More client vacancies won
Respond while the hiring manager is still deciding who to brief, rather than after another agency has sent a shortlist.
AI for Recruitment Agencies
Your consultants are billing. Or they’re updating records.
Candidate and client enquiries answered the moment they arrive, qualified against your criteria and written back to the ATS — so consultants spend the day on the conversations that place people.
A voice AI agent answers the phone in and out of hours, establishes whether it is a candidate, a client or a new vacancy, captures what the role actually needs, books the conversation into a live diary and updates the record. Anything commercially sensitive goes straight to a consultant.
Client vacancies, candidate calls and out-of-hours applications, handled around the clock.
- Answered between calls
- Qualified before the consultant dials
- Booked into live diaries
- Written back to the ATS
Two ways recruitment time is currently lost
The inbox is doing the work of a workflow engine.
A new requirement arrives by email. A CV lands. A client replies. An interview time changes. A candidate sends a document. Every one of them needs a person to notice it and translate it into an action somewhere else.
Email is excellent communication technology. It is not a workflow engine, and neither is a phone that rings while the consultant who could answer the question is on another call.
The same applies to the telephone. If a hiring manager rings about a new vacancy and the consultant is unavailable, the realistic options today are a message, a notification or a note to call back — none of which is the vacancy being captured.
Workflow: Enquiry arrives → identified and qualified → routed to a desk → conversation booked → ATS updated
- Establish whether it is a candidate, a client or a new vacancy
- Capture the role, location, rate and start date
- Confirm whether the client is already on terms
- Identify which consultant or desk should own it
- Check a candidate against the criteria for registration
- Book the conversation into a live diary
- Escalate anything commercially sensitive to a person
- Write the record back to the ATS rather than a notepad
Two ways recruitment time is currently lost
The consultant is the integration layer.
The ATS holds the history. The inbox holds the conversation. The calendar holds the availability. The phone holds everything that was actually said.
Between them sits a consultant, carrying information from one system to the next by hand. They do it least reliably on the days they are busiest, which are the days it matters most.
None of that work requires recruitment judgement. It requires something to happen reliably, which is a different problem and a much easier one to solve.
Workflow: System event → recognised → action prepared → consultant picks up the conversation
- Recognise an assignment ending and start the redeployment conversation
- Surface candidates already in the database when a vacancy matches
- Chase a missing document without anyone remembering to
- Acknowledge and qualify a client enquiry outside office hours
- Update the record after a conversation, not at the end of the day
- Keep the candidate and client journeys moving in parallel
- Raise the follow-up that would otherwise be forgotten
- Give the consultant the detail before the call, not on it
Recruitment splits cleanly into two kinds of work.
Automate the movement of information. Keep the judgement.
Understanding what a client actually needs, persuading a good candidate to consider something unplanned and rescuing an offer that is falling apart are not automation problems. Searching, scheduling, chasing and recording are.
We set the argument out at length in AI in recruitment: the tech stack is full, including what the research does and does not support.
The enquiry journey
From first contact to a booked conversation.
The same workflow behind the Megabite AI receptionist, applied to candidate and client enquiries rather than generic web forms.
Each stage is only built where it earns its place. An agency losing client vacancies to slow response needs something different from one whose consultants are buried in registration admin.
- Enquiry arrivesTelephone call, website form, job board application, client email, referral or messaging.
- Immediate responseInbound voice AI, outbound AI callback, SMS or email acknowledgement, with human escalation where it matters.
- Identification and qualificationCandidate or client; the role, rate, location and start date; whether the client is on terms; whether a candidate meets the criteria for registration.
- Booking and routingRegistration call, client briefing or consultant callback — routed by desk, sector, geography and who is genuinely available.
- Record and follow-upATS and CRM updated, call summary and transcript stored, confirmation sent, and the follow-up created rather than remembered.
Commercial outcomes
Consultants spending the day on conversations, not records.
What changes when information stops waiting for a person to move it.
Registration done before the call
Consultants arrive at the conversation with availability, rate expectations and right-to-work already gathered.
Redeployment that happens
Assignment endings surface as actions while there is still time to fill them, not as something somebody meant to check.
Nothing lost to evenings
Candidates apply and clients email outside office hours. Both get an answer rather than a place in tomorrow’s inbox.
Integrate before replacing
Built around the systems you already use.
