Resources
3 min read
Best Practices for Recruitment Communications
In the age of instant gratification among consumers and the next generation workforce, it’s all about ease and speed when it comes to your recruitment communications. These are the keys to keeping prospective candidates engaged and responsive while inside your hiring process. The three most common ways recruiters typically use to communicate were email, text and phone. Now we can add two more channels to the mix, AI recruiting chatbots and video. With technology changing the way we communicate so rapidly, let’s review some of the best practices when it comes to chatting with and keeping your applicants in the loop. EMAIL Every recruiter should have a great signature that not only contains their contact info but also your company’s social media links and potentially your logo and calendar link. Using that space as a promotional tool will help you get more followers and encourage them to reach out when needed. In addition your ATS probably comes with a set of templated emails that get triggered when the applicant workflow changes. If you have yet to customize those templates to reflect your company brand, now is a good time to revamp that messaging. Take a look at the employer branding and words used to communicate the message. Make a point to personalize them and soften the tone so that it doesn’t sound like a robot wrote it. In short, put some thought into what it says. TEXT RECRUITING SOFTWARE If your company isn’t using text recruiting software to communicate with candidates yet, then it should be at the top of your shortlist of things to implement next. Millennial job seekers want ease of use when communicating about a job and texting is their preferred way to do that. It’s also attractive for recruiters as well since the response time is almost immediate. According to a CTIA study, the average email response time is 90 minutes, but only 90 seconds for a text message. Plus text recruiting is a better option when it comes to reaching people at work. They are much more likely to reply to a text than answer your call since an SMS is private and let’s them engage on their own schedule. The speed of a text recruitment message is such a killer feature in today’s job market. Remember also to first get their permission, keep all text messages professional and consistent with your employment brand and have a clear objective in mind when sending them. RECRUITING CHATBOTS & AI AI Recruiting chatbots are an important feature offered by top tier recruiting software vendors (Emissary included), especially those focused on recruitment automation. A number of studies have indicated that a majority of job seekers like interacting with them because it makes the process more efficient and puts the candidate in control. Plus a recruitment chatbot is available 24/7 and never takes a day off. If a candidate visits your career page at 10pm at night, they easily ask an AI chatbot a question and get an answer instantly. When it comes to the wording inside your recruiting chatbot, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, be as brief as possible with the answers to the preset questions that you create… remember that efficiency enhances the candidate experience. Two, avoid asking for open ended responses, unless it’s truly necessary and three, set expectations that it’s an automated process, not a real person. Think of your chatbot as an AI powered automated recruiting assistant that acts a bit like an ATM in that the user should prefer the automated tool over live assistance, at least for basic transactions. Recruiting process automation can be a major boon to your recruitment communication strategy when implemented with care. PHONE When it comes to the phone we are mainly referring to the phone screen. That time honored tradition of qualifying a resume that looks interesting. Best practices start by making sure the candidate knows what to expect. Let them know how the process will unfold and set their expectations up front. A typical phone screen should last no more than 20-30 minutes. Therefore you’ll want to focus on the most important questions such as; Why are you leaving your current role? What type of opportunity would make you switch jobs right now? How did you hear about this opportunity? Which core skills are you really good at? On a scale of 1-10 how would your last boss rate your performance? What are your salary expectations? Any questions for me? VIDEO As video interviewing takes hold during the pandemic some recruiters have struggled to use it properly. In my experience it just takes repetition and some attention to the small details that will make you look good on camera. You’ll want to have good lighting and a camera that fills the screen with your face and shoulders. I have seen too many people on a Zoom this year with half the video feed showing more of the ceiling than the person. That is easily corrected by tilting your camera down until you fit in properly. Also invest in a good microphone and be sure to wear your company swag or have a backdrop with a company logo to provide an employer brand boost. Remember that every interaction with a job seeker is a candidate experience that can’t be redone. Make all your recruitment communications, no matter the channel, a good one so every candidate experience is delightful.
