Chris Russell (5)
Text Recruiting
Tips for Texting Job Applicants
The hiring process can be an exhausting one for recruiters, especially when it comes to staying in touch with job applicants. Thankfully, text messaging is a perfect tool for recruiters to use to keep communications with applicants running smoothly. Let’s look at some of the ways that texting job applicants can make the recruitment process easier and more efficient. •Many candidates are using their phones to search for jobs, with nearly 70% of applications being submitted through a smartphone. • Candidate texting is a way of communicating with candidates throughout the process via text message. • This can include reminders for things like completing job forms, scheduling interviews, and providing reference information. Texting is Quick Text messages are read almost immediately after they are sent, meaning that recruiters can get quick feedback from applicants and move on to the next part of their recruitment process without waiting days or weeks for an answer. This is perfect for tight turnaround times and can help speed up the hiring process as a whole. It also allows recruiters to respond quickly if an applicant has any questions or needs help with their application. Scheduling Interviews via Text When it comes time to schedule interviews, texting is a great way for recruiters to communicate with job applicants. Since text messages are received almost instantly, recruiters can get confirmation from applicants quickly and easily. Texting also allows recruiters to have all of the interview details handy in one place instead of having them spread out over emails or phone calls which makes scheduling much simpler and faster. Personalization thru SMS Texting also allows recruiters to personalize their interactions with job applicants, which helps build relationships and create better connections between employers and potential employees. Text messages allow recruiters to provide information such as directions, helpful tips, or even just friendly reminders about upcoming interviews that help make job candidates feel more comfortable throughout the hiring process. Job Search Texting Job hunting has come a long way since the days of scanning newspaper classifieds. Now, nearly 70% of job applications are submitted through a smartphone, with many candidates using their phones to search for open positions. This trend is likely to continue, as more and more employers move to texting and SMS as a way to communicate with job seekers. As a result, it’s important for candidates to be aware of how to use their phones to their advantage when looking for a job. For example, texting can be a great way to follow up with a potential employer after an interview. A quick text can help you maintain contact without being too intrusive, and it shows that you’re still interested in the position. In addition, texting can be used to schedule interviews and keep track of important deadlines. By understanding how to use texting as part of your job search strategy, you’ll be better positioned to land the position you want. Popularity of Texting Texting has become a popular way to communicate, with many people choosing to text rather than talk on the phone or send an email. texting is also becoming a popular way to communicate with candidates during the recruitment process. candidate texting is a way of sending candidates text messages throughout the process, from initial contact to after an offer has been made. Texting is a quick and easy way to communicate with candidates, and it allows you to have a conversation without interrupting their day. texting is also a great way to keep candidates updated on the status of their application, and to remind them of upcoming deadlines or interviews. candidate texting is a valuable tool for recruitment, and it can help you to build better relationships with candidates. Overall, texting is an essential tool for recruiting professionals who want to stay connected with job applicants during the hiring process. Text messages provide quick responses, easy scheduling of interviews, and personalized interactions that make job candidates feel valued throughout the entire recruitment experience. Whether you’re just starting out as a recruiter or have been in the business for years, learning how to effectively use text messaging will help you succeed in your role by making your recruitment processes faster and easier while still providing excellent customer service. Book a demo of Emissary today to bring texting into your recruiting workflow.
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Recruiting Trends
Future of Healthcare Recruiting
The healthcare industry is growing rapidly, and healthcare recruiting is becoming more complex and challenging due to our population getting older and living longer. In order to stay ahead of the competition, healthcare recruiters need to be prepared for the challenges that 2023 and beyond will bring. Here are the top 6 healthcare recruiting challenges that I see coming up: 1. Talent Acquisition: In 2022, healthcare organizations will be challenged to find the right talent for their organization. With healthcare jobs becoming increasingly specialized and competitive, healthcare recruiters will need to develop effective strategies for sourcing top-tier candidates. 2. Cost Control: The healthcare industry has seen a steady increase in healthcare costs over the past few years, and healthcare organizations are increasingly looking for ways to reduce costs without compromising quality of care. Recruiters will need to be creative in finding cost-effective recruitment solutions that still bring in the best healthcare professionals. 3. Employee Retention: Healthcare recruiters will also face the challenge of keeping healthcare talent engaged and committed to their healthcare organizations. Retaining healthcare professionals is key to success in the healthcare industry, and recruiting strategies should focus on creating an engaging environment for healthcare employees that encourages loyalty and retention. 4. Recruiting Automation: More healthcare organizations are utilizing recruitment automation technology to streamline their recruitment processes. This will present a challenge for healthcare recruiters who are not familiar with the technology, and they will need to quickly become knowledgeable in order to keep up with their healthcare competitors. 5. Adaptability: As healthcare technology advances, healthcare recruiters will need to be able to quickly adapt recruitment strategies to include changes in healthcare technologies and processes. 6. Compliance: Healthcare organizations must comply with relevant healthcare regulations and laws when recruiting healthcare professionals. Recruiters must be aware of healthcare compliance regulations and ensure that recruitment activities are conducted in a compliant manner. To follow up on these thoughts, The Josh Bersin Company, a research and advisory company focused on HR and workforce strategies, recently published some practical advice for healthcare organizations looking to address the sector’s alarming and fast-growing clinical workforce gaps. According to Bersin’s research, the healthcare industry is the largest employer in the U.S., with 1 in 7 Americans working in the sector today. The vast clinical capacity gap (there will be a gap of 2.1m nurses, or 1 in 3 nurse roles, by 2025, according to recent Bersin Company research) is the biggest challenge faced by the sector both in the U.S. and globally. The new report specifies what healthcare organizations should do now, based on this innovative, groundbreaking data—from benchmarking current workforce skills, and identifying roles in decline, using AI to identify skills and roles adjacencies, to determining career pathways to help bridge the capabilities now needed. The report also provides targeted development and educational programs to support people into the key roles of tomorrow. How to Fix Healthcare Recruiting Here’s a summary of solutions to address the healthcare recruiting challenge. Career pathways can even help raise communities from poverty to higher levels, solve societal challenges, and create equity and sustainability Reskilling people from a whole range of other roles, whether inside or outside healthcare, is now one of the most impactful strategies to fill severe gaps in nursing, potentially addressing 1/3 or 700,000 of unfilled vacancies in the health economy Healthcare employers need to be more vocal about no-cost retraining opportunities. Although 61% offer tuition reimbursement, only 11% see this widely used by employees and just 8% say employees are aware of these programs Educational assistance programs—those that don’t require employees to pay out of pocket—allow economically disenfranchised workers to participate and access genuine opportunity via these programs Employees in declining roles like receptionists or environmental services workers have many of the skills needed to easily reskill to entry level clinical roles Career pathways programs also significantly reduce the turnover of clinical talent—one of the biggest issues in healthcare (with some providers seeing rates of up to 60%). Gale Healthcare Solutions released new survey data today showing that gig-style work options offering flexible schedules and quick pay to workers can address the national nursing shortage and retain sought after nursing staff. The vast majority of clinicians – 89% – said they strongly prefer getting paid daily or sooner versus waiting for weekly or biweekly pay schedules. This finding held true across all age groups, not just younger workers. “Healthcare has 2-3 times as many job titles, skills, and career clusters as other industries, but traditional recruitment and retention solutions alone aren’t effective enough to close the clinical capacity gap. Career pathways from dead-end administrative roles to future-proof clinical jobs are one of the most strategic solutions to fill the clinical shortage over time. However, employers will need to develop long-term strategies to build their pipelines, as the certification requirements and learning/reskilling timelines are very long for clinical roles. As a result, healthcare organizations must think and act outside of the box, and they must start today if they want to survive beyond tomorrow. What’s interesting is that leaders in any industry can learn from these innovations to future-proof their organizations.” -Kathi Enderes, SVP, Research, and Lead Healthcare Industry Analyst at The Josh Bersin Company The healthcare industry is becoming increasingly complex, and healthcare recruiters need to stay ahead of the curve in order to remain successful. By understanding the top healthcare recruiting challenges of the future, healthcare employers can (and need to) prepare themselves for the changing landscape. These challenges can be solved, but only with a fresh perspective and the leadership to make it happen.
