RSSM Digital First Interview Edition December 2019 | Page 5

COMMENTS FROM FIRST
INTERVIEW
Looking for work? Your next job interview might
just come by text message
Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY
When the text message popped up on his iPhone,
Malcolm Barnes was skeptical. Could this really be
from a recruiter? Sure, he had applied online for
a job. But in the era of data breaches, spam, and
scams, he wasn’t sure whether to trust it.
“I’ve always had face-to-face interactions when
hiring people (myself) or when I was looking for a
job,” the 28-year-old says.
As it turned out, the text was legit. He never met
the recruiter who sent the messages. A month or
so after the initial text, Barnes was hired as a senior
patient care technician at Community Heart and
Vascular Hospital in Indianapolis.
Texting has become a fairly routine staple of com-
munication today. Many of us don’t give a second
thought to having relationships in our personal
lives almost entirely by text, it seems. But as the
portal to that dream job, texting is still pretty for-
eign to most of us.
Texting for a job instead of a more traditional
screener phone call is becoming more common.
Depending on the role the company is trying to fill,
texting may take you and the recruiter fairly deep
into the courting process.
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For Barnes, after a little research to confirm the
recruiter’s identity, that text exchange began his
hiring journey – covering his qualifications, avail-
ability and even his salary requirements. It was well
into the process that he finally got to connect with
his prospective bosses in person.
That said, we may not yet be to the point of total
comfort going from the first contact to the first day
on the job via text. In some ways, texting for hire
parallels online dating, says Aman Brar, CEO of
Jobvite, whose text-based interviewing platform
Canvas is used by, among other places, the hospital
that hired Barnes.
“In most cases, you are going to have a few live
dates before you get hitched and spend the rest of
your life together,” Brar says.
The path to most upper management positions, as
well as doctors, lawyers, and other professionals
will typically still play out the old fashion way and
barely rely on text-based recruitment if at all. But
Brar says his company’s text platform is used by
airlines hiring pilots, hospitals hiring nurses, and
employees in manufacturing
Jared Bazzell, talent acquisition manager at CDW, a
tech-solutions provider for businesses, says the mo-
bile phone has changed recruiting. “We use texting
on the principle that we want to communicate with
our hires how they want to be communicated with,”
he says.
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