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Use case

Candidates go cold while you are in another call

The candidate remembers exactly what you promised and exactly when. You promised them an update by Friday, and Friday had nine interviews in it. This is a set-up for the promises that live between calls.

Start with GoogleRead how phone-call reminders work
A recruiter on a headset taking a call at their desk

Where a recruitment desk actually leaks

None of these are failures of effort. They are all the same failure: a commitment made inside a conversation, while you were not in a position to write it anywhere that rings.

  • The promise made mid-call

    You are on with a candidate, you say "I'll come back to you Thursday morning", and the next call starts before you have finished typing the note. Thursday morning arrives with its own nine calls in it.

  • The client who went quiet

    You sent the shortlist on Monday. It is now the following Tuesday and nobody chased, because chasing was never a task anywhere — it was an assumption that they would reply.

  • The candidate who took the other offer

    They had two processes running. Yours went four days without contact during the offer window. Theirs did not. Nothing was mishandled; something was just slower than somebody else.

  • The interview that needed a nudge first

    The candidate needed the joining link, the name of who they are meeting and the format, sent the day before. It was in your head at 17:00 and gone by 17:10.

A callback is a person, not a line of text

A generic to-do that says "follow up Sarah" is useless at 16:00 on a Thursday, because by then you have three Sarahs and no number in front of you. Timelee has a Call reminder kind: you set it against the contact, and the number comes with it.

When the reminder arrives you are one tap from the call rather than one search away from it. That gap — the search, the scroll, the "I will do it after this next thing" — is where most follow-ups die.

Attach a note and you get the context too: what stage they are at, what you promised, what the client said. The prompt arrives holding the thing you would otherwise have to go and find.

  • The number travels with the reminder
  • A note on the reminder carries the last thing that was said
  • Free-text tags such as a role reference or a client name keep one desk separate from another
A recruiter making a call at their desk

Built for the week a recruitment desk actually has

Your week is not a project plan. It is a large number of small promises with different owners and different clocks.

  • Call reminders

    Set the callback against the contact when you agree it, not when you get back to your desk.

  • Priority view

    Four levels — Low, Medium, High, Urgent — and a second view of the same list that regroups it into First, Then and Later. Friday's promises sort above Friday's admin.

  • Per-day repeats

    Switch on the individual days yourself. A Tuesday and Thursday candidate-pipeline sweep is two toggles, not two reminders.

  • Tags per role or client

    Type them inline as you capture: !high for priority, #role-4412 for the tag, @work for the category, all on one line.

  • Hand one to a colleague

    Assign a reminder to someone on your team. They accept or decline, so "sent" and "taken" are visibly different things.

  • A record of the chase

    Completed reminders stay in History. Useful when a client asks when you last spoke to a candidate and you would rather know than guess.

A follow-up you meant to make on Thursday is one the other side has already stopped waiting for.

Speed is most of the service you are selling. The reminder has to arrive somewhere you will see it during a working day that is mostly other people talking.

A set-up that survives a nine-interview day

Twenty minutes once, then it runs itself.

  1. Capture the promise inside the call

    Quick add takes one line and an Enter. Type the promise and the tag while the person is still talking — the point of quick add is that capture never stalls. The date and the delivery can be added later.

  2. Set the delivery by consequence, not by habit

    Most chase-ups sit fine on a plain alarm or an App Call. The offer-stage candidate and the client update that is already a day late are the two or three a week that deserve a real phone call.

  3. Add a pre-alarm to anything you cannot do instantly

    A 30-minute pre-alarm before an interview gives you time to send the link and read the CV again. A 5-hour one on a Friday client update means you write it before the afternoon disappears.

  4. Run the list down in Focus mode

    Fifteen minutes between calls, one item at a time on screen: Enter marks it done, S skips it. It is a way of clearing the list rather than re-reading it.

You cannot point an automated call at a candidate

Timelee only places a phone call to a number whose owner has confirmed it with a one-time code. The phone-call channel reminds you to make the call. It does not call your candidates for you, and it was deliberately built so it cannot be turned into that.

Start with the three promises you make most often

Sign in with Google and put this week's callbacks in as Call reminders against the contacts. Free to start. Phone calls use credits.

Start with GoogleSee how delivery works

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