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Recruitment Marketing
3 min read
Not Hiring? Build Your Talent Community Instead
Since many companies have had to freeze hiring or layoff people due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, a lot of them are still posting jobs in hopes of “pipelining” candidates. One industry insider told me recently as many as 50% of employers are actively still posting with no intention to hire. But this strategy has one big flaw. It exacerbates the resume black hole for candidates who are looking to find work now. Instead of this tactic, I recommend employers look at building and curating their own talent communities if you truly want to fill your pipeline for future hiring needs. A talent community also provides a slew of long term cost saving benefits especially when it comes to job advertising. The bigger your talent community is, the less you have to spend on external marketing in the future. Your organization already has the foundation of a talent community. It’s the database that sits right inside your ATS but most companies fail to use it properly. A talent community is merely a group of people who have shown interest in working for your company at one point or another. It could be as broad as everyone who’s applied and been rejected or as narrow as your “silver medalists” – those that you interviewed but didn’t hire. These networks usually manifest themselves in an online format which allow you to maintain a relationship with the candidate over time using channels such as email, social media, and video to communicate industry news, job alerts and other updates about your hiring plans. By staying in touch with prospective candidates, a talent community allows you to maintain that relationship the next time a job opening occurs as well as building your employer brand for when they are ready to make a move. If I were building a talent community from scratch, the first order of business would be to hire or assign someone to be the community manager. This person would be responsible for building a digital relationship between you and your candidates through the above mentioned content tactics. Talent Communities Are Not Lists The Talent Community should not be thought of as just a list of people that you communicate with, it should also be a place where they can talk to each other. A number of cloud based software platforms like MightyNetworks or Hivebrite already exist which allow anyone to build a dedicated, private online network. It just takes effort and consistency to make it work. Candidates (especially the good ones) need a good reason to join your talent community. They don’t want to be marketed to with just job alerts. They want to learn and grow in their field and it’s your job to help them do that. One great example of a talent community that works is by a European company called Specsavers. They are an optometry retailer with locations in about 10 different countries. Their talent community is called Green Club, and it’s not branded as Specsavers at all. It’s a login website, with a message board, video content, professional development courses, events and more. It’s become a powerful tool to augment their optometry hires year in and year out. You can setup your community as a pre-screen tool as well by asking some qualifying questions during the signup process to give you better data about the candidates who are joining. Once they’ve signed up you can create and curate content that interests them. In a past role in recruiting I once set up a twitter account to retweet news from the industry my company participated in (ecommerce). I found RSS feeds for all the major news sites that covered the space and rebroadcast their headlines to the twitter account which was branded as a free resource for the industry “powered by” my employer. It became a solid channel to build our brand and share job leads. If you don’t want to go that far you can do something like what the LinkedIn Talent blog does each week. They put together a list of the 10 Must Read Articles for Recruiters each week. This type of content curation is easy to do for any industry. 3 Ways to Use Texting in Your Talent Community Send potential candidates a monthly update on upcoming hiring plans. Offer text based job alerts according to their preferences. Send them a monthly reminder with one of the perks about working for your company. In addition to industry news, you should be sharing content such as company news, interview tips, hiring manager spotlights, career paths, new hires, hiring process FAQs, perks and benefits and related events. Within your talent community, whether its just an email list or a full blown online platform, don’t bombard your members with content. Sending them an email every few weeks with relevant news and if possible segment those emails based on their job type interest. Over time, as your community grows it becomes another channel that you own which will certainly reduce your reliance on outside hiring sources that you are paying for.
