Texting is a game changer for recruiting, especially for high volume, entry level recruiting.
In a world where candidates quick apply at job boards to 20, 30+ job posts in a matter of minutes and unemployment is at 3.9% (BLS, 2018), being able to contact candidates quickly, is critical, texting allows you to get a speed advantage over the competition.
At one company where I helped implement text recruiting, prior to texting, for every 100 applicants, we would complete between 10-20 phone screens, after we implemented text recruiting, this jumped to 60-65 phone screens for every 100 applicants. The key is speed and open rate. Prior to text we would leave a voicemail and send a follow up email. Often, it would take days, sometimes weeks for candidates to check their voicemail and then call us back (I’ve received replies sometimes months later, asking if a position is still open). Emails are worse, emails only have about an 18% open rate (Constant Contact, 2018), when they are finally read. Texts have a nearly 100% open rate and are often opened instantly.
There are many services that offer texting that can connect with your landline, after trying out several, analyzing features and factoring in cost, I went with ZipWhip and you can get a free 1 month trial by clicking here, ZipWhip has a number of very cool features to save time and effort, such as:
- Group Texting with dynamic fields, so I can customize texts – include each person’s first name when mass texting
- Create Templates – saves me from having to rewrite the same messages over and over again
- Schedule texts – set reminder to be sent out at future times, i.e. morning or evening before an interview
- Search texts by keywords
- Import contacts with name & phone via a .csv file
Sources:
“Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject” Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sept. 24, 2018, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
“Average Industry Rates for Email as of April 2018” Constant Contact, June 21 2018, https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5409-average-industry-rates?lang=en_US
