Dive Brief:
- Jobvite announced it is partnering with Canvas to bring Jobvite Text, a new platform that lets recruiters converse with candidates in the place they spend the majority of their time – on their smartphone.
- The platform allows for individual or group texts to both active and passive candidates and provides analytics and insights to help recruiters target audiences and deploy campaigns securely. The platform also comes with a chatbot feature to help automate some aspects of candidate outreach.
- Jobvite follows on the heels of various other text-based firm acquisitions or partnerships that have emerged this year, including announcements by Jobalign and iCIMS.
Dive Insight:
In a competitive job market, making an immediate connection could be the difference between scoring a potential hire or leaving endless, unanswered messages — and for that reason, more ATS platforms are turning to texting.
Texting is taking off in the HR space in some regards for both management and recruiting purposes. Millennial managers report they are most comfortable texting with their subordinates; 55% prefer texting while only 28% prefer email for faster communication. Work chat applications, like Slack or HipChat, are normalizing texting and instant messaging in a work context.
Jobvite isn’t the first to incorporate texting into the recruitment process, but the addition is certainly in response to market demand. Jobalign recently announced its own texting platform, while iCIMS acquired TextRecruit at the beginning of the year.
In today’s market, speed to connect with candidates translates into shorter time to hire, which translates into smart business practice. As the business community strives to keep candidates and employees happy in a tight job market that can easily see them scooped up by the competition, a strategy that meets job seekers in the environment which they prefer could prove to be a critical advantage.