Recruiting is difficult: you need to find people that qualify for the position while convincing them to submit their applications. If your business struggles with recruiting, it should use methods like text recruiting to make the process more efficient. If text recruiting interests you, then we have some points to share that will explain what it is while giving you tips on how to use it.
Understanding Text Recruiting
Text recruiting uses text messaging to inform users about job positions, communicate with them, and maintain contact. By working with an SMS provider (short messaging service), you can easily contact potential applicants by providing a consistent channel that allows communication. While seeking employees through text messaging may seem strange, it makes sense when you consider how many people own phones.
Why It Matters
Over 60 percent of people in the world own mobile phones, so many of them have access to text messaging services. To add to this point, 95 percent of text messages sent to people are opened, read, and responded to within three minutes of delivery.
This can assist your recruitment process in multiple ways.
- Receive quick responses and applications from potential hires.
- Send urgent and important information that the hires need to see.
- Allow the applicants to reply and respond at a convenient time.
To summarize, text recruiting matters because over half of the people in the world own a phone and you can quickly communicate with your applicants in a convenient and easy way.
Legal Points
Remember that countries have their own laws concerning SMS regulations - you should look into them so your business can follow them. For example, the United States has the Telephone Consumer Protection Act which limits telemarketer communication through text messaging, faxing, and similar services.
Even if you’re not a telemarketer, you will rub people the wrong way if you don’t get their permission to text them first. As a general tip, you should send recruitment texts to people that give their consent. Also, spend some time researching and looking at the SMS regulations for the countries that you contact so that you can avoid any legal complications.
Ways to Utilize Text Recruiting
After your business decides that it wants to use text recruiting, you might wonder how to approach the recruitment process. If your business needs some help with identifying the type of messages it should send to potential hires, then we have some suggestions for you.
Message Relevant Candidates
As a business, you need to use the best resources available to message relevant candidates for the position.
For example, you can see that social media is a great place to find potential candidates based on the statistics shown above. Alongside social media, you can also look at employee referrals, former applicants, and similar sources. As you come across these potential candidates, send them a message and encourage them to apply for the position.
Keep Applicants Informed
Applicants need to know about updates, changes, and deadlines that apply to them. Because of this, your business should strive to send text messages that give them this information so they can easily remain informed and submit their applications on time. You can do so by using recruitment marketing software to automatically send messages to potential applicants.
As you inform applicants about important information, you will keep the process organized and smooth for everyone involved.
Confirming Interviews
Remember that people live busy lives, so they won’t remember every single event or appointment that they set up. If you want to ensure that people make it to interviews, you can send them a text to remind and confirm it with them. This also applies to text interviews since you can ask applicants if they will agree to one.
By confirming interviews, you show your applicants that you care about their time and that you want to work with their schedule.
Tips for Text Recruitment Strategies
Nearly two-out-of-three businesses don’t have an official strategy for their text-based marketing, so how many of them do you think have a strategy for their text recruiting? As you consider this point, you may wonder how you can improve your recruitment strategy. We have two quick tips that you can use throughout your texting strategy so that you can make each text count.
Short and Professional Messages
When you send text messages to your applicants, you should keep them short. Do your best to fit your messages within the 160 character limit as a general guideline. However, don’t sacrifice professionalism by using abbreviations or text lingo, such as “ttyl” or “l8r”.
Finding this balance with each of your messages will help you to get your point across without appearing unprofessional.
Include a CTA
Every one of your messages to potential hires should include a call-to-action (CTA). For example, if you message people about an opening in a position, then you can include a link so they can apply for it. Keep your CTAs straightforward and simple so that people can easily complete them.
As you add CTAs to your text messages, you can encourage more people to complete the tasks necessary to encourage qualified candidates.
Tips for SMS Job Interviews
Over 80 percent of people will change their mind about a job if they have a bad interview experience. You need to strive to create a pleasant experience for text message interviews whenever possible. If you want to avoid problems and make the process smooth, then try and apply these three tips.
Organize Yourself Beforehand
When it comes to interviews, you need to do your best to keep everything in order so that you can provide a smooth interview process. With this in mind, you should prepare questions ahead of time, decide on the order, and write them down somewhere. From here, you can quickly type out questions and send them to your applicants.
Organizing yourself makes the process easier so that you can minimize hassle and problems as you send your text messages.
Ask Straightforward Questions
When you organize the interview questions, you should also keep your messages concise by making them less than 140 characters. This means that you should get to the point with questions and avoid long sentences. This way, you can lower the risk of an interviewee misunderstanding the question.
In short, make sure that you keep your questions straightforward and easy to understand so that you can make the text interview enjoyable for applicants.
Be Patient With Responses
As you go through the interview process, avoid rushing or pressuring the applicant for answers. You need to understand that people get busy and they can’t always respond to questions immediately. After you send the question, give the applicant plenty of time to respond so that you can avoid coming across as pushy or aggressive.
As you provide a comfortable texting environment when you perform interviews, you can provide your applicants with a positive experience that will encourage them to join the company.
Conclusion
Text recruiting provides various options to help your business find more potential applicants and hire them. Like any channel, it’s important to consider what makes this channel unique and play to its advantages. This way, you can provide more flexibility and options for recruitment in your business.
By using this guide, you can learn the initial steps for text recruiting so that your business can properly use it and improve your recruiting process.
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