Megabite improves what happens around your current systems. We do not recommend replacing a capable ATS simply to add immediate response, qualification and booking — the years of history in it are precisely what make it valuable. Where the connections themselves are the work, that becomes a systems integration question.
- Telephone number or telephone system
- Applicant tracking system
- CRM or client records
- Website and application forms
- Job boards and aggregators
- Live consultant calendars
- Email and SMS
- WhatsApp Business
- Internal notifications
Integration depends on the access, APIs and restrictions of each provider. Megabite checks feasibility before promising a connection.
More ways Megabite can improve recruitment operations.
Once the enquiry workflow is connected, the same foundations support the rest of the desk. These are expansion opportunities, not prerequisites.
Around registration and placement
- Structured registration capture. Collect right-to-work, availability, rate expectations and location consistently, before a consultant commits time to the call.
- Dormant candidate activation. Surface people already in the database when a relevant vacancy appears, rather than relying on somebody remembering them.
- Document chasing. Request and track the paperwork a placement depends on without a person following it up.
- Redeployment prompts. Recognise an assignment ending and create the conversation while there is still time to fill it.
Around vacancies and delivery
- Vacancy intake. Capture the role, rate, location and hiring process at first contact, in a consistent format.
- Interview coordination. Arrange, confirm and reschedule without a chain of six emails.
- Feedback collection. Collect interview feedback from both sides while it is still fresh enough to be useful.
- Reporting dashboards. Assemble the placement, margin and activity reporting that currently takes somebody a morning.
Implementation
A focused implementation, not a major systems replacement.
Every agency connects a different combination of telephone system, ATS, job boards, calendars and CRM. The figures below are starting points, not fixed quotations.
Lead Recovery Review
Free. The starting conversation: a short commercial review of how candidate and client enquiries currently arrive, what happens when consultants cannot answer, and where vacancies may be going to whoever responded first.
Recruitment Lead Recovery Setup
From £1,500. Covers the selected call answering, voice AI, qualification, booking and ATS workflow. Where the figure lands depends on how many channels and systems are connected and how complex the qualification rules are.
Managed service
From £195 per month. Covers hosting, monitoring, workflow management, voice AI configuration and an agreed monthly usage allowance. It scales with enquiry volume and the number of workflows being maintained.
These are starting points rather than fixed prices, and vary with the level of integration involved. Additional usage is charged according to connected call minutes and agreed messaging usage. Multi-desk and complex ATS implementations are scoped separately. You receive a firm figure after the review, not before. Prices exclude VAT or IVA where applicable.
Straight answers
What agencies ask before starting.
The workflow draws on workflow automation and controlled AI automation. Neither is the point—the booked conversation is.
Do we have to replace our ATS?
Almost never. The ATS is usually where the history lives, and that history is why it is valuable. Megabite builds the response, qualification and booking workflow around it and writes records back into it. Where the connections themselves are the work, that is a systems integration question rather than a replacement one.
Will candidates and clients be stuck talking to AI?
No. The agent handles identification, qualification and booking, which is the repetitive part. Anything commercially sensitive, any negotiation and anything the rules do not cover goes to a consultant, with the detail already gathered so the conversation starts further forward.
Can it decide which candidates progress?
It can surface candidates and check them against agreed criteria. It should not be making the rejection decision. The ICO has made automated recruitment decisions a specific regulatory focus, and solely automated decisions with a significant effect on a candidate bring additional UK GDPR obligations. Qualification and scheduling are a different matter from selection.
Which workflow should we start with?
One, not ten, and one with a measurable outcome. In practice that is usually client enquiry response, candidate registration, interview coordination or redeployment of contractors approaching the end of an assignment. Which one depends on where information currently stops moving in your agency.
Can you integrate with our ATS and CRM?
Often, but it depends on the product, your licence and the access available. Megabite checks the API, permissions and record structure before recommending an implementation, and will say plainly when a reliable connection is not possible.
Experience what your candidates and clients would experience
See a demo built around your agency.
It happens in three steps. First a short call, so we understand how enquiries reach you now and can tell you honestly whether this is worth doing. If it is, we build a lightweight demonstration around your agency. Then we call it together—you test it as a hiring manager or a candidate would, ask realistic questions and see how the qualification and booking actually work.
The call and the demonstration are both free, and the demo call takes about ten minutes. If the fit is not there, we will say so at step one rather than build something you do not need.