With the recruiting landscape rapidly shifting, the strategy for attracting and reaching today’s top talent requires a modern, multichannel approach. Recruiters have to think beyond e-mails, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. They need to evolve and find better, faster ways to reach candidates where they are: on their phones.
While the average open rate for e-mail remains strong at more than 20%, mobile text commands a near-perfect 98% read rate.
That’s why more recruiters are leaving phone screens behind and making their first touchpoint with candidates via text message. A wide variety of companies—from Silicon Valley-based businesses recruiting engineers to Midwest-based companies hiring welders—are seeing better results when starting the interview process with text-based screens.
There are numerous benefits of incorporating a text-based interviewing and recruiting platform into the hiring strategy. From attracting and retaining talent faster in a competitive marketplace to showing personality throughout a conversation using emoji and Bitmoji, text-based interviews allow recruiters to ultimately hire the right people in less time. In fact, a team of four recruiters can save 3,689 hours each year by using a text-based screening platform. Yes, you read that right!
A lot of signs point to why recruiters should consider adding text-based screens into their hiring process. Here are some of our favorites:
Nearly All Adults Have a Cell Phone, and the Numbers Are Growing
According to a recent Gallup poll, texting is still the most preferred form of communication for those under 50 years of age, and that includes business communication.
Additionally, a study by Nielsen found that texting is now the most utilized data service worldwide, with 18.7 billion texts sent every day. With nearly instant response times, texting can expedite the hiring process for both the recruiter and the candidate.
Ranked among the nation’s most integrated healthcare systems, Indianapolis-based Community Health Network (CHN) uses text-based recruiting to expedite the screening process for positions ranging from nurses to customer service representatives, master-level social workers, housekeepers, security professionals, patient services workers, therapists, and more.
Before using a text-based platform to screen talent, CHN was experiencing quite a bit of lag time—sometimes as much as 72 hours—from when a job candidate first submitted his or her résumé or application to when the recruiter was able to make the first connection with him or her. The health network’s recruiters were constantly e-mailing candidates or leaving phone messages and often had a difficult time reaching this busy talent generation.
By texting candidates, the organization is finally able to make a connection within minutes of receiving an application or résumé.
Candidates Can Easily Respond, Even Those with Jobs
Based on a study conducted by Jobvite last November, of the 2,084 adults surveyed, 51% of people actively seeking a new job are currently employed. Unfortunately, answering a phone call to talk about an interview for a new gig while at the applicant’s current job is rarely possible and always awkward.
Texting, on the other hand, is different. A job candidate can respond in less than 1 minute without disrupting his or her day. It’s fast, obscure, and doesn’t pull the candidate away from current work. With robust recruiting platforms, the average time to screen a candidate is just 4.4 minutes.
To date, CHN has contacted nearly 2,000 individual applicants and obtained an 83% response rate using text-based recruiting. Before, when using traditional recruitment methods like e-mail and phone conversations, response rates typically ranged from 45%–60%.
Recruiters Can Eliminate Unconscious Bias
Recruiters should aim to fairly evaluate any candidate’s qualifications to perform the particular job they are interviewing for, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc. Yet, unconscious bias persists throughout every aspect of today’s hiring process, which unfortunately stands in the way of assessing applicants thoroughly.
A recent study conducted by Harvard researchers found that in analyzing 24 separate experiments related to discrimination, there has been very little progress in hiring discrimination over the last 25 years.
This research showcases the need for recruiters and hiring managers to conduct business differently to ensure a fair and diverse workforce.
With leading text-based screening and interviewing platforms, recruiters can enable a candidate de-identification feature to eliminate names and gender-specific pronouns and words before sharing transcripts with hiring managers.
Adding this option to candidate screens provides recruiters with the tools to combat unconscious bias in decision-making throughout the hiring process. In addition, the text message component adds another layer of masking to allow the recruiter to concentrate on the candidate’s skills and abilities.
Introverted Candidates Get a Fair Shot
Workplaces—and often recruitment methods too—favor extroverts. Most interviews today require recruiters to ask candidates impromptu questions via phone or in person under a clear time constraint. Responding to questions under these conditions is an extroverted strength.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of candidates’ abilities, other than how they may think on their feet. Introverts generally prefer time to think before speaking, which can be a disadvantage during a 30-minute job interview.
Given that many introverts get anxious at the mere prospect of an in-person interview, screening a candidate over text message offers many benefits:
- Texting gives candidates all the time they need to craft their response to a question. They’ll appreciate the flexibility to develop a well-thought-out response.
- Given that introverts generally dislike small talk, it’s advantageous to screen over text, as it eliminates chitchat and lets the applicant focus solely on detailing his or her skills and experience.
- Text-based screening eliminates an introvert’s potential concerns about the less important details of an interview like clothing choices, location, etc. Instead, he or she can simply focus on providing the interviewer with answers related to the job opportunity.
- Introverts dislike having to repeat themselves, so the redundancy that often happens during in-person or phone screenings can be daunting. Text interviews allow introverts to be direct and to the point.
By screening candidates via text message rather than on a traditional phone call, recruiters and HR professionals can save time and reach 10 times the candidates than ever before, helping guarantee they find the right fit for the job, no matter the industry or position.
 Aman Brar is CEO of Canvas, the first text-based interviewing platform that enables recruiters to screen more job candidates and market employment brands. With Canvas, companies have transformed their reach and engagement with talent by designing their recruitment strategies in a way that aligns with the communication preferences of today’s workforce. |