Once a trend, texting candidates has now become a requirement for sourcers and recruiters. Without a doubt, texting is the most efficient way for recruiters and sourcers to communicate with their candidates. Emails can surely become buried, InMails are extremely easy to ignore, and for some reason, most of us are still hesitant to pick up the phone and talk to a candidate.
Texting is effortless, yet many recruiters aren’t comfortable using their cell phones for messaging candidates and let’s be honest, our cell phones aren’t designed for productive recruiting campaigns or compliance audits.
“Recruiters shouldn’t be using their personal cell phones to text with candidates,” says Brian Thompson, co-founder of Rectxt.“Mixing personal and professional contacts in your phone, along with the risk of auto-correct errors, can lead to some potentially embarrassing and unprofessional situations.”
Thompson, along with his business partner Brad Clark (both former recrutiers), founded Rectxt after discovering that there were no viable text recruiting solutions available to them in the SMB segment of the recruitment market.
“We were both looking for a better texting alternative than our personal cell phones, but we couldn’t find one that was affordable to small businesses or contractors like ourselves,” adds Brian. “The platforms we found were priced for enterprise companies, required 12-month commitments, a heavy sales and onboarding process, and were full of features that we simply didn’t need–certainly didn’t want to pay for these levels of commitment.”
Thompson and Clark knew that they weren’t the only recruiters who felt under-served by the technology available to them, so they started to design their own.“We wanted a light-weight and affordable text recruiting platform that was easy to use and did one thing really well – texting,” says Clark. “Every aspect of Rectxt has been thoughtfully designed from a recruiter’s perspective, and we’re proud to say that our platform is genuinely designed for recruiters by recruiters.”
The beta version of the Rectxt Chrome extension is currently available in the Chrome store. Yes, it’s a Chrome extension for all of you “tool lovers.” Not only does this product allow for you to text your favorite candidates effortlessly, but it also helps you quickly source phone numbers for candidates.
To start, head to LinkedIn and watch it find available phone numbers on your current connections. You can create talent pools, or communities within the platform, allowing you to set up sourcing campaigns and talent communities. Rectxt goes beyond LinkedIn and also will enable you to integrate candidates from your ATS or any website that you use to source candidates. When you are using Rectxt, any ten digit phone number on a website will be highlighted, allowing you to instantly click on the phone number to import and message the candidate in the platform.
Once a candidate responds to your text message, a notification will appear on your browser. Pricing starts as little as $15/month, with your first month free, and the option to cancel at any time. For more information and a brief tutorial, check out the video from Thompson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P32LoeHe4a4&feature=youtu.be