Recruiting is a communication profession. You’re constantly communicating with candidates, hiring managers, other recruiters, researchers, etc., etc.
But the big question is this one: HOW are you communicating with these people? Over the telephone is one way, of course, the chief way, in fact. Some recruiters use email that integrates with their recruiting software. However, what about other forms of communication—how about texting, for instance?
For some veteran recruiters, using text messaging as a way in which to communicate professionally might seem completely foreign. That’s why we wanted to conduct a recruiter poll to find out approximately how many recruiters use texting on their recruiting desk.
We polled recruiters from all across the country (in our recruiter split fee network) by posing the question below:
Are you texting either candidates or hiring managers?
The choice of answers that we provided is listed below, along with the percentage of recruiters who selected each one:
- Yes, I send text messages to both. — 49.0%
- Yes, I send text messages to candidates only. — 24.0%
- Yes, I sent text messages to hiring managers only. — 0.0%
- No, I don’t send text messages to either. — 27.0%
Summary:
As might be expected, a sizeable amount of recruiters who participated in our poll (27%) indicated that they don’t text candidates or hiring managers. However, nearly half of respondents (49%) texts to BOTH groups of people.
The other results aren’t that surprising, either. Nearly a quarter of recruiters polled send text messages to candidates only (24%), and there wasn’t one recruiter who sends text messages to hiring managers only. After all, that doesn’t really make sense. If you’re going to send text messages to hiring managers, you might as well send them to candidates, as well.
But we had to include that as an option, because what if there’s ONE recruiter out there who only sends text messages to hiring managers? It could happen.
Analysis and Conclusion:
There is no doubt that texting has become more commonplace for recruiters and the recruiting industry. More people have smartphones, which means more people are using them, which means more recruiters are going to use them. It only makes sense.
However, the practice is still heavily tilted towards the candidate side. Recruiters text candidates more frequently than they do hiring managers. I’d be willing to bet that even for those recruiters who text both groups of people, their texting frequency is weighed toward candidates.
What about you? Do you send text messages? If so, to who? In what situations do you send them? Do you believe this type of communication will continue to become more and more prevalent?
