Introduction to Text Recruiting
Picture this: a busy recruiter is trying to nail down an interview time with a candidate. They’ve been emailing back and forth over the last 2 days. After 7 attempts, the recruiter no longer hears back from the candidate, who was the number one choice… Or this: a hiring manager is running late to an interview, she emails the candidate 5 minutes before their scheduled time. The anxious and confused candidate doesn’t see the email until it’s too late… Or this: the store manager emails the candidate he met at a hiring event in their store. They had a great conversation but the candidate never replied to the email. The recruiter doesn’t realize this Gen Z candidate barely uses email…
Timeliness, convenience, and responsiveness are some of the leading values of text messaging over other forms of communication like email and voice calls. Messages are typically read within a short window of time after they are received because they are so accessible and top-of-mind. Consumers are increasingly reliant on messaging apps to communicate with friends and families. This behavior is no different when it comes to work, or talent acquisition.
Messaging presents an incredible opportunity for businesses to effectively reach consumers at scale. There is already a massive shift towards messaging for consumer communications. Twilio found that 9 out of 10 consumers globally want to contact businesses through messaging. An increasing number of businesses use it to offer customer service, promote deals and new products, keep customers updated with order status, and much more.
Hiring is no exception. In modern recruiting, timeliness is the name of the game. The immediacy of the experience is critical to hiring team performance. Talent Acquisition teams competing for the best talent not only need to reach new candidate audiences but keep them engaged throughout the hiring process. Nurturing candidates, whether external or internal, is critical, and messaging provides a real-time, personal way to engage them. Companies that are fast to embrace mobile communications will remove any friction in communications and stay relevant. This is a key part of the employer branding and how companies get perceived by candidates. In the following chapters, we will talk how texting is currently applied in hiring, why we decided to build a native text recruiting solution, SmartMessage, within our talent acquisition suite, what the market for text recruiting products looks like, and our vision for SmartMessage.
