According to recent data, the average U.S. adult spends three hours and 15 minutes on their mobile device each day. As an HR leader or hiring manager, you likely tap into your mobile device when you’re away from your desk to check on the status of open roles and next steps with candidates. And job seekers continuously turn to their phones to see the latest updates about potential job opportunities.
Embracing mobile recruitment tools during the hiring process can help you more effectively reach candidates and simplify your job as a whole. Below, we’ve outlined a few ways you can make the most of mobile recruitment tools to drive candidate engagement.
Communicate with candidates via SMS (text messaging)
Your team has likely run into situations in which you’ve played phone tag with candidates while looking to schedule an interview, or an important email to candidates has gotten overlooked in a crowded inbox. To speed up candidate communications and drive engagement, your team can tap into candidate text messaging.
A recent study found that nearly 90 percent of people agree it would be beneficial to receive text messages during the hiring process. And with most people spending hours each day on their mobile devices, candidates are likely to see – and respond to – your text messages in a timely manner.
Some examples of ways you can use text messaging for candidate communications include: reminding candidates to take a pre-screen survey to move forward with the hiring process, coordinating interview times and sharing directions to your business location. Candidates can also easily reach your team to confirm interview times, reschedule an interview, or ask any other questions they may have.
One concern your team might have is that it can be overwhelming to think about your HR team or hiring managers texting candidates from their personal or work phones, as a process like this can get disorganized quickly.
To ensure candidate communications are as organized and engaging as possible, you can partner with a recruitment CRM platform like Hireology, which includes integrated text messaging. Rather than using your team’s personal phone numbers, all candidate data and communications can be centralized in one place.
In addition streamlining all candidate communications, partnering with a recruitment CRM platform that has candidate text messaging capabilities offers the following benefits:
- Create and save templates: Save time and ensure all text messages are professional with available templates, or create and save your own for future use.
- Reconnect with candidates: Tap into your network of past candidates you’ve interacted with to share new roles that might be the perfect fit.
- Send mass text messages using dynamic fields: Rather than sending one-off text messages as your hiring managers might if they were to text from their personal phones, a recruitment CRM platform enables you to send mass texts. For example, if you want to reach out to several candidates asking for interview availability, you can send a mass text, using dynamic fields to personalize their names and specific roles.
- Avoid added fees: With Hireology’s recruitment CRM platform, text messaging is included with your base subscription.
Text messaging is an impactful communication channel for both employers and job seekers and can streamline your candidate communications, driving engagement. As an added bonus, hiring managers who have used Hireology’s text messaging solution have decreased time to hire by 8 days, ultimately increasing productivity that’s typically lost when roles are open.
Centralize all candidate communications in a mobile application
Depending on their position, your hiring managers might not necessarily be in front of a computer throughout the day. For example, at a dealership, the fixed operations manager is often busy overseeing the shop floor and is away from a computer for most of the day. Or, at a home healthcare agency, the director of nursing spends a lot of time on staff training and other critical, hands-on tasks.
While away from their computers, most hiring managers have their phones on hand and with the right mobile technology in place, they can easily communicate with candidates in between other tasks.
Later this year, Hireology is launching a mobile application. The mobile application will enable hiring managers to engage candidates on-the go, hire faster and avoid losing applicants to competing job offers.
As part of the mobile application, Hireology customers will have the option to initiate and manage candidate communications directly from their mobile device. Key capabilities will include:
- Text messaging: Send new text messages to applicants or review the text message history.
- Email: Send a new email to an applicant or review the email history. Other options for emails in the mobile application will include inquiring about interview availability and sending rejection emails.
- Phone: Initiate calls to applicants directly from the mobile application.
Embracing text messaging and other mobile recruitment tools can help your team save time, speed up the hiring process and boost candidate engagement. For additional tips on making the most of your candidate communications, read our resource, “The Candidate Engagement Playbook.”
