2024 Guide to Recruiters Texting Best Practices
Using SMS messages to communicate with job seekers before, during, and after the recruitment process is a powerful way of opening a dialogue. Marketers have demonstrated that SMS remains one of the most effective ways of reaching out to a person.
One study from Gartner revealed that text message open rates are as high as 98%, with response rates also surpassing that of other channels. Utilizing a recruiter’s texting strategy requires you to use the right tactics to get the most out of it.
What is Text Recruiting?
Sending a text during the recruiting process may not be the most obvious avenue to pursue. Yet leveraging this form of communication to connect with candidates before, during, and after the process has significant benefits for your company.
Texting software for recruiting has experienced a surge in popularity because it can be used at every stage of the hiring process.
Some of its uses include:
- Candidate outreach
- Applicant screening
- Scheduling interviews
- Following up with applicants
- Re-engagement with unsuccessful candidates
All the above stages are vital to a streamlined pipeline that gives you access to the best talent while treating applicants right. Recruiting texting slashes the time it takes to manage all of the above.
Moreover, an increasing number of employers are getting more out of text recruiting platforms by automating everything via chatbots.
Joining the automation revolution frees up your team to work on the aspects of your business that really matter without compromising on the quality of candidates.
What are the Benefits of Recruiting Texting?
A recruiter’s texting strategy can elevate your hiring pipeline. Most people associate the use of the SMS text messages with the marketing world, but it has crossed over into attracting great candidates and improving the jobseekers’ experience.
Indeed, as a recruiter, you want to save time on menial tasks and invest your time more productively. Here are the primary benefits of text recruiting software and some examples of how it can be used.
Text Recruiting Gets Higher Response Rates
There has been significant controversy regarding the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of using SMS to get the message out to your target audience.
However, the truth is most businesses continue to report that their messages still have the highest open rates of all their forms of communication. For example, one study revealed that companies reported 20-35% open rates on their texting efforts.
The most commonly cited reasons why some organizations are not getting the results they want include:
- Too Many Messages – Like any channel, if you bombard your targets with too many messages, they’re going to dismiss them as spam.
- Irrelevancy – Sending a communication about something someone doesn’t care about will not get you the response you want.
- Long Communications – This channel is designed for short and straightforward communications. If you’re sending excessively long messages during your recruitment drive, people will stop reading.
In the context of a recruiting text message template, keeping everything short and ensuring that you’re sending relevant information will keep your open and response rates high.
Text Recruiting Leads to Faster Fill Times
Your fill time is how long it takes to find a suitable candidate for a position. Over the last year, average fill times have increased as employees become more willing to leave their current employers and more discerning about the companies they join. As of March 2022, 44% of employees were actively on the hunt for new jobs.
It has left employers struggling to fill their open positions. Sending a text message for a job opportunity could put your brand on the map as a viable choice for the brightest and the best.
The simple fact is becoming a text recruiter automates many of the aspects of the hiring process. Replying to candidates, scheduling interviews, and emailing hiring decisions takes time and effort. Recruiters’ texting their candidate pool automates it and therefore cuts down on your fill times.
Text Recruiting Makes for a Better Applicant Experience
Pay attention to the quality of the applicant experience because treating candidates poorly reflects on your organization’s reputation. With how pervasive social media is, people talk, and your company’s ethics could be called into question if you fail to treat candidates right.
According to an article from Forbes, here’s a selection of the most common complaints candidates have:
- Poor Application Process – Text applying for a job can make it simpler to submit an application. Candidates hate the unwieldy legacy systems for applying for a role.
- Inadequate Communication – Scheduling and hearing about interview outcomes require great communication. Texting job applicants keeps them in the loop.
- Ghosting – Large numbers of applicants can mean some people never hear back. Don’t fall into the trap of ghosting by ensuring that automating batch messages to your applicants.
Of course, there are other common complaints, but many of these problems can be alleviated by ensuring direct, personalized communication.
Opting for a text-based approach doesn’t put any further demands upon your team and, if anything, lessens their burden by making them more efficient at what they do.
Why Use Texting Software for Recruiting
Using texting software for recruiting gives you an unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of state-of-the-art techniques for reaching out to everyone involved in the hiring process. Create a frictionless pipeline that allows you to make the most of being a text recruiter.
But why does using SMS make sense if you’re a recruiter?
Cost-Effective Texting Rates
Businesses commonly underestimate the expense that goes into hiring a new employee. Figures vary depending on the role being hired for, but the average cost to hire an employee stands at $4,000. The figure presented here comes from both the direct costs of hiring, such as publishing a job posting, and the indirect costs of your hiring team’s salaries.
Developing a recruiters’ texting strategy must consider the costs and how firms can get this number down. Texting job applicants is the fastest communication method and comes with one of the best ROIs.
The cost of sending an SMS message is measured in mere cents. Some plans may even provide you with an unlimited number of messages under the terms of your subscription. Compared to email and phone calls, there’s no more cost-effective option than texting.
Automate Text Responses
Automation is vital for speeding up the process of communication. Replying to every message takes time. There’s not always a need to turn every reply into a private conversation, particularly if the candidate is seeking basic information, such as a reminder of when their interview is scheduled for.
However, automation doesn’t take away your ability to craft a tailored response to your candidate pool. You still have the option of writing your own messages.
Full automation is not recommended because you risk making your hiring process too impersonal. The key is to know when to automate text responses and when to wade in directly with a tailored response.
Texting Improves Personalization
The biggest complaint candidates have about job hunting is feeling as if they are not receiving the personal attention they deserve. Companies are becoming increasingly aware of this problem, but they have the issue of being unable to reply to everybody.
Lucrative roles may attract hundreds of individual candidates. Is it practical to have your team send a personalized message to everybody? Of course not. One way to get around this problem is to opt for text-based communication.
