SMS As a Recruitment Tool
Jobs are on the rise in the U.S. Between spring and summer of 2014, there were 30.6 million people in the workforce, 820,000 more than a year earlier. The growing sophistication of global recruitment agencies have helped make this possible, they being the companies that seek out potential hires on behalf of organizations in need of qualified candidates.
In the fast-paced world of recruitment, the competition for employment contracts is fierce. Traditional methods of communication between an agency and potential hires have long depended on email and phone correspondence, but that’s all changed thanks to SMS messaging.
According to Frost & Sullivan, only 22% of emails are opened after an agency’s reply to an application or cover letter. That’s a huge breakdown from the average 300 applicants that apply for each job offer.
An estimated 90% of all global recruitment agencies claim that SMS messaging has helped their recruitment process by improving the line of communication.
SMS messaging appears as a 160-word text message directly to a user’s mobile device. On average, these mobile messages are responded to in just three minutes. And according a survey, 43% of job seekers find recruiters that implement a combination of SMS messages with other marketing, more professional than recruiters who don’t.
SMS messages can help recruiters in several unique ways including alerting potential new-hires, scheduling interviews, confirming appointments, follow-up and feedback.
This technology is great for the recruiter, but it’s also befitting the job seekers as well. Potential hires can now interact more quickly with recruiters when a new job is posted. On average, the first response to a new job offer occurs three minutes and twenty seconds after the posting. This number highlights just how competitive the employment landscape can be.
What’s more, it’s not just the speed of applicants that apply for new positions that makes it so competitive. Recent studies report: cover letters are only 17% likely to get read, and if they do succeed to approach the eyes of a potential employer, on average, they only spend five to seven seconds skimming the material.
Unprofessional email addresses are immediately tossed out, along with applications containing spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. In addition to ensuring that all of these criteria are met, job seekers should expect to see more use of SMS messaging by recruiters, and welcome the opportunity to stay more engaged with potential job offers.
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