As the parent company to three unique staffing brands, Advanced Group fills a wide range of roles from finance to healthcare to creative services. With smart tech at the forefront of their engagement strategy, the firm has been using texting as an important component of their communication plan for years.
“It’s about the ease of access,” says Maddie Westman, Sr. Operations Coordinator at Advanced Group. “We know candidates are more likely to reply to a text message much quicker than an email or phone call.” They’re not wrong. On average, 90% of people read text messages within 3 minutes and respond 90 seconds later.
When Advanced Group decided to make the switch to Sense Messaging as their texting platform of choice, they were already using Engage for workflow automation. Ultimately, their goal was to integrate communications in one place and give their text and email messaging more cohesion. With consolidated dashboards showing a more comprehensive view of talent engagement, the switch to Sense Messaging tools has allowed Advanced Group to streamline their workload.
“Our team at Sense have been really great partners,” says Westman. “They help us tweak our outreach strategy, workload criteria and audiences to make sure we're being as effective as possible.”
The Sense mobile app has also been a game-changer for the team, allowing recruiters to use their own phones to text candidates directly without sharing their personal number. The app accelerates time-sensitive communications such as payroll, compliance and onboarding documents, making the entire process easier on both candidates and recruiters.
During the uncertainty of Covid-19, the speed of communication with Sense Messaging has been critical. Clients’ staffing needs change daily, and the texting tool and mobile app have given recruiters an agility that they didn’t have before. “The projects I’m working on are moving at lightning speed to meet demand, and with the Sense app I can communicate in real time to get back to candidates at any time of day. During working hours I can resolve a problem with a candidate while I'm doing something else — which is amazing, which I love,” says Heather Dula, Clinical Recruiter.
Sense Messaging has even helped the team tackle large-scale projects on short notice. As more clients and roles became remote in April 2020, the operations team leaned on text messages to gather critical information about locations, resources, and transitions. Kate Rich, Operations Coordinator, lends her team’s rapid response to effective texting. “Our team sends large-scale broadcasts with straight-forward messages that gather important information. And I think that's been really helpful, because I can send that out once to a targeted group, track responses, and easily follow-up if I need to,” says Rich.
To ensure they’re getting the most out of texting, Advanced Group has equipped its recruiters with a toolkit of best practices, including the subtle differences between email and text content. The crux of their strategy? Simply being human. People communicate differently via text, so it’s important to match the informal nature of the medium and make your content bite-sized.
Advanced Group recruiters have also made a habit of adeptly switching between broadcast and 1:1 text messages, increasing efficiency without losing their personal touch. The ability to send and receive photos easily not only makes texts more human, it also saves an immense amount of time, particularly when dealing with complex documents. At Advanced Group, the details are no longer getting lost in translation.
The firm has seen significant gains since switching to Sense Messaging, like an astounding inbound/outbound rate of 80%. Their overall contact response rates are now hovering above average at 54% with some superstar recruiters even boasting 90% inbound response rates — a clear indicator of the impact of an integrated communications plan.
And the numbers are translating to impactful change within Advanced Group. In addition to their impressive metrics-driven results, they’ve been able to keep candidates happier and get ahead of potential issues earlier.
Sense has helped their teams improve communications around onboarding, background checks, and compliance with real-time, personal messaging. From the hiring process to circulating more feedback from candidates, texting has allowed Advanced Group to move faster throughout the talent lifecycle.
With a fully integrated communication engine, the team at Advanced Group now has an opportunity to be highly targeted and tactical in their outreach. As they continue to build out and execute on new SMS workflows, their ATS records are automatically updated to reflect the most relevant and current information for their growing database of contacts.
Up next, the team plans to conduct focused outreach via SMS and email to fill in numerous database fields to better match candidates with opportunities. Ensuring each candidate has an updated CV and accurate records will allow them to fill roles faster with the right people. And because moving faster and smarter is what keeps Advanced Group ahead of the game, they’re using Sense to make it happen.
Sense works with staffing firms like Advanced Group to evolve their SMS strategy and integrate communications seamlessly. To see how Sense can help you, talk to our representative today.
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