With a talent market that is more competitive than ever before, you might be finding it challenging to differentiate yourself to prospective candidates. How are you delivering the best candidate experience? A text-enabled recruitment service is a great solution to help you build the best relationships between your candidates and organisation.
Most organisations are missing out on a crucial opportunity to connect with candidates in real time.
Think for a moment about how you communicate with your friends and family. Chances are you don’t spend much energy wondering if a phone number is textable — every friend, family member, acquaintance, and kids’ soccer coach that you communicate with has a single number you can call or text without thinking about it.
Communicating with candidates in real time should be just as straightforward. In fact, it’s what candidates expect! Here’s why you should enable texting for all your recruiters.
It empowers candidates to move easily between phone and text
One of the strategies for helping facilitate conversions is by making the decision process easier and less cumbersome. Text enabling your recruitment contact number eliminates a decision point for candidates — they can click your number and text you in real time without giving it a second thought. When they’re ready to call, they can hit the call button from your text conversation without missing a beat.
What’s more, because so many phone numbers are textable, separate text numbers add extra hassle for your candidates. Some of them may assume that your number is textable, which means you’ll lose any texts that are sent your way and you won’t even know you missed them. This means that not only are you missing out on a potentially valuable lead, you are also failing to give them a positive experience. They don’t necessarily know they are texting a number that can’t receive texts and may assume you are just ignoring them. Their next step may be reaching out to someone else in your organisation (which you may not want) or worse…one of your competitors.
It allows multiple users in your team to manage texts to a single phone number
Another drawback to a siloed text messaging number is that it may have limited functionality when it comes to sending and receiving text messages. If all text messages are going to a single inbox, your team may lack the insight and speed they need to keep up with candidates. With a standard shared inbox, it isn’t always top of mind for everyone to check and make sure candidate needs are met. It is also a common behaviour that team members assume that someone else is checking the inbox, when the reality is, no one is checking it (or at least not checking it regularly).
A fully functional, textable business number means that your entire team can field incoming text messages in real time because they will all receive and see it. Texting has an immediacy to it — it prompts the receivers to look and acknowledge or respond. This ensures that no candidate is left behind — if a rep is sick or on vacation, another member of your team can jump in and make sure their needs are met.
It makes your phone calls and interviews more effective
Think about how much of your team’s time is spent making phone calls to candidates who just don’t want to or simply can’t pick up. Nowadays, most people don’t even accept unscheduled phone calls from their friends and family. It’s no wonder that your team is having a hard time getting through!
A text-enabled business number helps you warm up those phone calls. Instead of cold calling, you can send a quick text that identifies who you are and a good time to connect for a call.
Hey Sam, This is Sara from ACME Co. I wanted to introduce myself as your point of contact and see if you’re available for a quick 5-min call this afternoon?
Sam can pick a time that works best for him — Sara gets the phone call she needs without interrupting his day. What’s more, if Sam is in a position to talk when he gets the text, he can easily click on the number Sara texted from and be instantly connected for a call.
Text messages are generally less intrusive than a phone call, so you also eliminate the risk of calling at a bad time. Text candidates before your scheduled interview to remind them of your appointment time, so when you make the call, they are prepared (and also impressed by the technology of the process!). You can also text them to book interviews, and they can respond quickly with a time that suits them.
Text messages are also more likely to be read than a voicemail is to be listened to — and you won’t run into the problem of a completely full voicemail inbox.
It saves valuable time
Bottom line — candidates want their interactions to be easy, clear, and concise. Instead of trying to figure out which number to call versus which one to text, they want to easily engage and start a conversation with you in real time and on their own terms, which might mean shooting you a quick text while they’re on their lunch break or surfing social media.
It helps you build relationships
Business texting is still a new frontier, so candidates can be more suspicious of a dedicated text number, worried that it will bring more spam into their lives. But a text-enabled business phone number adds a level of trust.
Your business phone number becomes just that — your number. Seeing the same number for you in both texts and calls lends authenticity to the relationships you are trying to foster. Prospects can communicate with you the same way they communicate with everyone else in their lives.
Text messaging is slowly becoming the primary way prospects want to communicate, but up until now, it has mostly been used as an often annoying or overlooked alert or notification system. As a recruiter, text-enabled business phone numbers with messaging capabilities to give power back to candidates by communicating in real-time and on their terms.
Andrew Kimmell is co-founder and CMO at TextUs (www.textus.com). At TextUs, Andrew has created a leading brand for modern business communication, where a growing number of industries are using text messaging to reach customers and prospects. The 10-digit phone number is being reborn as a high-value business tool, with texting leading to meaningful conversations, authentic relationships and real-time responses. In addition to founding TextUs and Rage Digital, Andrew served as a creative director and designer for Boulder-based duo 3OH!3, co-founder of The Receptionist for iPad, creative director and designer for Orbotix, and graphic designer for Rage Unlimited.