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Recruiting Tactics
2 min read
Recruitment Planning After the Pandemic
There’s a ton of uncertainty in the labor market right now. Unemployment claims have slowed but still seem to hit 1 million each week. The cycle of hiring, letting go, and rehiring has thrown everyone a curve. The effects that the pandemic has had on companies has been uneven to say the least. Those working in essential services are extremely busy, while others have to let workers go just to stop themselves from going under. It’s a stressful time for the recruiters that are still actively searching for talent. Be Transparent With Talent Now that many areas are reopening and hiring has started to pickup, it is important to keep potential candidates engaged NOW. Be transparent about when and how you plan to hire. How potential candidates are treated right now creates a lasting impression, making sure you treat people well is extremely important. Now is not the time to post jobs just to collect applicants you don’t plan to hire. Now is the time to keep people interested in your company so that they will still be interested when it is time to hire. This means funneling them into a talent community. For the vast majority of companies this could simply mean collecting emails from candidates who one day have an interest in working for you. You can then send them periodic updates as to your hiring plans and include news and information about your company and industry to keep them informed. Review Your HR Tech Stack After the pandemic some companies may have to go back to high volume hiring, where efficiency is key to recruiting talent in multiple vacant positions before other companies get to them. While idle, now is a great time to invest in newer better technology to make the hiring process more efficient. I have heard from a number of HR tech vendors who said they saw an increase in demos during the height of the pandemic. If your ATS is still a road block for hiring, replace it asap. If you need automated scheduling tools, get that too. Recruitment automation tools and features will become more dominant inside the modern talent organizations of tomorrow. Make Remote a Priority According to new research from background screening company Checkster, they found that 72 percent of recruiters will have to option to work from home permanently, while only 16 percent required to come back to the office. That represents a significant shift from pre-pandemic times when only 8 percent of recruiters reportedly worked from home. The study also indicates that the majority of recruiters employed some form of video or other virtual communication, with Zoom mentioned most frequently, followed by email, phone calls and texting. If you haven’t yet mastered remote working, interviews and onboarding then you will soon need to. Remote hiring is poised to become the norm not the exception as the world of work goes virtual. Once we get through this crazy period in history there will be new changes to the recruitment process as well as the nature of all work. But for now, planning for what lies ahead is what most good talent teams are prepping for.
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Recruiting Automation
3 min read
Candidate Experience in Recruitment Automation
We’ve written a lot about AI and recruitment automation here on this blog. But recruiting automation without empathy for the candidate could have disastrous implications for their experience and how they’ll view your brand in a post Covid-19 world. In an unsettled world where many jobs have been upended, some employers are really putting empathy to work for them. Take Truss for example. The software consulting firm has recently placed the following statement at the top of all their job postings; A note from Truss: We know you’re likely experiencing a lot of disruption as our nation (and our world) responds to COVID-19 – we’re experiencing it, too. There are two things we want you to know when it comes to hiring. First, we’re financially stable. We have a variety of well-established government contracts that we expect to continue over the next few years. Also, we’re winning new work, and we have a robust rainy day fund. Second, during video interviews, you’ll likely see more of our human side. Family members, partners, kids and pets are home with some of us! We promise to be present and engaged, but we may be a little…harried. It’s OK if you are, too – we understand that everyone is experiencing extra stress right now. If you have any questions along the way, please let us know, and stay healthy and safe. There is so much empathy in this paragraph it’s hard to understate. Their words help reassure the candidate that the company is stable and secure and most importantly humanizes the company in ways that most don’t. Automating a recruiting message like this to candidates can be done so easily with most recruiting software that I wonder why most employers haven’t done this yet. You can simply add it in the thank you email or text message that gets sent upon applying in addition to placing in your job description templates. If your company is still using the same language in your automated recruitment communications with applicants, perhaps you should change it to reflect the times we are in just like Truss has done. Setting Expectations Most candidates want the same thing when applying for a job. They want clear communications as to the status of their candidacy. They want to know what will happen next along with some form of timely resolution should they be disqualified. If you don’t think your current recruiting workflow and messaging provides those answers, now is the time to re-read that candidate content and ask yourself if it’s still relevant for the world in which we now find ourselves? Automation in recruiting can save valuable time for talent acquisition teams, but it can also add to the empathy factor for the candidate when it comes to what they want and need to have a good experience. That has a major impact on employer brand perception and candidate experience. There may not be an easier way to increase good will with candidates in this environment. The key factor is then striking the balance between in-person and automated recruiting touch-points so that talent doesn’t feel like they were hired by a machine instead of a recruiter. If job seekers take the time to invest in your recruiting process, then your recruiter (and your recruiting automation software) needs to return that respect by valuing the seeker as a person, not just a resume. A great candidate experience can only happen with the right mix of thoughtful recruitment automation put in place by a human with the job seekers journey in mind. Not only will you get higher acceptance rates from those that apply but your reputation for treating them with empathy will skyrocket your employment brand to new heights. 5 Ways to Use Texting for a Better Candidate Experience Send them a text message to confirm their application was received. Text them directions to your office before the interview. Update them via text as their application status changes in your ATS. Remind them via text that they have an upcoming interview. Send a welcome message by the hiring manager upon them accepting your offer. In the end, recruitment automation is the perfect way to set candidate expectations, provide assurances about your company and the hiring process, as well as letting them know if they are moving to the next step. Those organizations who embrace this new mantra will be the ones who become the employers of choice for the next generation of talent.