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Human Resources
Employee Recognition Still Lacking
Are you thanking your employees for a job well done? A new national survey of U.S. workers finds nearly half (47 percent) say they would like to receive more recognition for their work, while nearly one quarter (21 percent) of workers indicate that they are never recognized for their efforts. If you care about retaining your workers, read on. “Our research signals that employers need to double down on employee recognition programs. Far too many employees are burnt out from their workload and say they aren’t recognized for their efforts,” says Melissa Jezior, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Hill Consulting. “Failing to acknowledge workers is a recipe for subpar organizational performance and high attrition, the last thing employers need in a volatile economy.” “Employees also indicate that recognition programs drive them to go above and beyond their responsibilities, an issue employers are grappling with amid the so-called quiet quitting phenomenon. There are ways that employers can quickly set up regular recognition that will get results and are cost effective. For example, many employees say just a simple thank you email or note makes a difference, as do rewards like of time off. The key to success is creating a culture in which thanking workers is woven into the fabric of day-to-day operations from the top to the bottom, not just a one-off effort that checks the box on recognition,” Jezior said. The results are based upon on the Eagle Hill Consulting Job Well Done national survey conducted by Ipsos from October 2022. Other key findings are as follows: Employees say that recognition programs should be more frequent (38 percent), more proactive (36 percent), more broadly shared across the organization (30 percent), easier to provide (26 percent), and unbiased (24 percent). When their work is recognized, employees say they are more likely to go above and beyond their responsibilities (53 percent), stay with their organization (48 percent), be more motivated to support their team (43 percent), and go above and beyond for customers (38 percent). Few employers (25 percent) ask employees how they would like to be recognized. Ways employees prefer recognition include cash or gifts (54 percent), time off (34 percent), a thank you email or note (32 percent), points to choose a reward (23 percent), experience opportunities like tickets (22 percent), public recognition (20 percent), and employee of the week/month programs (19 percent). Thirty-two percent of workers say recognition makes them feel motivated at work, just below meaningful work (60 percent) and a supportive team (51 percent), and higher than career potential (29 percent). Employee recognition does not have to be expensive or time consuming. In fact, there are many simple ways that you can show your employees that you appreciate them. Benefits of Employee Recognition Employee recognition has been shown to have a number of benefits for both employees and employers. Recognizing employees can increase job satisfaction, motivation, and productivity, while also reducing stress and improving retention rates. In addition, thanking employees can help build a positive culture within your organization and improve communication between managers and workers. There are many ways that you can show your employees appreciation. Some companies choose to give out awards or bonuses, while others may simply say thank you more often. Whatever method you choose, the important thing is that you are consistent and sincere in your efforts. Employee recognition does not have to be complicated or expensive – a simple “thank you” can go a long way. If you are looking for ways to start thanking your employees, here are a few ideas: -Text them personalized thank you notes -Give employees a day off -Buy them lunch -Give them a small gift card or voucher -Publicly recognize their achievements Employee recognition is an important part of a happy and productive workplace. By showing your appreciation for your employees, you can improve morale, retention, and communication within your organization. Thanking your employees today is the first step to building a positive culture and a successful business. Platforms in this sector include WorkTango, Motivosity and AwardCo. Check out a bigger list here.
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Recruiting
What does a recruiter do?
What does a recruiter do? This is a question that many people have, but don’t know where to find the answer. A recruiter is responsible for finding and hiring the best employees for a company. They work with both job seekers and companies to match the right person with the right job. If you are interested in becoming a recruiter, or just want to learn more about what they do, keep reading! In this blog post, we will discuss the role of a recruiter and some of the things they do day-to-day. As a recruiter, your job is to find the best candidates for open positions at your company. To do this, you will work with both job seekers and companies. You will get to know a lot of people and learn about different types of jobs. This knowledge will help you match the right person with the right job. You will spend most of your time meeting with candidates and companies. During these meetings, you will get to know the candidates and their skills. You will also learn about the company’s culture and what they are looking for in a new employee. After you have met with a candidate, it is up to you to decide if they are a good fit for the company. If you think they are, you will help them through the interview process. At the end of the day, your goal is to find the best candidates for the open positions at your company. This can be a challenging and rewarding job. Many recruiters love to work with people and help them land their next job. You may also get into helping people prep for interviews, negotiate salary and craft a resume. Internal vs External Recruiters There are two types of recruiters that companies use to fill their open positions: internal and external. Internal recruiters are employees of the company who are responsible for finding qualified candidates to fill vacant positions within the company. External recruiters, also known as staffing agencies, are third-party companies who work with businesses to find qualified candidates for specific job openings. So, which type of recruiter is right for your business? There are pros and cons to using both internal and external recruiters. Internal recruiters may have a better understanding of the company culture and values, which can be beneficial when trying to find candidates that will be a good fit for the organization. External recruiters often have a larger network of contacts and may be able to reach a wider pool of potential candidates. It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of each type of recruiter before making a decision for your business. Consider the specific needs of your organization and the type of candidate you are looking for when making your choice. When trying to decide whether to use an internal or external recruiter, there are a few things to take into consideration. Internal recruiters will generally cost less than external recruiters, but they may not have the same network of contacts. External recruiters may be more expensive, but they Both internal and external recruiters can be beneficial to your organization, depending on your specific needs. Consider the type of candidate you are looking for and the needs of your organization when making your decision. Recruiters Do Not Help Candidates Find Jobs They serve the employer. If internal their job is to help the hiring manager find the right match with job applicants. If external, their job is to help their client (employer) sources, screen and suggest candidates for them to hire. They are paid only by the employer who hires them. A common misconception is that recruiters help people find jobs. A better way to think of it is to say they help match candidates with employers on a skill based level. As I mentioned above many recruiters love the work they do. Its a needed and noble profession to help others find their dream job. Characteristics of a good recruiter include assertiveness, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident and willingness to learn. Ancillary Recruiting Roles The primary types of recruiters fall into one of two categories–internal and external. But there are ancillary roles to consider as well. Sourcers: The job of a Sourcer is to look for candidates online and then pass those leads onto recruiters who will then qualify them. Sourcers specialize in things like Boolean search strings and are adept at internet research. Recruiting Coordinator: Coordinators help keep the process moving by keep candidates scheduled and on track during the hiring process. They are generally responsible for setting up and coordinating interviews and candidate communications. Recruitment Marketing: The job of Recruitment Marketers is to ensure a steady flow of candidate leads into the ATS. This involves handling the career site messaging, job advertising and other forms of talent promotion. According to Indeed the average recruiter salary is around $52,064 per year. That’s generally for internal recruiting roles but even external recruiters can make six figure salaries by placing people inside companies. That is more lucrative since they typically get approximately 20% of the hires annual salary as compensation for finding them. Some recruiters go on to become heads of Talent Acquisition or even CHRO’s. Source: Indeed
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Recruiting Trends
Job Engagement Trends
