How Your Recruitment Team Can Benefit from Business Texting

In the realm of recruitment, well-established and strong communications attract the right candidates to your company. And as many recruitment teams know, hiring is an exhaustive process that requires a lot of resources. However, modern recruiters have been making the most of business texting for recruitment reasons.
What is Business Texting in Recruitment?
If the concept seems new, it’s because it is. Business texting generally refers to businesses communicating with customers or clients through text messages.
In a recruiting context, this involves companies or HR departments using text messages as a way to advertise open job positions, schedule interviews, and communicate with candidates throughout hiring. While traditionally recruiters use email or phone calls, texting is proving to be even more effective at communicating with candidates.
But Why Texting?
Long gone are the days when texting is solely meant for personal communication. At Text My Main Number, we often encounter this question from a few curious partners. The reality is text messages are far more open and engagement rates than emails. It’s easy for emails to get buried with the rest, it’s easy for someone to miss a phone call. However, text messages receive just over 98% open rates and are responded to within 10 minutes. In recruiting, companies are reporting that candidates have a 60 – 70% response rate.
Besides how effective it can be with communicating with your audience, texting your candidates makes your lives as recruiters easier as well. For example, you can send out messages or schedule interview times on a mass scale. With a simple send button, hundreds of your candidates can receive all the information they need.
How You Can Use Recruitment Texting (with texting examples)
Depending on your industry, top candidates take anywhere from 10 days to a few months to get hired by a company. As such, you want to make your decisions and your communications as fast as possible to hire the most qualified candidate. Here are just a few ways to stand out and improve the speed of hiring:
• Interview Scheduling
If you’re mass hiring, it can be easy to confuse times and it can take a long time to schedule everyone one-on-one. So why not send out a poll link to all candidates?
Example: Hi Emily! We’ve read over your qualifications, and we’d love to invite you in for an interview. Please click on the link attached to this message to schedule an interview at a time that works for you! Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
Besides scheduling an interview, you can use this opportunity to remind your candidates of their interview times. This not only shows others that you have their best interest in mind, but it also makes the recruitment process a lot smoother when everyone shows up to their interview.
Example: Hi Emily, this is just a friendly reminder that your interview is tomorrow at 4 PM. Our address is 123 Front street and you can find free parking in the garage of our building. To get into our building, our door code is 5890.
• Answer Questions
It’s important to keep an open level of communication with candidates. Remember, this is both an exciting and nerve-wracking time for your candidates as well. As such, encourage them to ask questions and get in touch with you if they need to.
Example: Hi Liam! Just to follow up on your previous question, this job will require you to work from 8:30 AM – 4 PM on Mondays – Thursdays and from 8:30 AM – 2 PM on Fridays. We love an early start to the weekend here!
• Sending Updates
Things happen along the recruitment cycle. Sometimes you have to reschedule appointments, other times your company may have decided to pause hiring. Either way, it’s important to keep your candidates updated at all times. What better way to do that than through texting?
While you may want to use this opportunity to tell your candidate they’ve gotten the job, a phone call may be the best way to convey this exciting message.
Example: Hi Emma! While we appreciate the time you spent applying to our firm, we have decided to pause hiring until we sort out our finances for year-end. But don’t worry! We will reach out again in late January to continue the process.
Example: Hi John, it was great meeting you today at the interview! Can you please send over your reference contacts as soon as possible? Thank you!
• Promote Open Positions
When someone signs up for your texting services, you can also use this as an opportunity to promote any upcoming positions at your company. You can do this by having a separate keyword that individuals can text to your business number.
On our platform, you can easily sort these individuals out and place them in a group. This way, you don’t send your candidates potential job openings as well.
Example: Hi there! Looks like you’ve expressed interest in working for our company. Here’s a new job posting that just opened up: Financial Analyst -2 + years experience, 45 – 50 hour work weeks. To learn more about the role and to apply to it, click on the link below.

Recruiting Texting Tips

1. Never use your personal number: Using your home phone will make things very messy. You want that separation between your job and your personal life. As such, create a different business number that you can use for solely recruitment-related reasons
2. Keep the texts short: As recruiters, it’s easy to fall into the same habits of writing long paragraphs explaining the scope of a job or a job acceptance letter. However, it’s important to keep your messages short on texts. It’s simply the nature of the medium. This makes it easier for candidates to scan your messages and act accordingly. Try your best to narrow down the main idea of your message and showcase that in your texts.
3. Sounding Too Robotic: Remember that your candidates want to talk to a real person. As such, add some personality and flair to your texts. This puts your candidates at ease and makes a good impression on your company.
   If you’re looking for a business texting platform that allows you to schedule messages, send out bulk tasks and more, try out Text My Main Number for a free trial. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact our team to learn more about how our services can make your recruitment process a seamless one.