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applying by text
2 min read
Is Text to Apply the Next Big Thing in Recruiting?
As the use of texting grows in recruiting, the ability to apply by text is slowly becoming more of a reality. As of now, you can’t typically apply through text messaging other than beginning the apply process by answering a few questions. But text based chatbots now allow you to essentially collect the basic data points you need to capture a candidate’s information and intent. For a growing number of jobs you don’t really need to collect a resume. Blue collar positions, entry level, customer service, gig work and even software developers can be included in this job cohort. What Is Text to Apply? Text to apply is simply a text based conversation with a software bot that enables a candidate to apply to a job through a series of text messages that help to pre-screen and filter that applicant to determine first if they are qualified or not qualified status. If they are, the sequence of texts would then continue to gather information about their skills and experience in order to move them through the recruiting funnel. Platforms like HackerRank have popped up to assess software developers ability to code and that is really all you need to know in order to understand if they can do the job you have. Instead of asking for a resume you could simply send them direct to the code assessment. But that’s a special case. When it comes to the blue collar type work I mentioned before, a short conversation with a bot should be all you need to allow that job seeker to apply or express interest. How do you apply for a job through text? A text based apply sequence for a truck driver might read like this; Bot: Thanks for checking out our job. Would you like to apply via text? Candidiate: Yes Bot: Great, let’s start by giving me your contact details. Whats your full name? Candidiate: its Bobby Axelrod Bot: Thanks, whats your email? Candidiate: bobby@axcapital.com Bot: Awesome, do you have your commercial trucking license? If so please list all your certifications. Candidiate: CDL Bot: Are you currently employed? If so what company do you work for? Candidiate: Axelrod Trucking Bot: Great, how many years have you been driving commercial trucks? Candidiate: 5 years Bot: Do you have a solid driving record? Candidiate: yes I do Bot: Perfect, it looks like you meet our minimum qualifications. A recruiter will be in touch within the next 24-48 hours to ask you some follow up questions. We appreciate you taking the time to apply with us! ### This simple exchange provides enough data to get the ball started with the candidate. From here, the candidates answers would be inserted directly into the ATS or CRM as a new “lead” and a recruiter can then follow up to request additional info or schedule a text interview. Applying via a web page is at best a chore. Applying via text is a friction-less process that more companies need to adapt, particularly if they have consistent hard to fill jobs. To be sure, the resume is still the biggest barrier when it comes to applying via text. There is no way to accept it other than forcing the candidate to go to a web page for uploading. This fact is unlikely to change anytime soon. But for certain jobs the text to apply functionality is already here. It needs only an internal champion to implement it at your organization.
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Recruiting Automation
3 min read
14 Recruiting Automation Ideas
From applicant to candidate to new hire, there are a myriad of ways to automate the recruiting process. As recruiters, you are already strapped for time, so streaming or automating mundane tasks in hiring can be a major win for the organization. Taking a thoughtful approach to recruiting process automation helps you maximize your ROI. Let your recruiting software take care of communications, marketing and other tasks wherever possible to give your recruiters more time to do what’s important, namely building relationships with candidates and allowing them to source top talent. Ultimately, recruiting automation assists recruiting teams to create a more structured and efficient candidate experience, while also freeing up time to enable more meaningful conversations. What follows below are simple, tactical ways to make recruiting automation work for you. Thank You for Applying Email This is probably the most famous piece of automation in place with most employers. Sadly many companies fail to optimize its use. I recommend letting candidates know what to expect next and ask them to follow you on your social media channels. You’re trying to build a relationship, so start with basic courtesy and say thank you. The Rejection Email Just about every ATS comes with an automated way to reject