Americans look at their phones an average of 47 times per day. And for Gen Z that number rises to 86 times per day, according to Deloitte.
Because we’re so attached to our phones, text messaging is an incredible channel – still relatively untapped – that savvy recruiting teams can leverage to see major results.
What kind of results, you might wonder? Rally sponsors TextRecruit reports that on average 37% of candidates reply to recruiting-related texts.
Given these engagement rates, implementing a text messaging strategy can give your team the boost it needs to keep candidates warm and engaged with your employer brand – so you can encourage them to apply to the right opportunity when it comes up.
Here are our 5 top approaches we’ve pulled together for text recruiting that you can use at your organization to engage your candidates.
Side note: Email is another effective channel you can combine with text messaging as part of a comprehensive candidate nurture strategy. For tips and approaches there, take a look at RallyRM Mentor Jared Nypen’s blog post, 5 Tips to Grow Your Candidate Nurture Email Strategy.
5 tips for using text messaging to engage candidates
Tip #1: Text your silver medalist candidates.
Remember that candidate who made it to the interview stage but who didn’t land the job? There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) more silver medalists in your CRM or ATS, so check if you have their mobile phone numbers. They’ve likely added new skills and gained more experience since the last job they interviewed for. Send out a text to these candidates to invite them to a call to touch base, or encourage them to apply if there’s a new opportunity you think would be a great fit.
Tip #2: Consider a rehire text campaign: send text messages to high performing employee alumni.
You can nurture and re-engage your employee alumni base through text too. This is a great candidate pool because it’s people who have already made the cut once, and who may be willing to return for the right job.
Trilogy Health Services implemented an alumni recruiting campaign and saw a big boost. They sent out 4,456 texts to past employees and saw a 50% response rate, with most candidates replying in less than 3 hours. Thanks in part to this campaign, rehires made up more than 13% of their hires last year!
Tip #3: Leverage text messaging to build a one-on-one relationship with new candidates.
Text messaging can also help you engage with newer candidates, in addition to the ones who have been in your network for longer periods of time. Text candidates a URL that invites them to your next recruiting event or that features an employee story related to their job family.
If you’re not familiar with landing pages, you can find out more on that topic in the new Rally How To Guide: 5 Landing Pages that Drive Candidates to Action.
Tip #4: Save time and automate with a text recruiting tool.
If you want to incorporate texts regularly into your candidate communications strategy, you should consider whether a text recruiting solution makes sense for your team. There are quite a few on the market today that will help you automate and streamline your approach so that recruiters aren’t manually sending text messages from their phones and their personal phone numbers.
Text recruiting software allows recruiters to send mass messages and manage conversations through a dashboard using a web browser. The software can also automate a response and handle simple two-way communication without always needing a real person to step in. Further, these tools also ensure your messages adhere to data security and compliance rules: candidates’ information remains private and they can unsubscribe from receiving texts.
Tip #5: Use text messaging to lower your application drop-off rates.
Now that you’re re-engaging candidates and driving traffic to your site through text, you can keep candidates engaged and committed to your application process. With a text messaging tool, you can set up an automated re-engagement text that is sent out to candidates when they start an application but don’t finish it within a certain time period. Civil construction company Allan Myers tried this approach and saw a 15x increase in application completion rates!
Looking for more insights on how to use text messaging for recruiting?
In the Rally How To Guide 4 Ways to Text the Modern Candidate, we break down how text messaging software works and how to use it attract, engage, nurture and hire candidates.
You can also check out the RallyFwd recording Make Candidates : -) Using Text Messaging to Respond (and Hire) Faster, where John Turner shares how his team at Trilogy Health Services implemented a text solution for their recruiting team and the results they observed.
