Candidate experience is moving increasingly towards the forefront of recruiters’ minds. This has been brought about as a result of the battle for talent that is now taking place. Such stern competition has meant that the service provided by recruiters must now be considered more carefully. Included in this is the way a recruiter decides to contact a candidate. Different forms of contact will be of preference to every individual, meaning there is never a definitive answer. However, a recent study has produced some interesting findings, highlighting the methods that seem to be most popular.
Findings from the survey:
- 58% of candidates are comfortable interacting with AI for initial questioning in the application process.
- 66% are comfortable interacting with AI and chatbots for interviewing scheduling and preparation.
- 66% of job seekers consider it acceptable to be contacted via text message by a recruiter.
- 14% of job seekers consider it inappropriate for a recruiter to text them outside of business hours.
- 29% prefer to be to texted between 8-10am, and 29% prefer to be texted between 10am-12pm.
- 57% of Millennials prefer to be contacted by email over phone calls.
- 47% of Gen Xers have equal preferences towards email and phone calls.
- 58% of Boomers prefer to be contacted by phone over email.
- 33% of job seekers want to receive an automated email after applying for a position.
- Recruiters can increase their response rate by 27% by keeping their InMails shorter than 200 words.
- 53% of candidates prefer a company which views your application promptly and reaches out.
- 30% of recipients replied to the first email sent by a recruiter.
- This dropped to 21% when a second email was sent.
- A subsequent email was replied to 25% of the time.
What is clear from these findings is that persistence can often be the key to success. Furthermore, using recruiting software with an automated email marketing function is also beneficial in many cases.
However, it’s important to remember that none of these statistics represent the overriding majority, meaning such methods will not be welcomed by everyone. You can never universally please, but these findings can be a good starting point when deciding on the best way to contact candidates in the future.
Source: Ideal