Four Tactics To Make Autoresponders (feel) More Human
The other day on Twitter a quick discussion occurred between me and Todd Mintz (@toddmintz) an SEO, Social Media and Marketing guy in Beaverton, Oregon. Todd tweeted the following:
@toddmintz Job candidate yells at me for spamming him...the spam was the autoresponder message asking him to make sure to send in his resume.
Nothing about this candidates response surprised me given the result of our recently published survey results on What Prospects and Candidates Think About Recruiting Calls and the soon to be published follow up on what they think about the Recruiting Engagement.
The autoresponder tactic is theoretically a good idea. The objective is to help save the recruiter and the recruiting team time and effort while making them more efficient. The autoresponder should allow candidates to get responses more quickly and efficiently as they reach certain milestones in the recruitment process or if information is lacking or incomplete.
The false hope of autoresponders, and how they are often sold by the ATS community, is that they are providing some level of CRM or TRM. Now I won't get into why Candidate Relationship Management shouldn't be your goal nor how the ATS products are terriblesince I have thoroughly examined both in the recent past. There is nothing relational or Talent Relationship Management focused about autoresponders as they are executed and positioned out of the box with ATS products.
Autoresponders are cold, disingenuous, boring and transactional. Prospects and candidates hate them almost as bad as falling into the long established black hole of no response that has tarnished recruiting teams and ATS products seemingly forever. These autoresponders are dreaded by candidates because by their nature, wording and delivery autoresponders put into writing what candidates have always felt about their value to recruiters and recruiting teams. That is, they feel like they are just a number or another resume/application adrift in a sea of others who are also getting either no response or the dreaded autoresponder.
The warm and fuzzy HR types out there have even gone so far as to name their autoresponders something that makes them seem more relational or more human. I have heard everything from TARA (Talent Acquisition & Recruiting Autoresponder) to SARA (Strategic Auto Response Application). Most often female names are used and if anyone has a clue as to why this is true please let me know. As if giving this autoresponder monstrosity a human name will cause the unsuspecting candidate to suddenly feel L.O.V.E.D.
Ridiculous!
The Four Tactics We Recommend Are After The Jump
I am not a fan of autoresponders and I believe great recruiters hang out in pools of talent, which by definition are much smaller than pools of candidates, and therefore can provide a higher level of touch to the talent in the so called "process". But, if you have to use autoresponders here are four things you can do, tactics we have actually implemented with clients, to make your autoresponder less transactional and more relational.
Take the time to survey your prospect, candidate and new employee population to learn about their experience with the recruiting process and the autoresponder. Be sure to ask those that exited your process at various stages because in their responses you often gain the most value. Ask them how and how often they want to be communicated with (a novel idea I know) and then build the autoresponder around your findings. Build your autoresponder (or whatever female name you want to give it?) messages with action words and humanity in mind. Not every candidate is the same so they shouldn't be treated the same. Since autoresponders treat them all the same you have to live with that you got so take the time to humanize the messages you are sending with the key words and elements you learned from your survey in first step above. Authenticity rules the day here. Don't try to trick the candidates into thinking you care by giving them a bunch of fancy slogans, mission statements or pretty HTML email templates. They see right through that crap. Content is key and the words you use are critical. Speak from the heart, be transparent, honest and authentic. Provide useful information about what the process looks like, where they are in that process, when they can expect human interaction (foreshadow) and links or attachments that actually allow them to learn more about the company or the role they may be working in. Give them your Candidate Bill of Rights (hopefully you have one) in which you outline your responsibilities to one another during their candidacy and engagement in your recruiting "process". Even better, give them an actual phone number in the email where a human being answers the phone and interacts with them in the event they need help or guidance. You will be surprised at how infrequently this number is used when the steps above are executed well.
I don't recommend using autoresponders right out the box. Heck, I don't recommend using them at all if you can avoid it. It is just a disingenuous attempt at communicating with candidates and they see right past it. That said, if you do have to use them give these tactics a try and I believe you will find a happier group of candidates next time you conduct your next candidate experience study.
You do do those right?
Oh, one more thing. Don't name your ATS or autoresponder some ridiculous female name to make it all cute and seemingly more relational. Why not name it what it is - CRAP (Candidate Relationship Attempt Process)
>
