Do you ever worry that your emails get lost in the shuffle? Think your lead times are longer because email is now ‘work’? Text messaging could be the answer.
Texting is a fast, inexpensive way to reach out to candidates. When your message arrives, it sits in an inbox surrounded by friends and family rather than random advertisements and emails from businesses the candidate visited once. What’s more, candidates are now more likely to apply for jobs on their phones than ever before.
We put together some simple rules to make text messaging a more effective tool for recruiters.
#1 Get Permission First
Did you know marketers can’t just text you? The law says they need to get your permission first.
While recruiting isn’t advertising per se, the rule still applies informally. You should always be getting permission when sending out the first text. Be sure to provide a reason for texting, too, and let them know how often they’ll hear from you and what kind of information you’ll send.
#2 Time It Right
It goes without saying that texting after dark is an unprofessional move. But you shouldn’t just avoid obviously anti-social hours.
Keep your texts strictly within business hours to keep it professional and avoid stressing out your candidates.
#3 Pick Up the Phone for Big News
Firing off a quick text may save you time, but candidates don’t want to hear big news via text.
When you have interview feedback or the results of a big decision, pick up the phone and call. No one wants to hear they didn’t get the job via SMS.
#4 Make Unsubscribing Easy
Unwanted texts are effectively spam, even if you’re a real person just trying to do their job. You don’t want to be spam, so you need to make it easy to opt-out of your messages.
If you’re texting manually, add a note to their candidate profile. Using software? Make sure your unsubscribe settings are on.
#5 Proofread Your Texts Every Time
Texting candidates isn’t like texting your friends. You shouldn’t rely on their ability to interpret typos and understand what you really meant.
It’s much easier to send out a typo-ridden text because you’re working with a smaller screen and fewer spell check tools. That’s why it’s essential that you read every text — and then read it again — before sending it to your candidate.
Turn the Perfect Candidate into Your Next Team Member
Texting can be a helpful tool to turn quality prospective candidates into great hires, but only if you use it the right way. Are you looking for more ways to simplify hiring? RightStone can help you attract the right fit for your project. Get in touch to learn more about our 360 process.
In order to be able to identify and recruit high-quality employees, managers in the IT industry need to understand the specific types of experience and technical expertise that they should be looking for in a candidate. This can often be a straightforward task: if a role requires a candidate to be certified in a particular type of cloud-services platform, for example, any manager can easily find out if any given candidate meets that requirement by simply asking for his or her certification. Difficulties can arise, however, if a hiring manager does not have some basic fluency in the more technical programmer jargon. In other words, it can be tricky for managers to get a clearly defined understanding of a candidate’s experience and skills without first becoming familiar with the language of the trade.