A new survey reveals that nearly a third of workers report decreased engagement with the connection that they feel to their work. This isn’t a new trend but it foretells ominous signs for talent retention in the coming years. Remote working is not the only culprit. The Conference Board survey said recently that work location—whether on-site, remote, or a hybrid blend of the two—has no impact on self-reported engagement levels. But some people do feel decreased engagement more than others: Women, Millennials, and individual contributors report lower engagement than men, older generations, and executives. The survey also finds that even though more workers want to quit, few have actual plans to do so. Perhaps the perception (real or imagined) of a recession next year has them thinking twice about quitting. This might be a temporary respite for employers that have been steadily losing the balance of power to candidates. Additionally, having a caring, empathetic leader increased in importance to hybrid workers (56 percent) and remote workers (50 percent) more than those in the physical workplace (44 percent), perhaps a reminder to leaders to be more intentional and inclusive for those who are remote at least some of the time. Leadership has to step up! The latest workforce survey from The Conference Board polled office workers last month. Respondents weighed in on workplace culture, work location, compensation, and benefits. Here’s what they said; Many employees are less committed, but they’re working hard anyway. How do you feel now about your engagement and level of effort compared to how you felt 6 months ago? 30 percent say their level of engagement at work—the commitment and connection that employees feel to their work—is lower than six months ago. Lower engagement isn’t necessarily affecting effort: Only 18 percent say their level of effort has decreased in the last six months. 50 percent say it’s the same; 31 percent say it’s increased. More women, Millennials, and individual contributors report lower engagement and effort than their counterparts. Engagement levels decreased for all workers regardless of work location/schedule. How do you feel now about your engagement compared to how you felt 6 months ago? Engagement decreased for 30 percent of fully remote workers, 31 percent of workers with a hybrid work location, and 30 percent for fully in-office workers. More workers want to quit… How do you feel now about your intent to stay compared to how you felt 6 months ago? 37 percent say their intent to stay has decreased in the last six months. More women and individual contributors say their intent to stay has decreased than their counterparts. Decreases in intent to stay were similar among generations. …but few have firm plans to leave any time soon. Have you voluntarily left your organization for another job since the pandemic began? Only 12 percent are actively planning to leave in the next six months. A looming recession has some workers thinking twice before quitting. Given the economic slowdown, are you more or less likely to leave your current organization in the next six months? 29 percent say the economic slowdown makes them less likely to leave their job. “While these results show that a likely recession may slow some of the high turnover we’ve been seeing, engagement is eroding for many of those who remain,” said Rebecca Ray, PhD, Executive Vice President of Human Capital at The Conference Board. “For businesses to truly thrive, they should focus on improving employee engagement, no matter the employee’s work location or schedule. Especially during challenging times, previous research from The Conference Board has shown that it is important for leaders to reconnect all workers to the mission and purpose of the organization, as well as to lead with compassion. For workers who are remote or hybrid, this may mean being more intentional about making time for connection.” A majority of workers now work a hybrid schedule—some days in the office, some at home. What best describes your current working situation? 55 percent say they have a hybrid work schedule, an increase from 43 percent six months ago. 16 percent say they are hybrid with a schedule that varies week to week. 31 percent of workers are remote, a decrease from 48 percent six months ago. Only 14 percent are in the physical workplace full-time. More women work remotely than men (33 percent vs. 27 percent). Few businesses are requiring staff to return to the office full time. How has your organization addressed the shift to remote work and the return to the workplace? Only 6 percent say their companies required all employees to return to the workplace full-time. 35 percent say their companies made working remotely full-time an option. 32 percent of workers surveyed say their companies allow flexible work hours. “Many workers have reevaluated their priorities since the beginning of 2020 at the outset of COVID,” says Robin Erickson, PhD, Vice President of Human Capital at The Conference Board. “Employees are not only demanding to retain the flexibility they gained from being required to work remotely, but they expect genuine and transparent communications to continue from their leaders as well. That’s not to say that pay no longer matters—it’s just not the only thing that matters, or even the most important thing. Now, when looking for a job, workers are weighing a variety of factors unique to them and their needs.” It is a new era of job engagement brought on by a number of workplace trends. Employers (and their C-Suites) need to listen more closely to what workers want. Those that can improve engagement levels will have a better chance at becoming an employer of choice for today’s job market.
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Product News
Emissary Text Recruiting Platform Now Available on SAP® Store
By integrating with SAP Success factors, text recruiting functionality from Emissary helps customers deliver better candidate experience. New York, NY — Emissary Software today announced that its text recruiting solution is now available on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Emissary’s solution integrates with SAP SuccessFactors® and delivers a more efficient candidate experience and communication platform to employers. Speaking about the new integration, Brendan Cruickshank, SVP at Emissary.ai said “Adding our text recruiting tools to SAP SuccessFactors® helps further the advancement of candidate communication as well as enhancing the experience for applicants. Candidates want faster, easier communication in the hiring process and delivering that is our core mission.” With built in texting and automation for recruiting and HR communication, SAP customers can increase candidate response rates and decrease response times. Here’s what else to expect from the platform: Texting/SMS delivers open rates of 95% and response times up to 60X faster. Message from directly inside SAP candidate profiles or any other web based tools including LinkedIn, Indeed or any CRM. Transcripts auto-sync to store all text conversations to SuccessFactors candidate profiles. SAP Store, found at store.sap.com, delivers a simplified and connected digital customer experience for finding, trying, buying and renewing more than 2,000 solutions from SAP and its partners. There, customers can find the SAP solutions and SAP-validated solutions they need to grow their business. And for each purchase made through SAP Store, SAP will plant a tree. Emissary Software is a partner in the SAP PartnerEdge® program. Built on SAP Business Technology Platform and integrated with SAP SuccessFactors®, using Emissary fuels customers to become intelligent enterprises. The SAP PartnerEdge program provides the enablement tools, benefits and support to facilitate building high-quality, disruptive applications focused on specific business needs – quickly and cost-effectively. About Emissary Emissary is a text recruiting platform built to make candidate engagement and recruitment automation easy. Our AI recruiting software empowers recruiting teams, HR departments and staffing firms with efficient text recruiting tools that work in harmony with any ATS, HRIS or recruiting site. # # # Emissary Software products and services as well as their respective logo are trademarks of Emissary Software, LLC. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. For more information, press only: marketing@emissary.ai
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Recruiting Tactics
Early Career Recruiting
On a recent episode of my RecTech Podcast I talked with CollegeRecruiter.com CEO Steven Rothberg about the early career recruiting space. He’s been helping employers recruit in this space for more than 20 years. I wanted to ask him his advice on how companies should approach recruiting in this critical segment. So here’s the question I asked him. If you were starting a college recruiting function today, instead of a large employer, how would you set that up? His answered surprised me. “So I wouldn’t set that up that way. If I was working for say, a Fortune 1000 company, a government agency, some employer that’s hiring at scale, I would not actually create a college recruiting function. And if I came in there and there was a college recruiting function, I would get rid of it.” They should have an early career or early talent function. Simply by naming it that way, and then setting up the goals or the rocks for that organization, you inevitably deemphasize the school, you deemphasize the major, and you start to become more inclusive of people like military veterans, people who went to boot camps, people who graduated from high school without good grades, without good standardized test scores, but who are just fantastic at software development or architecture or something, whatever that skill it is that you’re looking for. If you are CarMax, big car dealership company, and you’re hiring thousands of college students and recent grads a year to work as mechanics, to work as salespeople, et cetera, why do you care what school that