Who wants to talk to a robot? Well, surprisingly more and more staffing firms are recognizing that candidates and even some clients are happy doing it. In a recent survey from CareerBuilder, half of all applicants give up on a company when they have not received feedback within two weeks. Recruiting chatbots are creating instantaneous conversations that are cutting into this number. The same survey noted that 31% of those candidates expect customized messaging.

Man hands holding mobile phone on blurred urban city as background

If you are looking to increase your recruiting outreach and overall impact with staffing firm candidates, then you may want to read on.

Let’s break down the various experiences through chat features in your website.

The first recruiting chatbot feature of true chat allows you to have a dedicated pool of recruiters interacting with candidates as they request a chat. This feature is not a bot. It is a real-time interaction where the website notifies the recruiting pool that a candidate wants to chat. The pros and cons of this feature are easy to see.

  • There is real-time communication between candidate and recruiter.
  • The recruiter has the ability to convert the conversation into a call easily.
  • The candidate experience is very high because they are conversing with the right person, right away.
  • The chat features allow you to go offline and accept emails when it is not office hours or when the team is unavailable.
  • The downside here is that it is another area for recruiting to manage.

The second chat feature is a automated chatbot. There is a wide array of recruiting chatbot products on the market that have been built with recruiting in mind. These chatbots can be customized to a specific job or generalized for your entire site.

  • The upside is a positive candidate experience that gets a great deal of information from the candidate and provides it to a recruiter. There is a customized experience and many people are enjoying the experience. In a recent study over 60% of candidates did not realize that the bot was not a person.
  • Many of these recruiting chatbots also allow recruiters to reach out via texting and email to solicit people into the chatbot experience in order to increase their reach.
  • The downside of this feature is that there is a fair amount of work in creating the original customized conversations.
  • The other downside is recruiter follow up on these conversations. There has to be a solid process because if you think people are bothered by not getting returned calls or emails, they are very bothered when they provide information through the bot and do not hear back.

The third chat feature is a hybrid that allows the recruiting chatbot to go down the road of feature 2, but offers a handoff to a recruiter if desired like chat feature one. While this is the best of both worlds in providing a great candidate experience, the downside is keeping recruiting engaged when it is not always being utilized.

The various features do have costs associated with them and there is a wide array of pricing. If you would like to learn more about how recruiting chatbots can be added to your website and create additional candidate flow, we would be happy to share the details. Give us a call.S.J.Hemley Marketing

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.