Playbook, recruitment agency
Which side of the desk is asking, and why it decides everything
Every other handover in this family works out what the question is. This one has to work out who is asking first, because the two audiences on a recruitment site are separated by a confidentiality wall rather than by a routing preference. A candidate asking about a role and a client asking about the same role are entitled to completely different answers, and material that is safe for one is a breach when it reaches the other. Get the audience wrong and the reply damages a client relationship rather than a conversation.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The handover's first job is identifying the audience rather than the topic, since the same sentence is routine from one side and confidential from the other.
- The confidentiality runs in both directions: nothing about a named candidate goes to a client contact, and nothing about a vacancy's internals goes to a candidate.
- A pay query from a temporary worker has a same day quality that a client enquiry does not, because somebody short paid this week cannot wait for a consultant to be free.
- Employment status and rights questions arrive from candidates in a form that sounds administrative, and answering them in the agency's name creates exposure the agency never priced in.
How it arrives
- can i speak to my consultant
- who is dealing with the vacancy we briefed
- my pay is short this week who do i talk to
- why was i rejected for that role
- what is the client actually looking for
- can someone call me about a role we want to fill
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Who handles candidates and who handles clients | The desks, the inboxes and the numbers, split by audience and by sector if you work that way. The routing is the substance of this page, and it is the thing agencies keep in their heads rather than on the site. |
|---|---|
| The payroll contact and the pay cycle | Who to contact about pay, when the pay run happens, the timesheet deadline, and what to do about a shortfall. A pay problem needs somebody who can open the payroll record the same day, and that route belongs inside the handover wording. |
| What is confidential to each side | Candidate details, client identities, submission lists, feedback, budgets. Writing this down is what lets the assistant refuse confidently instead of improvising a boundary in the moment. |
| Your response times for each audience | How quickly a candidate hears back and how quickly a client does. These usually differ, and the handover should only promise the one that matches whoever is asking. |
The reply
It would help to know whether you are looking for work with us or looking to hire, because the two go to different teams. Either way I cannot discuss a named candidate or the detail behind a particular vacancy, since both sides of that are confidential. If it is about pay for a shift you have worked, tell me and I will flag it as urgent for payroll. Otherwise leave your name, your email and one line on what it is about and the right consultant will come back to you.
It asks the audience question first because everything downstream depends on it, and asking is cheaper than routing wrongly. Stating the confidentiality once, in both directions, saves the assistant from arguing about it later in the conversation. Singling out pay is deliberate, since that is the one enquiry here where a day's delay has a real cost to the person asking.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any named person or named vacancy enters the conversation, or the message concerns pay, an outcome or a live role.
I cannot discuss a named candidate or the detail of a particular vacancy, so let me get you to the right person. Tell me whether you are looking for work or looking to hire, leave your name and email, and the right consultant will pick it up.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say anything about a named candidate, including whether they exist on the database.
- Never describe what a client is really looking for, or what the budget is.
- Never say who else has applied for or been submitted to a role.
- Never answer a question about employment status, notice or holiday entitlement for an individual.
Questions
- Why not just route everything to one inbox?
- Because the two audiences are separated by confidentiality rather than by convenience, and a candidate enquiry read by whoever handles client accounts is an awkward mistake at best. Asking one question in the chat is the cheapest way to get it right.
- Should pay queries really be treated differently?
- Yes. Somebody short paid this week is not interested in a process explanation and will not wait, so the payroll route belongs inside the handover wording where it appears in the first reply rather than in a document the assistant has to match.
- Candidates ask why they were rejected. Can it soften that?
- It can be kind about the refusal without answering it. The reason belongs to a consultant who can give it properly, and a guess or a generic reassurance from a widget is worse than a short honest handover.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- The word fees means two opposite things on a recruitment siteOne site, two prices. A candidate is never charged, and a client wants a percentage of salary or a margin inside an hourly rate.
- Why a hiring manager cannot get a number out of one messageA recruitment quote is arithmetic on a salary nobody has settled yet. What may be said about contingent, exclusive and retained work.
- Nobody got back to me, and the three complaints hiding in itThe commonest complaint here is hearing nothing after applying, and it is the one an assistant cannot resolve. What it can honestly do.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.