person went to? Why do you even care if they went to college? You should be hiring them based upon what they’re likely to do for you. And you shouldn’t have to anymore look at the school or the major as a proxy. You can use assessment tests. There are plenty of really good ones out there. You can build one on your own for very little money. You’re looking to hire a mechanic? Bring somebody in and have them do something for 15 minutes. It’s like, “Do you know how to change a spark plug?” Well, I don’t, and they’d see that very quickly. And they’d say, “Get the hell out of here.” But Chris, if you know how to change a spark plug and you can tell them, “Oh, on this car, this is the catalytic converter” and blah, blah, blah, it’s like, “Okay, I can see that you’re probably well qualified to be a mechanic.” What difference does it make if you went to school for that or not? If you know how to do it, you should be able to do it. If you were in the army for four years and working in the motor pool, wouldn’t they rather hire you than if you just went to some trade school for a year and never actually had done the job other than outside the classroom? So I think that we’re starting to see this with more organizations. It’s a rapidly increasing minority of organizations are renaming their college or university recruitment departments as something to the effect of “Early career, early talent”, and I am really excited about that. I think it’s going to lead to much better matches between the organizations and the candidates. Early Career Recruiting Mistakes What mistakes do you think employers make today when it comes to recruiting students and grads? One of the mistakes that they make is that they are… especially the ones who are focused on on-campus recruiting. This is not all of them, but it is too many of them. They’re focused too much on the process and not on the outcomes. And what I mean by that is a lot of employers that are specifically targeting college and university students and recent grads, equate the school and the major with quality. And the data shows it’s just not the case. Now, certainly, there are some majors that are required in order to be in that profession. So you want to be a nurse, you have to have a nursing degree. You want to be a teacher, other than now, apparently in Arizona, you have to have an education degree. You want to be an engineer, you have to have an engineering degree. So hey, if you’re recruiting engineers, it does make sense that you’re going to be looking at engineering majors and not fine arts. But for almost every job out there, your major’s actually pretty irrelevant. Employers have come to understand that soft skills are far more important than hard skills. Ernst&Young, years ago, probably 5, 6, 7 years ago, one of the top recruiting people there, they were quoted as saying that, “We can teach you how to read a balance sheet, but we can’t teach you how to think critically.” Well, do you know who does teach you how to think critically? Your liberal arts or fine arts or whatever undergraduate program. You spend two years or four years learning how to think critically. And so the smarter, the better employers, like the E&Y’s of the world, they look at those students and they’re looking at, “Is this person likely to be productive?” And they’re not using proxies like, “Did they happen to go to Carnegie Mellon? Did they graduate with a computer science degree?” The better employers now are far more interested in, “Oh, okay, you’re applying to be a software engineer with us, show me some of the work you’ve done. Have you and your buddies built an app so that you can beat everybody at fantasy football? If so, you’re of a hell of a lot more interest to us than somebody who got a bunch of A’s on exams because we’re going to be paying you to build apps. We’re not going to be paying you to take tests.”
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Recruiting
Social Media Recruiting
Are you recruiting on social media? If not you are probably missing out on a recruiting channel that can help you hire. A new study conducted on behalf of CareerArc by The Harris Poll among more than 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18+ who have ever had a job, reveals some interesting data points about the state of employers and social media. Younger jobseekers are turning to social media to find work: 58% of jobseekers search for information about potential employers on social media and 48% of both Gen Z (ages 18-25) and Millennials (ages 26-41) with work experience have applied to job opportunities they found on social media. The research further showcases how jobseekers interact with social media in the recruiting process as well as employees’ involvement in sharing their company’s social media content on personal social channels. “With US employers adding 528,000 jobs in July – surpassing economists’ forecasts and returning to pre-pandemic levels – the war for great talent and how organizations are recruiting continues to be at the forefront of business goals,” said Jim Bramante, Chairman and CEO at CareerArc. “This data presents a clear picture of how critical a tool social media is for today’s jobseekers and the companies trying to recruit them.” Social media is an important resource for jobseekers The data found that more than 2 in 5 jobseekers (45%) say social media is very important to their job search. When breaking down how candidates search for jobs by generation, Boomers (ages 58-76) with work experience are the least likely generation to have discovered job opportunities on social media (12%) with Gen Z (62%) and Millennials (56%) being much more likely to have discovered job opportunities on social media and Gen X (ages 42-57) sitting in the middle at 31%. Further supporting the use of social media for job searching by younger generations, Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (48%) with work experience are vastly more likely to have applied to job opportunities they found on social media than Gen X (24%) or Boomers (7%) with work experience. Aside from discovering and applying to jobs found on social media, about half of Gen Z and Millennials with work experience use social media to tap their networks for the best opportunities: Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (47%) with work experience are more likely than Gen X (23%) and Boomers (8%) with work experience to have connected with recruiters/employees through social media and/or employees of prospective employers on social media (e.g., Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn), and 49% of Gen Z and 47% of Millennials with work experience have reached out to peers on social media for job leads. Social media recruiting attracts diverse candidates When surveying how job seekers interact with social media by race/ethnicity, the data showed that Hispanic and Black Americans with work experience are far more likely than their White counterparts to say they have discovered job opportunities on social media (49% and 46% vs 28%). Additionally, Black and Hispanic Americans with work experience are more likely than their White counterparts to say they’ve used social media to apply to job opportunities(42% and 39% vs 21%), connected with recruiters and employees at prospective employers(42% and 35% vs 21%), and reached out to peers for job leads (42% and 37% vs 21%). Employees are open to participating in social media-based employee advocacy programs With this many jobseekers turning to social media as a major tool in their job search, the way organizations present themselves on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook – and the extent of their reach with jobs and career-related content – is central to their success in recruiting top candidates. When it comes to getting employees involved in social media, half of employed Americans (50%) say they would share their company’s social media content (e.g., job postings, employee spotlights, team events, news articles) on their personal social channels, with nearly a third of employed Americans (30%) saying they already have. That number skyrockets by generation with Gen Z (66%) and Millennial (67%) employees far more likely to say they would share their company’s social media content on their personal social channels than Gen X (43%) or Boomer (19%) employees. “This begs the question of how organizations can do a better job of encouraging employees to share employer content and be active participants in their talent acquisition strategy,” said Bramante. The survey found that 26% of employed Americans say they would be more likely to share their company social media content on their personal social channels if their company (e.g., my manager, senior leadership) simply asked them to. In addition to this, 24% say they would be more likely to share company social media if they had a direct connection to the content (e.g., open position in their department, business update for the work they were involved with). Furthermore, just over 1 out of 4 Gen Z (27%) and Millennial (27%) employees would be more likely to post their company’s social media content if their company made it easier, such as by providing the content and/or templates. “The value candidates are placing on a company’s social media content and presence makes social recruiting and employee advocacy more important than ever,” said Bramante. “It’s clear that when it comes to hiring, Gen Z and Millennials are turning to social media, whether it’s to find job openings or to assess what your company culture is like, and they’re willing to get involved in company social media if employers simply ask.” Employers can check out the full report here. The stats above prove that companies should take a fresh look at their social recruiting strategy. Creating content for these channels that resonates with potential candidates is a must have in today’s competitive hiring environment.