candidates en masse or individually. Employers need to get better about closing the loop on applicants they are never going to hire. One company I know of actually makes it part of every recruiters job to make sure they accept or reject every applicant assigned to the reqs they own. Interview Reminders Candidate, hiring manager and recruiter should all automatically get an interview reminder email or text message about the upcoming interview. If in person, it should contain instructions on where to go and who they’ll be meeting with. A text interview reminder is the perfect use case because it can incorporate a link to Google Maps and other key details in a streamlined format. Good text recruiting software will integrate with your ATS and help you do it automatically. General Status Updates As a general practice it would be great for candidates to get a notification each time their status in the ATS is changed to help them understand where they are in the process, either by email or SMS. Leaving them in the dark is part of the resume black hole that is all too prevalent in today’s hiring process. By being proactive like this you can also cut down on the number of inbound inquiries from candidates themselves. 1st Day on the Job Send a text message to your new employee via your text recruiting platform the day before they start in order to welcome them and give any last minute instructions for where to go. Candidate Experience Use recruiting process automation to regularly conduct feedback surveys among your candidates by asking them about how they perceived your application/recruiting process. Send candidates an email within a few days of their rejection email asking them what they thought about your process. You can gain valuable insight into what’s working and what’s not. Onboarding Information Requests With most of us working remotely, digital onboarding has become more important than ever to get right as part of a comprehensive recruiting automation strategy. Many ATS providers have onboarding components that allow you to send the proper paperwork to be signed electronically. These docs can be sent as part of a change in status in your ATS for example. Vendors like Smart Recruiters let you extend an offer letter right from their ATS for example. Notify Recruiter When Candidate Clicks Link in Email Wouldn’t it be great if you could be notified when one of your sought after candidates clicked something in an email you sent them? Some CRMs like Candidate ID offer this type of functionality already and I expect more ATS providers to incorporate this kind of alert in the near future. Ask for Referrals Setup an email to ask your top candidates who they know that might fill another role at your organization. A players tend to know other A players so it won’t hurt to ask. Programmatic Job Advertising Employers have been able to automate their recruiting spend by partnering with programmatic job vendors that take your job feed and automatically distribute those jobs to multiple job boards. Costs are incurred on a per click basis. Companies like Appcast, JobAdX and Joveo are some examples of these companies. Social Media Automation If you have a feed of jobs and/or blog content you can automate the publishing of that content through a tool like Dlvr.it or Buffer. Each time you post a job or blog that item can automatically be shared across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn thus eliminating the hassle of posting to each channel one by one. Pre-screening Candidates Having candidates self assess can save you valuable time by automatically rejecting them before they apply. Recruiting chatbots are great for performing this task. The chatbot can sit on your website or work as a text chat with the candidate by asking them screening questions and either rejecting them or pushing them into the funnel. This is an easy way to tap the power of AI in your recruiting efforts. Interview Scheduling A number of interview scheduling tools now exist and ATS providers like Smart Recruiters are also building in functionality to allow candidates to self schedule their interview based on your team’s calendar. You can also tap your text recruiting platform to trigger automated scheduling texts based on activity in your ATS if they have an integration. Candidate Nurturing Maintaining relationships with candidates who indicate interest in your company is an important part of a modern hiring process. CRMs (aka Candidate Relationship Management) are adept at this type of functionality mainly through email automation. These emails can keep the candidate engaged throughout the pipeline so they don’t lose interest. Including texting at job fairs with them. Learn more about how Emissary can automate your recruiting with features like our AI recruiting chatbot.
