Text Recruiting: A blessing or a curse for jobseekers?
Have you received a text about a job? If you haven’t yet, the chances are growing that you might receive one soon.
Would you respond to a text about a job?
For many people, a text about a job might not be taken seriously. You might think this applies mostly to Boomers or GenX. However, many Millennials don’t find Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and other social media all that interesting. Many people, across the working generations, may receive a text about job and be annoyed!
That could be a mistake!
Last month a client of mine, an engineer, received a text about a job. The end of the text read, “Reply YES if interested, STOP to opt out.” He’s an engineer. He started work about two weeks ago.
Texting companies: How do they work.
Texting companies are after your information.
One demo with a Text Recruiting company showed me that they can send out 5,000 texts at a time. With the use of Big Data and the ability to purchase information about you (all the information that you give out online), companies can identify those individuals most likely to respond to a text message or a phone call.
In a different demo, one company representative told me that they can also determine which method would be the best approach for a given individual. In other words, where Marcia LaReau is concerned, with the information available to them, they can predict, “Marcia? Yes, she’s an email gal. Better email than text.”
Companies that offer text recruiting services also make phone calls. We get those all the time, right? You see a phone call from your area cod and pick up, just to hear a recorded message. That’s old school! (I’ll get to that in a minute.)
Technology allows voice to text conversion. That means that you may have a recorded conversation with someone (or a phone-bot) that is then converted to text and saved. Perhaps you use the dictation feature on your smartphone when texting a friend so you are familiar with how easily your speech can be converted to text. Companies who are no part of the hiring process are after your information. Phone conversations are converted to text and stored—with your name on it.
I was told, “Marcia, I guarantee you that people will text and have multiple conversations with our text-bots and phone-bots, and they will never know they aren’t talking to a human being!”
Questions you should ask about text recruiting and phone-bots
I hope this gives rise to a host of questions that you are asking yourself.
Here’s a quick list, just for starters:
- How much personal info should I share?
- What kind of privacy is good?
- Who is looking at my information?
- Where is it kept and is it safe? …from what?
- Was I really selected for this position, or did an algorithm do it?
- What about my phone number…should I remove it?
- What information will hurt my career?
Some people have an immediate visceral reaction! It goes something like this:
“That’s why I never joined Facebook and I put very little out there on LinkedIn. I don’t waste my time online, and I’m very careful on websites and I don’t share anything!
Certainly, there is a lot of confusion. Should you shut down certain accounts? Use others?
What should you do?
That’s the right question! You should be asking all those questions. However, there is another question that is even more important.
How do I get control of this and use it to my advantage?
Yes, I think that’s the right question!
That’s my job! I’ve made it my business to understand the jobs market and everything associated with the hiring processes and I’ve developed programs to keep jobseekers ahead of the curve! Text recruiting and calling is now a part of the hiring process.
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