In the professional world, emails still reign supreme. Email’s little brother, text messaging, is somewhat overlooked as a communication tool, yet SMS has some powerful advantages for communicating. With an open rate of around 95%, adopting text messaging for recruiting is a great way to share brief but essential information or issue a call to action that motivates your candidates.

In recruitment, this open rate is unheard of! Think of how many missed interviews there are every year. When you use SMS in recruitment, you can almost guarantee that your potential employee turns up! Read on to see how text messaging for recruiting is taking off in 2021.

How to Use Text Messaging for Recruiting

SMS is still a valuable technology in 2021, thanks to a high open-rate. It’s a way to communicate important information instantly and, as a recruiter, you’ll have plenty that you need to convey. Here are a few ways you can use text messaging for recruiting to up your game this season.

1. Keeping Applicants Updated

Nobody likes being left in the dark and with long, challenging recruitment processes. It helps a lot to separate you from other employers if you can deliver a positive candidate experience through the efforts of keeping candidates in the loop. Every candidate is the same in this regard - after one or two weeks, candidates expect an answer, but if you have a wide range of applicants, those days can turn into weeks or even months. Text messaging updates are quick and non-intrusive. You can use these updates to keep applicants updated on how their application is progressing. And even if your candidate turns out to be unsuitable for the role, you can keep them up to date with future roles using text messaging.

2. Interview Reminders

Missed interviews waste everyone’s time, and they often become emblematic of a lack of professionalism within recruiting. Through scheduled text message reminders, you can make sure your applicants never miss another interview. Rakuna has the perfect solution for this, with our Text Recruiting Software!

You can schedule SMS reminders in advance, and the whole process can run on auto. Arrange the interview, set up the text reminders, and then you can forget about it. You should also try to keep the text as short as possible so that the entire message fits in the message preview.

3. Discreet Communication

The world of recruitment sometimes calls for discretion - after all, many of your candidates will be exploring potential roles while working full-time elsewhere, and they may not want words getting out that they’re looking to move.

Text messaging provides the perfect platform for discrete communication when phone calls and even emails might stand out. One of the challenges of recruiting is that you’re likely working the same hours that everyone else is. Phone calls during working hours can be tough to navigate with discretion. A text message can slide into your candidate’s DMs discreetly.

Text Tips For The Perfect Message

If you’re used to conducting your recruitment through emails and phone calls, it’s important to note that the rules of engagement for text messaging are a little different. Let’s take a look at some top tips for text messaging for recruitment.

4. Introductions Count

While there’s often a lot of information to squeeze into your character count with an SMS message, introductions count. As SMS marketing catches on, candidates are likely receiving multiple messages a day, so you need your text to stand out. Make it clear who you are and why you’re reaching out within the first line of your SMS to grab their attention and make sure it’s the message received.

5. Enable Text Responses

The vast majority of text messages are opened and read - that’s what makes this such a valuable medium for communicating information. However, if you need a response, engagement drops off if you require users to move to another platform such as a website. Enable your applicants to respond to your inquiries via text, and an SMS message can start a dialogue with candidates that takes you far.

6. Short and Sweet

Text messages are designed to drive a simple point home, not for sending essays of information. Think of a text message like a tweet and make each character count. A good rule of thumb is to try and keep your text messages under 140 characters. Use simple language that conveys your point at a glance.

7. Be Personal

When you’re using text messaging for recruiting, it pays to be personal. Due to a human’s desire for control and the inherent information overload of the internet, most people have a major preference for simplifying and easing personalized experiences.

By personalizing your recruitment SMS messages, you’ll stand out from other business dispatches applicants are receiving into their inbox, and you’ll instantly begin building a connection with your candidates. Personalized emails will lead to a higher rate of responses, and they’ll ensure the crucial information you include hits home.

8. Call Your Candidates To Action

Before sending a text message, think carefully about the response it’s intended to create. To get the most out of your SMS messaging, you should craft every message around a call to action (CTA). Whether you need someone to update their resume or schedule a phone conversation, an intriguing CTA should be at the heart of every SMS to engage your candidates.

Wrapping Up

Text messaging for recruitment is a valuable tool that lets you connect with clients in an instant. Thanks to a high open-rate that leaves emails dead in the water, text messages are the perfect medium for getting across essential information such as interview times and scheduling phone calls. You can use text messages to guarantee your candidate arrives at the interview and keep them up to date on future opportunities! Message received?

If you liked this article, why not check out our other post about how to plan your next campus recruiting strategy.

Author Biography

Regina Wheeler is a writer and consultant at Ph.D. Kingdom and Next Coursework. She studied business and marketing before becoming a recruiter and loves the challenge of fitting candidates to roles, supporting companies and individuals synthesize their goals. If you want to read more of her work, you can find it on Write My Thesis.

Images used in this post: Freepik

This blog post originally appears on Rakuna's blog.