The Future of Texting for Next Level Hiring
Looking into the future, we envision texting being fully embedded into each step across the entire source-to-hire narrative. To get there, a key area of focus will be Interviews, wherein text messages can dramatically drive efficiency and productivity. When asked about how text messaging would benefit them, half of our customers surveyed designated Interviews as the top priority (SmartMessage Early Access Q1 2020 survey). This sentiment is reflected across the industry at large, where interviews take up to 25% of total time and resource by stage. The scheduling side of interviews can take up to two thirds of a recruiter’s time. To make matters worse, no-shows and cancellations range between 10% and 50% of scheduled interviews. SmartMessage will streamline this process for hiring teams and candidates as much as possible. Specifically, it will reduce the relay time in landing an interview date and time, and minimize no-shows or late cancellations so teams can continue to advance candidates.
Beyond interviews, an area of focus will be enabling teams to work more effectively with multiple candidates, whether in sourcing with campaigns or during review. Launching text campaigns to re-engage candidates already in the database can lower sourcing costs and speed up the hiring process. 1:Many texts (or “bulk texting”), combined with templates and merge fields can increase efficiency for talent acquisition professionals while maintaining a consistent brand voice for their organization at large. This is especially important for distributed hiring where it is important for a candidate to receive the same quality of communication, no matter where they apply from. Finally, text message automation will tie the entire process together and build lasting rapport with candidates. Teams will be able to configure outbound messages to candidates along each hiring stage, for things like application confirmations, to notes about moving to resume review, to updates about incoming offer letters.