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Text Recruiting
Text Recruiting Discussion
Last week I hosted Madeline Laurano from Aptitude Research as we brought her new text recruiting research report to life on Zoom. It was a terrific discussion with some comments from the attendees as well on texting use cases, do’s and dont’s and more. Below is a full transcript of that discussion so you can follow along. Download the Rise of Text Recruiting Text Recruiting Transcript All right. Let’s do this. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of RecTech Live. I’m your host, Chris Russell, Managing Director of RecTech Media, where we cover all the world of recruiting technology. Today, we’re talking about text recruiting. As companies look to improve communications, text recruiting is becoming a strategic priority for them. In fact, 40% of companies have increased their use of text in talent acquisition this year, according to new research conducted by Aptitude Research, in conjunction with Emissary.ai, the text recruiting platform entitled, The Rise of Text Recruiting and the Business Impact. The report states that although text is widely adopted in other areas of business, talent acquisition has been slow to respond. Email is still their preferred method of communication, and 58% of candidates received no response at all when they are screened out of the process. You can download the report for free with no email required, over on the link there on the chat, on the Emissary website. Or you can click on the blog at Emissary.ai, to get it. And definitely hit them up for a demo while you’re there, as well, if you want to learn more about text screening solutions. Here to discuss the report is author Madeline Laurano. She’s the Founder and Chief Analyst at Aptitude Research. Good afternoon, Madeline. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me on the show. I think this is my second time her, so, I appreciate you having me back. Absolutely. Looking forward to it today. We had to reschedule from last week, of course. Sorry about that, audience. So a great topic today, and if the audience has questions as well, feel free to throw them in the chat there as we go along. I’m going to have the report up here on the screen, and we’ll scroll through it as I go through my questions with Madeline. We’ve got a few more people in the room, David Bernstein. Awesome. It amazes me that most companies have yet to adopt texting into their recruiting process. There’s still just a huge swath of companies out there, Madeline, that have yet to actually tackle this technology. But can you kind of just summarize the report in a few words here for us as we get started? Sure. So it’s amazing to me too, Chris. We look at our consumer lives, we look at our personal lives, and we use text all the time. It’s just part of how we engage with companies and brands. It’s part of how we communicate, and we’re not seeing it widely adopted in talent acquisition, at least not in a way that’s compliant and safe and really engaging with candidates. So to me, when I looked at this study and we first started talking about what this was going to look like from a research perspective, started to really dive into the communication crisis right now in talent acquisition. To me, a lot of the issues with candidate experience come down to communication. I think it’s a communication challenge. I think we’re not communicating with candidates in a way that’s immediate, in a way that’s personal, and in a way that’s meaningful, and we’re seeing that really impact every single area of talent acquisition. And what we found in the research when we looked at this communication crisis, is that companies rely so heavily on email. This is the go-to, this is how ATSs support communication. This is what companies use. There’s classes and training out there on how to create an email. We’ve all seen this. We’ve all gone through this on how to just create these email templates. And this is the go-to form of communication. What we found in the research is 43% of candidates don’t even open their emails. And we know when we look at the hourly workforce, which is the forgotten workforce, a lot of these candidates don’t even have access to email. So we’re seeing, especially through the pandemic, this increase in the use of mobile devices and individuals owning mobile devices and communicating through mobile devices. We need to be able to communicate with candidates where they live and where they spend their time. So the report, to summarize, I know that was a long answer, really looks at the communication crisis today, and then the impact of text in being able to improve that candidate experience and the recruiter experience as well. Yeah. Email becomes kind of a crutch, I think for, for companies. It’s sort of the default, just send an email if it’s so easy, I guess. But what do you think is preventing them from adopting things like text recruiting in their communications and talking to candidates and applicants and all that kind of stuff? I think one of the reasons is it becomes a behavior. The behavior is just to use email, and a lot of system support email, and that’s been the go to for a lot of recruiters and a lot of hiring managers and companies. So I think that’s one reason that we’re seeing this. I think the other is companies don’t exactly know that they have these options. And what we found in the research too, is a lot of recruiters are using text, but they’re using it in, I would say, inappropriate, and I don’t mean it probably as that’s going to come across, but if they’re using just kind of rogue texting to say, “All right. Somebody put their number on LinkedIn in their profile, or I found their number on their resume. I’m just going to send them a text and see if they want to jump on the phone with me.” And it sounds really easy, and this is happening all the time. And we know this is happening. I’ve been contacted by recruiters through text, but it’s not compliant. It introduces bias, because we don’t know the language being used. It’s not integrated into the ATS, so we’re not able to track the effectiveness of this type of communication. And it’s just out there. So I think a lot of companies don’t even know that the recruiters are actually doing this in a very rogue way, and it puts them at risk. If we think about it, on the consumer side, imagine going into a store and you buy something, or you go and you have a meal in a restaurant and you leave the restaurant. And imagine that the waiter sends you a text, “Hey Chris, thanks for my tip. Can I get another 10 bucks?” Or, “Thanks so much for coming. I hope you liked the steak. Next time I would try the scallops.” That would never happen. It would be so inappropriate. The text comes through a system, it comes through a platform that says, “How was your meal? Can you give us a rating? How was your meal? Would you like to come back? What can we do better?” It’s engaging, it’s professional, it’s compliant. And we need to think about doing the same thing in talent acquisition. Definitely. Was there an aha moment in this report for you, in terms of some of the numbers that you uncovered here? Yeah. I think there were a few. I think for one, I didn’t realize how many recruiters are just using text without having a platform or a way to really measure that effectiveness. That was surprising. And then, I think the other piece, and it’s just been a theme for me this year, is the impact on the recruiter experience. We’ve talked so much about candidate experience. That’s definitely been a big focus for my research in the past few years. But this year, the recruiter experience really came to light. We really started to see that recruiters are leaving, companies are struggling to find recruiters. Recruiters are burnt out. We need to think about technology that supports recruiters, not just technology that IT wants to buy or that VPs of HR want to buy. What does really work for people that are doing the work? And so, looking at this report and this research through the lens of the recruiter experience, it was like, “Okay, text is not just for candidates. It’s just as much of a benefit for recruiters and recruiting teams, too that do not have time to engage with candidates one-on-one that still want to create meaningful experiences and just want to do it in a more immediate way.” Yeah. Yeah. David Bernstein in the chat there agrees, he says “Lack of communication is the number one reason why candidates complain about their experience.” I see Kevin Grossman over at the Talent Board talks a lot about the key to providing a great kin experience is the ability to provide frequent and respectful feedback through the entire life cycle. That’s something that’s definitely lacking out there. A hundred percent. That feedback over there. Yeah. Hi, David. I think that’s a great comment. And I know Kevin and the Talent Board, they create these pillars of what is a great candidate experience? And feedback and communication are two of those pillars. And they’re both impacted by this conversation today. Yeah. I wonder if there’s a company out there that’s kind of like a text first company in terms of just all the communications with their employees and their candidates out there. There must be some small company out there that does everything by text. I’d love to talk to them about that. But if anybody knows in the chat there, there’s got to be a