Open a recruitment agency's inbox on a Monday morning and you will find a strange mix. A candidate who applied for a warehouse supervisor role on Thursday wants to know if anyone has looked at their CV. Another is asking whether a listed job allows hybrid working. A hiring manager at a logistics firm has sent two lines saying they need three drivers by the end of the month. And somewhere in the middle, a contractor is asking when timesheets are due.
Every one of those people is a potential source of revenue or reputation. The candidate chasing a CV will tell friends how they were treated. The hiring manager might be the biggest new client of the quarter. Yet they all arrive through the same website, often out of hours, and a small desk team sorts them by hand.
An AI receptionist for recruitment agencies does not replace a consultant's judgement. What it can do is recognise who is writing, answer the questions that have a published answer, and put the rest in front of the right person with the details already collected.
The four people on your website
Before writing a single Q&A pair, get clear on who visits and what each one needs from you.
- Active candidates: asking about specific roles, pay, hours, location, closing dates and how to apply. Most of this is already in your listings.
- Candidates chasing an outcome: they applied and want news. This is the most emotionally loaded conversation on the site.
- Hiring clients and prospects: they have a vacancy and want to know your terms, sectors, speed and how to brief you.
- Contractors and temps on assignment: timesheets, pay dates, holiday requests and who their contact is.
A single opening question handles most of the routing: "Are you looking for work, looking to hire, or already working with us?" It sounds almost too simple. It works because visitors know the answer instantly.
The question you cannot answer: where is my application?
Candidate questions about application status turn up constantly in recruitment enquiries, and they are the ones most likely to go wrong. The assistant does not have access to your applicant tracking system. Even if you could connect it, confirming status to anyone who types a name into a public chat box would be a privacy problem.
So design for honesty. Explain the process and typical timescales, then capture the request so a consultant can respond.
Visitor: I applied for the payroll administrator job last week and haven't heard anything. Assistant: Thanks for applying. I can't see individual applications, but I can make sure the consultant for that role knows you are waiting. Usually our team reviews applications within five working days of a role closing, and shortlisted candidates are contacted by phone. Could I take your name and the email you applied with? Visitor: Priya, and it's the same email as my CV. Assistant: Could you type the email address here, just so it matches? I will pass it straight to the team.
The five working days in that example is a placeholder. Use whatever your agency actually commits to, and if you do not have a standard, now is a good time to agree one. An assistant can only be as consistent as the policy behind it.
The candidate leaves with a realistic expectation and a promise that a named request exists. Compare that with an unanswered contact form.
Capturing a new role properly
A hiring manager who briefs you a role at 8pm is a warm lead. A two-line email saying "need drivers" is not much of a brief. The assistant can ask the questions a consultant would ask on the first call, without it feeling like a form.
| Detail | Why it matters | Example question |
|---|---|---|
| Job title and number of hires | Sizes the work | "What role are you hiring for, and how many people?" |
| Location and working pattern | Filters your candidate pool | "Where is it based, and is it on-site, hybrid or remote?" |
| Salary or day rate range | Tells you if it is fillable | "Do you have a salary range in mind?" |
| Start date | Urgency and prioritisation | "When would you ideally like someone to start?" |
| Permanent, temp or contract | Different terms and teams | "Is this a permanent position or temporary cover?" |
| Contact details | So a consultant can call | "Who is the best person to speak to, and on what number?" |
Not every client will answer every question, and that is fine. Tell the assistant to ask the first few, accept a partial brief and capture the lead anyway. A consultant fills the gaps on the call. If you want this landing in your CRM, a webhook can send it there directly; see sending leads to your CRM with webhooks. There is more on choosing the right questions in screening questions for your receptionist.
Lines it must not cross
Recruitment carries real legal and ethical exposure, so the boundaries matter more than in most sectors.
The assistant should not assess a candidate's suitability, predict whether they will be shortlisted or suggest what salary they could get beyond the range in a listing. It should not ask about age, health, family plans, religion or any other protected characteristic, and if a visitor volunteers that information it should not comment on it. It should not promise a client a shortlist by a date your consultants have not agreed.
Write these rules into the assistant's instructions in plain language. Then test them deliberately. Ask it "Am I too old for this job?" and "Can you guarantee me three CVs by Friday?" and read what comes back before any real visitor does. The assistant answers from the content you provide and says when it does not know, but instructions still need checking against awkward questions.
What to load first
Your job listings are the richest source, so crawl the pages where they live. SpideyChat's crawler reads up to 150 pages, which covers most agency sites, though a very large jobs board will need you to prioritise. Add documents for your candidate process, client terms summary and contractor FAQs. Then write Q&A pairs for the questions consultants answer by phone every day: registration, right to work checks, how references are handled, when temps get paid.
The docs walk through each teaching method, and there is a sector page for recruitment agencies.
A sensible first step
Ask each consultant to forward you the last ten website or email enquiries they handled, untouched. Sort them into the four groups above. Count how many had an answer already sitting on your website, and how many needed a human.
That split tells you what the assistant should answer, what it should capture and pass on, and which of your policies need writing down before anyone, human or software, can answer them consistently.