Used correctly, it can speed up the recruiting process, allowing you to get answers faster and communicate better.

It’s Customizable and Versatile

Whether you’re targeting truck drivers, restaurant workers, or any other type of candidate, recruiting text messages can be easily tailored to your ideal audience. Texting allows you to create a personal yet professional message to effectively engage with your candidate while showcasing your employer brand. 

What is Employer Branding

It’s Scaleable

Whether you’re bringing in a large seasonal staff expanding to a new location or simply growing your team, text recruiting can help you reach your hiring goals. From texts promoting open positions to messages re-engaging past or passive applicants. With SMS recruiting, you have a flexible tool that can be adjusted to meet your business’s constantly changing talent acquisition needs.

 

Best Practices For Text Recruiting?

SMS can be a highly effective recruitment tool and while there are no hard and fast rules, there are a few key best practices to follow to ensure your campaign is efficient, effective, and respectful.


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Create an Etiquette Policy 

Most of us are used to sending out personal acronyms, emojis, and GIF-filled texts all day long. With text recruiting you’ll need a policy in place to ensure that your company as a whole puts a professional foot forward and makes the best impression on potential candidates, and it’s important that your recruiters understand and agree to follow your texting policies. 

Stick to the Rules

It pays to abide by the text messaging and spam laws that control when and how a business can text people. In efforts to crack down on spam, carriers are making it easier for people to report spam. If enough job seekers report you as spam, your number could be blocked. Before messaging, always ask permission to text a candidate. It’s common practice to request a mobile number during the application process, however, if you didn’t ask candidates to opt in to SMS messages you cannot contact them this way.

Include Opt-Out Instructions in Every Message

While we’re on the subject of rules, including opt-out messaging on every mass message you send increases the probability of your contact opting out instead of reporting your number as spam. For convenience, you can make your opt-out instructions a reusable template that can easily be attached to each mass message you send. With Work4, our system automatically enables candidates to text STOP to opt out. 

Identify Yourself

To avoid confusion, always identify yourself and your company as well as what position your communication is about. Remember that with any candidate it is possible that they have applied with multiple companies, or that they have applied to multiple positions within your organization. 

Keep it Short and Simple

Text messages are often read on a cell phone, even if they are sent as an email so keep your message short and simple by only including crucial information. Aim for 160 characters or less. 

Stay Professional

There is nothing wrong with taking a friendly tone when texting candidates but keep your messaging professional. Don’t use all caps, excessive punctuation or emoticons, informal slang, or acronyms. And, avoid throwing around company-specific buzzwords an outside candidate may not understand. 

Don’t Try To Do It Manually

The average online job posting attracts more than 100 applications. Even when not recruiting at high volumes, that’s a lot of conversations to manage through a personal or company phone. To avoid becoming overwhelmed or worse, overlooking a candidate’s text and failing to respond you’ll need a bonafide text recruitment platform. One that can manage incoming texts, and stay on top of all those conversations. Work4 can enable you to automate texts to candidates, save recruiters time, reduce time to fill, and improve your candidate experience. Contact us today to learn more about our recruitment marketing solutions. 

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