company that does a lot of this well. One thing too, Chris, I think what happens, to that point, is a lot of companies are great with improving communication, whether that’s text or conversational AI or messaging, they’re great at one part of talent acquisition, like we’ve figured out how to improve the interview scheduling, because we’re going to do that through text or we’re going to improve the apply process and answer questions through a different form of communication. But to do it end-to-end, I think that’s surprising to me as well when we looked at the research. It’s like this impacts every single part of that candidate journey. Yep. All right. So how many companies did you talk to you for this report? I think we had over 400 companies that responded to the survey, and then we do quite a bit of interviews, oh, a little bit over 300. And then we do quite a bit of interviews to support that as well, so that happens throughout the year. And communication has just been a big, big topic of a lot of the round tables in the interviews that we do. Yeah. Let’s go through some of the numbers here. Four times more likely to see candidates respond in the first two minutes. That’s, I think, very true. I was talking to one of Emissary’s clients the other day, we’re doing a case study with them and I asked the guy, “What did candidates tell you about this?” And he said, “It’s just their reaction.” He says, “I’ll message a candidate as soon as they apply and they reply back, ‘Oh, wow. That was quick.'” And to me, that’s awesome. Right. That’s what the candidates want. And we need to have more of that happen throughout TA in that kind of speed, I think. But two times more likely to fill positions in the first two weeks and 48% in the overall permanent candidate experience, so very cool. Now, well walk me through the top findings here, because these are pretty interesting, I think. Yeah. So, the first I think is what we started talking about, which is email is not enough, and that’s been the go-to for a lot of companies. You can see here, 43% of candidates aren’t even opening those emails, and that’s not just true for talent acquisition, that’s true for the employee experience, too. So looking at how does this impact not just how we’re recruiting, but can we continue this type of communication through the employee experience? But we rely so heavily on email and just again, going back to this idea of high volume or hourly workforce or the forgotten workforce, a lot of these individuals don’t even have email addresses or they’re not checking them frequently. And why are we not going to where candidates spend their time and communicating with them there? So I think just kind of getting out of this behavior of email is definitely been a big theme in the research report. Text is important across all areas of talent acquisition. Again, I think we just think of it in one situation, like this could improve apply, this could improve scheduling, maybe this improves onboarding. But there are use cases throughout all of talent acquisition, and we really have to think about providing that consistency throughout. And then, I think this idea of ROI, this is a theme just in TA tech in general. Companies aren’t measuring ROI, and a lot of companies, I think, find it challenging to measure ROI. When you look at communication and again, whether that’s text, conversational AI, messaging, whatever it may be, this ROI conversation, it becomes much more critical because you’re seeing an immediate ROI. You’re seeing candidates respond. Within two days, you’re seeing candidates being able to maybe accept a job within two days. We’re seeing improvements in efficiency. We’re seeing improvements in that experience. We’re seeing improvements in recruiter productivity. So the ROI, it’s almost immediate. I hate to kind of say it so definitively, like this is an immediate ROI, but it really is. When you improve communication, you see the impact across all of these areas of talent acquisition. And we talked about speed and the response time, the metrics change within talent acquisition, too. We’re not just looking at time to fill or quality of hire or a lot of these traditional metrics. We start to look at metrics that are more marketing metrics, like what is response time? What is communication? And what are these metrics that we can start tracking to be able to really gauge candidate engagement? And the recruiter experience, too, right? They sure love using text. Do we have any recruiters in the audience who want to give texting some props here? Feel free to chime in. And yeah, the mobile only mindset. I think even job alerts should be text now. Forget email if you’re a company and you’re any kind of talent community, you should be texting those jobs to the candidates if you want more applies, right? Right. And even think about again, going back to the consumer experience, even companies that are sending you emails all the time, you’re still getting texts, too, or you have an option to receive text messages. And that’s just how we communicate. I get text messages all the time. They’re like, “I sent you an email, but I’m sending you a text too, because I know this is faster and sometimes easier for people.” And it definitely is for me, so it’s appreciated. Yeah. I think candidates want it, too. Yeah. They expect it almost at this point. Jonathan Doraday says, “We use the term first contact to offer our clients moving from seven days to two days with text plus automation.” Yep. “You can’t do job alerts over text,” he says. “It’ll get banned to spam.” Really? I would think as long as it’s opt in, why can’t you do that, Jonathan? I’m curious there. All right. So other findings here, two week communications at scale is a reality through text. Now, all text is the same. What do you mean by that one? So I think that’s kind of going back to the point that a lot of recruiters will just text a candidate if they see their number on a resume or they see their number in a LinkedIn profile or wherever it may be, and just reach out and say, “Would love to schedule some time, would love to connect you with this hiring manager,” whatever it may be. And that’s not the same as using a text-based platform that’s compliant, that’s reducing bias, that’s thinking about this experience, that’s integrated with your ATS or able to manage and measure the effectiveness. And again, I think just going back to that kind of consumer example, we would never expect that as consumers, to get these random text messages from the person you just met in a store that you wanted to buy a t-shirt in. But we’re seeing recruiters do the same thing. So I think thinking through it as a compliant platform. And bias is a big part of that conversation too, because companies are spending so much money on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have to think about reducing bias in the hiring experience. We know bias is everywhere in talent acquisition today, and we can’t just risk having either managers or recruiters sending out text messages without really ensuring that they’re communicating in a way that is really thinking about bias, too. Yeah. Syed has a good comment in the chat there. He says, “We talk about texting like a bullhorn.” So yeah. Good point there. I’ll say you can’t overdo texting, because it is so personal and immediate. You have to do it… There’s a right mix of cadence there. Anything around that, Madeline, that you want to talk about? Yeah. And I think that that does happen. I think we’ve all probably experienced that, where you have to really figure out what the right level of engagement is and what’s going to be most effective, and not just do a lot of the same patterns that we do on email through text as well. That’s a great point. Yep. All right, here. So the communication crisis. When asked to select top three priorities for 2022, companies identified improving efficiency, finding candidates faster, and finding more candidates. Speed is a currency for success in talent acquisition. Amen. So the numbers here, improving all of our efficiency, you can see where the needs are. I thought this was interesting here, which was the daily recruiter activities. So what do they spend their time doing most? Do you want to read some of those for us? Yeah. If you talk to recruiters, and having a lot of friends that are recruiters, we know why people love being recruiters, is because they love connecting with candidates and they love building these relationships. I have a good friend who is a campus recruiter, and she loves seeing someone get their first job and working with early talent and building those relationships, and kind of being that point of contact and that first relationship with someone before they join an organization. Recruiters aren’t recruiters because they love searching in an ATS or because they love reviewing applicants. So I think one piece of it is, a lot of this work is administrative. And the other piece of it that comes through in this data to me is recruiters are not able to focus on really connecting with candidates, that communication gets lost when you’re spending all of your time just searching for candidates or worrying about advertising or trying to be able to schedule interviews, which is a lot of time, and a huge time commitment. So again, I think this idea of text is not just being something for candidates, but for recruiters too, really changes the whole idea of