What a Recruitment Firm Should Hand Off First

A recruitment desk earns its fees in conversations: the candidate who is quietly open to a move, the hiring manager who needs a nudge, the offer that needs a steady hand. Everything around those conversations is admin, and the admin grows with every open role. Longlists to build, interview slots to juggle across time zones, CVs to reformat, references to chase, an ATS that only tells the truth when someone updates it. Here is how a staffing firm hands that work to one point of contact and gets its recruiters back on the phone.

Start with sourcing and longlists

Sourcing is the biggest block of quiet time on any desk, which makes it the first thing to hand over. Your assistant builds and refreshes longlists to the brief you set, using Boolean searches in LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed and the job boards you already pay for, then screens profiles against the must-have criteria and adds them to your ATS with tags and source notes.

• Longlists built to your brief and refreshed for repeat roles
• Profiles screened against the criteria you set
• Candidates added to Bullhorn, JobAdder or Vincere with tags
• First-touch outreach and InMail sequences you have approved

Then the interview diary

Every interview is a chain of messages between a candidate, a hiring manager and a recruiter, often in three different time zones. Your assistant owns that chain: screening calls booked through Calendly or your recruiters' diaries, client slots coordinated, confirmations and video links sent, reschedules handled and feedback collected afterwards. Your recruiter hears about it when it is booked, not while it is being arranged.

Keep the ATS honest

An ATS nobody trusts is worse than no ATS, because people stop looking at it and start relying on memory. Your assistant updates stages, notes and activities after every touchpoint, merges duplicates, archives closed roles and keeps candidate documents where the next person can find them. Job ads are posted and refreshed on Indeed, LinkedIn and SEEK on the cadence you agree.

CVs, references and placement paperwork

Formatting a CV to the agency template is not recruiting, but it has to happen before a client sees anything. Your assistant formats CVs to your branding, prepares submission packs, chases references and ID documents, and prepares onboarding paperwork once an offer is accepted. Placed candidates get a check-in message during their first weeks, so the relationship does not end on the start date.

We screen against the criteria you set. Hiring judgements, fees and offers stay with your recruiters.

Reporting your clients will actually read

Clients want to know where their roles stand without a phone call. Each week your assistant prepares a short update per client: open roles, candidate stages, interviews booked and documents outstanding, pulled from the ATS you now trust. The same summary lands on your desk, so you know where every placement stands before the Monday meeting.

The order that works

Firms that get the most from support hand over the work in roughly this sequence. Each step frees a block of recruiter time before the next one begins:

• Sourcing and longlists for the roles you place most often
• Interview scheduling and confirmations
• ATS hygiene and job ad posting
• CV formatting and submission packs
• References, onboarding paperwork and client reporting

Before any of it starts, an NDA is signed and you decide which systems and permissions your point of contact gets. Overlap hours are arranged for the US, UK, Canada or Australia so interviews can be booked while your recruiters and clients are at their desks, and hours flex up for a large client project and back down when it closes.

See staffing and recruitment support

The free 30-minute call is where we go through how your desk runs today and agree what to hand over first. There are no setup fees, and the first tasks are usually the ones above.