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Human Resources
2 min read
How Will Remote Working Affect Company Culture Going Forward
How will a more prevalent remote work environment affect your company culture going forward? It’s a question that many companies are pondering these days as the pandemic persists and remote working is still in full effect. Organizations that once prided themselves on their in person culture have no doubt seen their employee base turn to other ways to engage such as Slack, text messaging or zoom happy hours, only to realize it’s not exactly the same thing. Now that we are months into a new remote working phase, I wondered how this will begin to affect company cultures going forward…will they morph into something new? Will culture be enhanced or muted because of the forced distancing? Gordon Collier, an entrepreneur I know told me that work from home is forcing people to adapt. “Based on my conversations with leaders I think this period of forced remote work has pushed leaders to accept remote work and as a result are seeing higher work output. It’s also encouraged people to reflect on how they work well and it’s fostered empathy. People have less office distractions.” More Focus on Results There’s been a lot of chatter about how remote work will affect innovation or those impromptu conversations workers have in the lunch room or hallway. Certainly those encounters are going away, but they will be replaced by virtual chats, SMS exchanges and meetings. Any loss should be minimal. What is more likely to change however is a new focus on results. There should be an emphasis on how managers evaluate and assess performance and projects. When you are working from home it’s less about face time and if someone is at their desk all day. Now it’s more about did they turn in this assignment and did they do it well? More Meaningful Conversations One of my connections, Irene Indarte, an HR Consultant told me over Linkedin she sees people having more thoughtful conversations. “Our culture has a focus on working as a team, collaboration and having fun/social. What I’ve seen during our WFH is people taking time to have more meaningful chats rather than a quick “hey there” in the hallway. I can see our company becoming more thoughtful of staying connected. The downside is I worry about people burning out. Too many forget to take time to relax and unplug.” Becoming More Empathetic Employers and managers are also being forced to be more empathetic and flexible when it comes to their workers lives. Many folks have had their kids bust into a zoom meeting or perhaps have had to cut short a call due to something happening in the house at that moment that required their attention. I can see these conversations becoming more acceptable in the future workplace. More Demands on Managers Kris Dunn, one of the hosts of the HR Famous podcast said on the show recently that managers will need to change as well. “I think that as we are less tied to place, your manager really becomes a new kind of cultural gravity. Their ability to flex and to show empathy in different ways to us and to be flexible, to get those results is really going to be the key thing. I think the managers who can show empathy in different ways, in different circumstances and show agility are the ones that are really, when I think probably the companies that train their managers to do that are the ones that are going to benefit.” There are now a whole host of companies who have pledged to stay remote only companies going forward because of Coronavirus. These organizations understand the new reality and will adapt and adjust to this new way of work. Cultures will ebb and flow. If your company does eventually go back to the office be sure to remember the lessons from this time. Mainly that means becoming more empathic to workers and giving them the flexibility they need to stay productive.
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Recruiting Trends
2 min read
Challenges Recruiters Will Face Post Pandemic
As we begin to come back to work from the Covid crisis what do you think will be the biggest challenges facing corporate recruitment going forward? We asked our network to comment on what they felt would be the biggest obstacles in a post pandemic work. Here’s a short synopsis of what they said. Candidate Experience Not having the ability to control the whole candidate process was an issue before the pandemic and will be afterwards. What I mean by that is, in recruitment you could be doing all of the exact right things. You’re building your employer brand, you’re strategically advertising, you’ve got sourcing in place, everything’s going great. And then you get a candidate through the door after a great conversation with the recruiter, and then they’re in an interview and you don’t know how the interview is going to go if you’re not in the room. And so you let go of the process at that point to the hiring manager. You worry about that experience. Will they be polite? Accommodating? A lot of recruiters often wonder if hiring managers are thinking about that candidate experience like we are. And now with remote interviews going more mainstream, this adds another potential barrier. Also if you haven’t moved to a digital onboarding experience for new hires yet this could put you at a disadvantage against other savvy employers. Empathy In my experience on average, leadership, doesn’t appreciate what goes into recruitment and what’s required. And so I’ve heard things like, “what’s so hard about it? I’ve been hiring for years” or, “it’s like widgets, or ordering a steak” one recruiter told me. So if this is the organization’s perspective on what recruitment is doing no wonder they struggle to get the people that they need to support their organization. Leaders need to have more empathy all around for the their recruitment team and giving them the tools and support they need to excel at their job. After all if the recruiting team is frustrated, then that’s going to be a direct reflection on the applicant and the applicant’s experience. Empathy (for your workers) just might become the new employer brand strategy. Turnover Turnover and retention are still going to be a major stumbling block. A lot of employers fail to think about the top talent they have until its too late. Now with massive job losses, candidates are becoming jittery. The short term affect may be that they stay longer in a job they hate but eventually this will catch up to everyone. Start to think about how your organization will respond. Talent Attraction With so many jobs going remote, some roles are deemed to change forever. If you hire college grads for example are they going to want to work 100% from home? Probably not. They crave the office environment so they can learn from and absorb the company culture and build their skills. A lack of face to face communications may hinder your ability to attract certain talent in a post pandemic world. Now is also a good time to think about automating your screening process to help streamline applicants. Recruiting chatbots and texting can certainly help with this. The employer of tomorrow will need to close the digital divide gap when it comes to attracting and converting job seekers online and on their phones.