Texting job applicants is among the most effective ways of starting a personal dialogue with the target. Text recruiting software humanizes and personalizes your outreach due to the association with the medium.
For example, consider the messages you receive daily. Most of them will be from family members and friends. It gives the impression that SMS is a personal form of communication, and this is what you can capitalize on.
Relaying lots of information in a shorter format offers you the chance to weave the professional voice of your brand with a more personal touch. Developing customized templates to improve personalization offers support and guidance to your talent pool from the very beginning of the process.
Recruiting Texting Analytics & Reporting
Firms have an opportunity when they use texting software for recruiting. The chances are you’re always searching for ways to improve your organization’s processes. Take the data-driven approach with text analytics and reporting.
By using the right software solution from DialMyCalls, you gain access to in-depth analytics on every campaign. You’ll be able to see detailed reports for your text messages. Moreover, you can dig deeper and begin delving into vital information, such as which candidates are most likely to respond to your messages and which messages in your automation series have the greatest impact.
Constantly tweaking your system will help you yield better results, thus creating a candidate outreach program you can rely on in the long run.
Best Practices for Recruiters’ Texting Outreach
Sending the best recruiting messages will not automatically guarantee results for your business. Like email or social media outreach, you need to follow best practices.
Recruiters’ texting outreach campaigns are incredibly effective, but there is a learning curve. With the proper knowledge, you can use DialMyCalls to get results from your very first recruitment campaign.
Avoid Spamming Your Audience
Relevance is the key to any communication. Is the person receiving your message relevant to the content of that message?
Spamming your entire contact list with a new job posting is only going to lead to people opting out of receiving further communications. You need to segment your contact list into groups to ensure that the right people are being contacted when the time comes.
Cell phone carriers have responded to the menace of spam by making it extraordinarily easy for people to contact them about spam messages. If enough people report your number as spam, you’ll soon find your number blocked from the network. It’s not the carrier that’s done this but the FTC.
You can get your number unblocked by the FTC, but it’s a lengthy process. While switching numbers is possible, you could see your company being banned again. Either way, why would you want to sully your brand’s reputation with the spam tag anyway?
Focus on segmenting your audience and sending only relevant texts to them. Make recruiters’ texting a vital asset, not a hindrance.
Clean Your Database
To become a successful text recruiter, you need to figure out ways to boost your numbers. Better open and response rates are a signifier of a successful outreach campaign.
The longer you’ve been in business, the greater the challenge of keeping your contact list clean. Ideally, you should only target those who have interacted with your company in the last year or two.
Limiting your talent pool may seem counterproductive, but it’s a benefit. Sending fewer yet more relevant texts will yield better results and save money because you’re not sending thousands of extra messages.
Every so often, you should reach out to inactive contacts to see if they still want to be part of your list. Some recruiting text message examples to ask include:
If you really want to slash your contact list, you can even begin filtering your contacts by qualifications. How drastically you clean your list depends on your own policy. Some companies prefer broad outreach, whereas others opt for the highly targeted approach.
Always Remain Professional
There’s a balance to strike between disseminating information and keeping your communications short. Resorting to text speak and emojis may allow you to cram more into a small space, but this only makes you look less professional.
Remember that the purpose of your outreach is finding talent to fill an open position. You wouldn’t get too personal or too informal when meeting a candidate, so why would you via SMS?
Keep it Brief
It’s easy to get carried away when sending an SMS message. The maximum character limit is currently set at 160 characters. Most carriers will consolidate your messages into segments before combining them into one single communication after it arrives.
Although the old limits are dead, you should still stick to them. Cell phones are unsuited to large walls of text. If you need to send a more in-depth message, consider emailing or actively calling your candidates instead.
Automated texts work for some types of communication better than others. For example, one of the best examples of recruiters texting a candidate is to confirm an interview appointment.
Remind the Candidate Who You Are
There’s basic professionalism in introducing yourself with every outreach. Remember, candidates actively searching for a job likely already have several irons in the fire. Your competitors might also be using automated texts to communicate with interested parties.
Don’t expect people to remember what your number is. Even if you’ve already talked to someone before, starting every text with who you are is a good idea.
If you’re opting for a more personalized approach and want to put a name to the person sending the communication, ensure that you include which company that person is from.
Pay Attention to Your Timing
There’s always a lot of debate over when is the right time to make contact with somebody. The same principle applies to everything from email newsletters to Instagram posts.
What is certain is that you shouldn’t be trying to talk to anybody at unsociable hours. Schedule your outreach campaigns for either the morning or the afternoon. Business communications should be kept during business hours.
The only exception to the rule is if one of your recipients replies at a strange hour. For example, if someone asks to reschedule their interview at 11 pm, confirming that you’ve received the message is perfectly appropriate.
Don’t Rely Exclusively on Text
There are so many ways to communicate during your search for new talent. Certain things shouldn’t be sent via this method of communication, however.
If you’ve reached the final stages of the interviewing process, don’t offer a job to a successful candidate or reveal interview results via text messages. It’s also wise not to reject someone during the latter stages of your search by text. It comes off as cold and impersonal.
What you can do, though, is send a text to schedule a call or to remind someone that you’ve sent a detailed email to their inbox.
Overall, the final stages of the recruitment process are when it’s time to pick up the phone and speak directly.
Try DialMyCalls’ Text Recruiting Software Today!
to find out why DialMyCalls is the solution for text recruiting software. We provide all the tools you need to reach out to your contact list with new job postings, updates to their applications, and essential information regarding interviews.
Make it easy to get in touch with your contacts and organize your lists appropriately to provide support, improve retention, and save time. To learn more about making the most of SMS for finding top-quality candidates, contact us now.