what are we doing and how are we reaching candidates? Yeah. So if we look at the graph here, top three things, reviewing applicants, number one, finding applicants, number two, scheduling interviews, number three. I would think technology is shifting those numbers, because technology can bring in a flood of applicants, you have to go through them essentially, as a recruiter there, unless you have some kind of automated evaluation process there. Yeah. And I think matching solutions help that, too. And there’s a lot of technology, a lot of automation that can help reduce a lot of these tasks. I think what’s interesting is a lot of the solutions are so complex that recruiters either are not able to use them in a way that’s really bringing any value to them, or they have to go through so much training, or companies are just switching them constantly, so it becomes really challenging to I think really see a high adoption in a lot of these TA tech solutions. Yeah. That’s a good point. Your TA tech solution has to be dead simple easy if you want to gain adoption with it. And the more complex it is, the less use it gets, essentially. So that’s the way of the world. Here’s some more numbers, communication often takes a backseat to these administrative tasks and responsibilities. The result is that candidates are ignored. Four times more likely to see… 56% of applicants that are screened out never receive a response. That’s a huge fail, and a part of the black hole out there. 74% of companies were not effectively engaging candidates in a remote environment. And 62% of hourly workers never receive a response. Wow, that’s crazy. Crazy. Especially because of everything that happened in the past two years, where during the pandemic, the hourly workforce is the workforce that made sure that we were getting food and really could sustain our lives during this time. And then, we’re not even treating them with respect enough to give a response during that period. So I think this, not to kind turn this into an hourly conversation, but to really think about what’s happened with the hourly workforce and how that needs to change, communication is the foundation of that. We have to be able to communicate with hourly workers in a way that’s simple, where they’re living and where they’re spending their time. And text is a big part of that. Yeah. I want to read some of the chat stuff here. It says, Jonathan Norte, “Best practices. ‘Hi, first name, my name is, recruiter name from company name.’ If you don’t do this, the engagement rates are subpar,” he says. And Dominic says, “Agreed. We’ve talked with candidates a lot as well. And one-way messages with links are frowned upon. Also, always ending with the question is a great way to get good engagement rates.” They make some pretty good points there. If you’re just sending a link, what’s the point, right? Right. Right. You can do that with an email. It’s got to be something different, more personal, I think. Yeah, definitely. I think that this idea of personalized experiences, this is where most companies need to go. And when you look at even the email training that I think a lot of companies have gone through, or recruiters have gone through, it’s to create more personalized emails. And to do that at scale, we have to kind of take some of that and put that into text too, just texting out a link or encouraging them to apply for a job without even providing any type of humanity just doesn’t go very far. So obviously, email is still king, but how do you see other tools like WhatsApp, WeChat, Slack, entering the recruiting process. Madeline, give us some thoughts around that if you could. Yeah. A lot of the ATSs are trying to figure out now how can we create better communication channels? And it’s not just email, and a lot of them are trying WhatsApp, and messaging is part of a lot of ATSs now, WeChat not as much, because they’re harder to integrate with. But Teams is obviously, there’s a few ATSs out there where Teams has been a big focus or Slack. So I think we’re starting to see more options, but it’s still, again, the go-to still is email. So the more that we can provide these options, the more we can think about where candidates are spending their time and how do we engage with them on those platforms, the more successful that experience will be. Yeah. Sayed, you had a question? Yeah. You know what? You start addressing it, which I think is really key, because the whole idea of texting is such a great communication tool because it’s very direct and it can be very personalized. But one of the problems that everybody that I talk to when I talk about texting, they talk about it as another top of funnel feeder. And to me, that basically perpetuates this problem of intermediation between the job seeker and the employer. So, texting should be a way to streamline the communication, to make it easier for an employer to engage. And that’s something that I think whoever does it best will start winning the quality war or the quality battle for great candidates, because as a replacement or as a top of funnel thing, I think it becomes another thing we have to come up with a cure for. Or another option that a candidate has to find on their own or that a company has to find on their own. Yeah. I think that’s a great, great point. It has to be as easy as possible and it has to be almost a text first approach. Well, I read your study, by the way. It’s fantastic. Oh, thank you. And thanks for putting it out there, Chris, really great work. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for joining. All right. So as we look through the rest of the report here, again, email versus text, I think some of the obvious comparisons there are pretty obvious. Yeah. And I think the more that we kind of bring awareness to email does not need to be the go-to approach that companies are using, I think the ATSs have some work to do as well to rethink that process. Yeah. I’m looking for a text-first ATS to come out. Right. Just with texting as it’s kind of core component, done properly. I think there’s a market there for something like that overall. Anybody else disagree with that? Yeah. There’s conversational AI-first ATSs, Paradox is certainly able to do that on the hourly side. It’s able to do on the professional side too, but a lot of hourly companies are using Paradox for an ATS. We could see similar for text, for sure. So, yeah. Yeah. So about 40% of companies said they’re going to increase their use of texting this year. Yep. They’re going to increase their use of text. And I think that will be again, the more we can educate them that the platform is a better option than kind of this just random texting, I think the more value companies will see. Texting…. And I think the other piece too, is it’s so so familiar. There isn’t a lot of education to tell companies what text is or what the value is. Everybody understands what we text all the time in our personal lives. This is unlike a lot of different areas of talent acquisition. If we’re just going to use AI matching as an example, you really have to explain what this is. You have to help companies understand how AI is used. Well, there’s an art to it, right? Yeah. Yeah. There’s an art to it. As Jonathan said here, first name, “My name is X from company X,” and you have to keep things brief, of course. There’s a whole best practices guide over in Emissary.ai if you guys want to check it out as well. But yeah, there is a little bit of art to this as well. I’ve done some surveys of recruiters around how they actually use texting, like what are the phrases and words they use, which I think can be… Words matter, right? Whether it’s text or email, the way you sound, that tone, is important out there. Right. It’s the method, and it’s the tone as well. Benefits of text-to-screen platform, 52% improved efficiency, 42% increase in candidate engagement, 32% improved candidate engagement, and 30% improved recruiter experience overall. That’s good ROI right there, for anybody who’s not using text recruiting yet. And the use cases for text-to-screen, run us through those there, if you could, on that one. Yeah. And I think a lot of companies think it’s just like apply and scheduling. A lot more, yeah. But to see all of these different use cases where you can do one-on-one text, where you can think about recruitment marketing, referrals, I think is a great example of being able to use text. And referrals are so obvious that I think often overlooked from text, because companies have referral programs. We know this is the number one source of hire, yet to be able to text referral codes and make them personal to your employees and have them be able to share that via text, provides just much better adoption of these referral programs than if you’re not using text. And then, I think beyond that, we really looked at the employee experience too, to say, “Okay, if talent acquisition is where a lot of companies are going to start to adopt text, can we look at this experience in other areas, whether that’s benefits administration, whether that’s performance management, whether that’s internal mobility, and to start to see the value throughout that entire experience.” Yep. I get their recruitment marketing one in there, and that’s great for short code recruiting. Emissary has a client, they were doing something with truck drivers, and they had a short code called “truck, yeah,” was there short code. And so, if you texted that you would get back some information on the company. Screening at 10%, it’s kind of low, I think. Yeah. Texting is a great use case for that as well. It’s a great use case for screening. Yeah. And I think especially during the pandemic, we started to see a lot of those examples kind of come up. But I think the other one too, that I call out, and I think it hits on all of these, is Campus as well. For companies that are going to either Campus events or they’re thinking about increasing their Campus recruiting programs, to be able to do all of this and reach early talent can be very valuable as well. Yeah. Yeah. You see more companies using texting in their Campus recruit. I would think the QR code has made a comeback too, there. Right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I think there’s going to be… I think where Campus is at right now, is companies are trying to figure out what the mix is going to be of virtual versus in person. And I don’t think there’s a lot of answers yet about what that will look like for next year. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can’t forget the employee experience, too, right? You can use texting inside of that arena. Just touch on that if you could. Yeah. I think there’s lots of different examples throughout that employee experience. I did an interview, this is a few years ago, but it was with the State of Colorado. And I think they employee like 50,000 people. Just for benefits administration, they were sending out emails for open enrollment to try to get people to sign up. And it was very low, like under 20% were actually signing up for open enrollment by the date, yet everybody wanted benefits. That’s part of the benefit of working for the state, the great benefits. And people just were not reading their emails, they weren’t opening the emails. So they had to really switch their communication, and they relied heavily on text to be able to do that. And they saw that enrollment go from under 20% to over 90% just in a year. And that’s just changing that method of communication. Yeah. What about onboarding too? That could be a good use case for onboarding, give welcome messages from the team and that kind of thing. Yeah. And the bidirectional, I think when you use a platform, too, it’s not just one way. You can get this bidirectional communication, and to be able to think about that onboarding experience. I think for onboarding, there’s so many fears for new hires. It’s scary, especially for going back to an office for the first time in two years, I was just talking to someone about this. There’s so much fear with, what do you need to bring? What is this going to look like? And it doesn’t feel awesome to be able to send an email Sunday night before you start on Monday, and ask these questions, or you might not get a response, you don’t really know who to go to. But if there’s an option to text and to be able to find out information or get quick reminders, it can feel really great. We even found in our research, this is pre-COVID, but the biggest fear for new hires was should I bring a lunch on the first day of work? And it sounds silly, but it’s really a real fear. Do I pack a lunch? Is someone going to take me to lunch? Is there lunch in the cafeteria? Is there a place to buy lunch? Do I need to leave the office building to find lunch? And lunch is expensive. So that, do I bring and pack a lunch is a fear that could easily be answered over text. Well, I guess at the end of the day, texting, just do it, right? That’s what it comes down to. We need to get this into more hands in TA and help speed up that hiring process and the other things as well. Absolutely. Cool. Any other questions from the audience as we wrap things up here? Again, you can check out the report on Emisarry.ai. You can also go to aptituderesearch.com, perhaps, is that the URL? Yep. Okay. I think so. I had to think about it. Throw your URL in the chat there too, if you could. And yeah, it’s been a great conversation. I love talking texting. And any last questions out there from the audience? I’m going to put this. Yeah. I have a quick question. Hi, Chase. Hey, my name’s Chase. I have seen text used really often for initial screening and knockout questions after a candidate applies. And especially in the hourly world, that’s working well to get more applications. Are you authorized to work? Yes or no? Makes it pretty easy on recruiters, but it’s less used in a personal one-to-one connection type of… It’s less used to develop intimacy and a sense of closeness with the recruiter like we’ve been talking about this whole session. And I’m wondering if you still feel, although it may be underutilized, if you still feel that there’s a lot of value in those pre-screening questions or maybe just some of that automated stuff for candidates that are applying to a job. That’s a great question. Chris, I’m sure you have opinions on this too, but I think there is value, because a lot of companies are going to ask those questions and try to get those requirements anyway. And to be able to easily do that through text, it’s more efficient, candidates are going to have to do it anyway, and then sometimes they forget to do it, or it feels like another hassle to go back to that email or log into some system to do it. So I think it’s more efficient, so that’s the benefit. I think the number one benefit I see, and I think companies are being creative, too on when they can include those. Maybe you can first create that meaningful relationship and say, “Hey, by the way, Chase, we need to also just get some of these questions out of the way. If you get a few minutes in the next day, if you can kind of send these back.” So I think the traditional way would be like, send those questions before we even provide any engagement, knock candidates out. And then do that. I think companies can be a little more creative now about when to do it. Some companies have even gotten rid of a lot of requirements, too. Yeah. I think if you’re a high volume employer too, you’re going to leverage that piece you mentioned, Chase, this screening out part versus the personalized stuff more. Sure. Because you just don’t have that bandwidth to make those personal messages on a one-on-one basis at that point. But at the very least, the screening out is an excellent use case for them. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Excellent. Good question. All right, guys, as I mentioned, I’m going to throw this on YouTube. Chris, did you. And then, on that guys, that’s Barry Lynch from Emmissary. Oh, hey, Barry. Dovetailing what Madeline had said and Chase had said, one of the best case uses we’ve was for new employees starting in a retail environment. They would send an automated text out the day before the person was due to start to say, “Hey, here’s the store location you’re going to. Here’s the time you’re supposed to show up. You’ll meet the manager of your shift who is going to be this person at this time. Any questions, shoot us a text, and we’ll be able to get back to you straight away on it.” And just that anxiety, again, as Madeline mentioned, about starting a new position, it was eased. One of the unexpected things about it was in the war for talent that’s happening in the hourly space and has been prevalent over the last little while is they were getting a lot of texts back going, “You know what? I’ve accepted another job.” Or “I’m not going to be able to make it tomorrow.” And that would clear the manager’s schedule to say, “Okay. I’m not waiting around here when I should be restocking the shelves or doing whatever the case may be, waiting for someone who’s not going to show up.” They would get more show ups and more people showing up. But also, “Okay, we need to start the recruitment process again, because this person we thought we had in the bag is not going to be with us.” So it had multifaceted benefits. Ghosting prevention. I love that. Yeah. I love that example, Barry, because that ghosting conversation is so real, and it’s a reality, especially in high volume. And it’s scary to send… To know you’ve accepted another job, or you went back to somewhere else, you decided you are going to take some time off and not work, and to draft an email, most candidates are not going to do that. Or they’re not going to pick up the phone and call someone and tell them they’re not going to show up. To send a quick text and say, “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work. I’m not coming in.” It feels immediate. It feels like you’ve done it. It feels less scary. And then, it’s a relief for the manager to say, “I know that I can spend my time doing something different tomorrow versus just sit around waiting and getting frustrated all day long because someone’s not showing up.” Yeah. Good stuff, Barry. Thanks for that. All right. It is 2:37. I think we can wrap up. What do you say? Good to see everybody again. Sayed, good to see you. You, too. Jonathan, thanks for the chats there. I’ll put it up on RecTech Media’s YouTube page, hopefully by the end of the day. And I’m also going to transcribe everything and post it on the Emissary blog next week, too, so stay tuned for that. Thanks, Chris. All right, everybody, well… Thanks Madeline for joining us, and check her out at aptituderesearch.com, Emissary.ai. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Thanks, everyone.
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