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3 min read
ROI of Text Recruiting Software
Most of the employers we talk to know that text recruiting software is a ‘must have’ for modern talent acquisition teams. But, many are not sure how to think about the return on investment on the purchase of an enterprise grade texting platform. This post provides a framework for thinking about the ROI of text recruiting that should be useful for talent acquisition leadership and frontline recruiters alike. The starting point is to acknowledge that recruiters spend a huge amount of their time communicating with candidates. Whether it’s scheduling interviews, screening or digging into the details of each candidate’s work experience, most recruiters live on the phone and in email. The problem is that emails and phone calls require lots of time and suffer from declining response rates. In fact, according to Entelo’s latest recruiting automation report, recruiters spend up to 20 hours per week on outreach alone! That’s 50% of the typical work week, often with lots of time in between waiting around for candidates to respond.. Switching to SMS changes the tedious email and phone dynamic instantly. Most candidates prefer texting to email anyway, so response rates are much higher and response times are much lower. According to CTIA/Hubspot, the average response time for a text message is 60X faster than email. That matches our internal tracking, which shows that response times are typically measured in minutes or hours, not days as with email. Stop and think about that for a moment. What if your recruiters could increase their candidate response times by even half that? What would the direct financial impact be for your organization? How about if they could double response rates (or more) at the same time? When thinking about using text versus email, consider these numbers: Texting open rates are at 95%+ vs. ~20% for email 90% of texts are read within 3 minutes vs. 80% of emails that are never read at all For more, check out our post on texting statistics for recruiters Ok, so how do we use the numbers above to estimate the ROI of text recruiting software? For starters, let’s assume that a recruiter is reaching out to 100 candidates. Open a spreadsheet and plug that number in, so you can tweak the estimate however you see fit. Next, let’s make an assumption about how many of the candidates we reach out to will open the message. To be conservative, we’ll use 20% for email (exactly as above), but we’ll lower the open rate for text/SMS to 80% from 95%. Multiply those numbers by the 100 candidates in the outreach pool and we get 80 opened text messages and 20 opened emails. Now, let’s plug in a response rate. For email, let’s be generous again and assume 50% of those who opened our email go on to respond (must be a great job!). And, for our text messages we’ll assume that 80% respond. For individual outreach, many estimates put the number higher, but we’ll go lower and assume that the messages aren’t highly personalized. Once we multiply our opens by our response rate, we get 64 candidate responses from our texting outreach vs. 10 responses from our email efforts. That’s a difference of 6.4X! If you think that’s too high or too low, just adjust the assumption in your spreadsheet. For example, if you think that the texting response rate should be much lower… let’s say 40% instead of 80%, change the numbers and you come out with 32 text responses vs. 10 email responses. That’s still a difference of more than 3X. Even the most pessimistic assumptions about texting produce a multiplier of 2X or more. So that’s the impact of response times, but let’s take a look at the time savings for the average recruiter too. We based our calculations on an average annual salary of $72,000 so if your numbers are different, just plug them into this formula. The Entelo study noted above found that recruiters spend about 50% of their time conducting outreach, but we’ll be more conservative and put our estimate at 33%, or 1/3rd. That means that a recruiter working 2,000 hours per year, spends about 660 of those hours on outreach, which translates into 83 workdays and ~$24,000 in cost to the employer. Now, if we plug in the 6.4X improvement in the effectiveness of outreach, that translates to a savings of 557 hours or 70 workdays in time saved. That’s more than $20,000 in labor savings for each recruiter… time that can be reallocated however the employer sees fit. Once again, if you think those numbers are too high, then change the assumptions as above. Every plausible scenario yields an extraordinary ROI on the modest investment required to get up and running on a text recruiting platform like Emissary. We realize texting won’t replace phone and email channels completely, but the above formula does offer a solid baseline to extrapolate ROI numbers for your own organization. The bottom line is that texting saves your team valuable hours throughout your recruiting process. Texting is convenient and fast. It cuts through the noise and gets your recruiters into active dialog with the candidates you need to hire. When it comes to your return on investment, text recruiting software delivers more than almost any other technology investment you can make.. Click here to schedule a demo of Emissary’s Text Recruiting Platform and experience the efficiency of text recruiting for yourself.
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Emissary is a candidate engagement platform built to empower recruiters with efficient, modern communication tools that work in harmony with other recruiting solutions.
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