Recruiting Agent
Keeps candidates informed and interviews booked, without judging anybody.
What is recruiting agent?
A recruiting agent handles the administration around hiring, including acknowledging applications, answering candidate questions, arranging interviews across diaries and tracking where each applicant has reached, while every decision about a person stays with your hiring team.
A job advertised in Kenya can draw eight hundred applications in a week. Most never receive a reply, not because anybody intended that but because acknowledging eight hundred people is genuinely a lot of work.
Meanwhile the candidates you actually want are waiting. Arranging a panel interview takes days of messages, and strong applicants accept elsewhere while your process is still finding a slot.
An agent acknowledges everybody, answers the questions candidates ask, and books interviews across the panel diaries. It does not read a CV and form a view about the person, because that judgement belongs to your hiring team.
What we refuse to score
Duara builds recruiting agents from Nairobi for employers and agencies whose application volume has outgrown the people processing it.
We will not build automated candidate scoring or ranking. A model trained on who you hired before will reproduce whatever pattern is already in that history, and it will do so invisibly and at scale. Screening tools that claim to rank people fairly are making a claim we are not willing to make on your behalf.
Who this is for
- One advert draws hundreds of applications
- Candidates never hear back
- Interview scheduling takes days of messages
- Good applicants accept other offers first
Industries we serve
- Recruitment agencies
- Banking and financial services
- Retail and hospitality groups
- Manufacturing
- BPO and call centres
- NGOs and development
Problems this solves
These are throughput problems in hiring administration, which is separate from the question of who to hire.
- Applications never acknowledged. Hundreds of people hear nothing, which costs you a reputation among exactly the people you may want to hire later.
- Scheduling takes days. Finding a slot across a panel takes a week of messages, and strong candidates accept elsewhere during it.
- Candidate questions unanswered. Applicants asking about the role, location or salary band get no reply, so they disengage.
- No view of the pipeline. Nobody can say how many candidates are at each stage or where applications are stalling.
What we deliver
Every application acknowledged, candidate questions answered from your own job information, interviews booked across panel diaries, and pipeline stages tracked so stalls are visible.
Acknowledgement to every applicant
Answers to candidate questions about the role
Interview booking across panel diaries
Pipeline tracking by stage
Reminders before interviews to reduce no shows
Reporting on where applications stall
Features
- No scoring, ranking or rejection. The agent never forms a view about a candidate. It moves the process, and people make the decisions.
- Everybody gets a reply. Acknowledgement to all applicants, which is entirely administrative and currently the most common failure in hiring.
- Panel scheduling handled. Interview slots negotiated across several diaries, which is where most of the calendar delay sits.
- Questions answered from your advert. Responses come from your own job information, so it cannot invent a salary band or a start date.
- Stalls made visible. Where candidates sit waiting is reported, and it is usually one stage rather than the process generally.
Benefits
- Faster time to interview. Removing the scheduling delay is often the difference between hiring your first choice and your third.
- Your employer reputation holds. Candidates who were treated properly apply again and speak well of you regardless of the outcome.
- Recruiters do recruiting. Time moves from administration to actually assessing and persuading candidates.
- The bottleneck becomes visible. Stage reporting usually shows the delay sits in one specific place, which is fixable once seen.
Technologies we use
- Application intake. Collecting applications from job boards, email and your careers page into one pipeline.
- Grounded candidate answering. Responses drawn from your own advert and role information rather than general knowledge.
- Panel diary negotiation. Finding interview slots that work across several interviewers and the candidate.
- Stage tracking. Recording where every applicant has reached so stalls surface in reporting.
- ATS integration. Writing to your applicant tracking system where you have one, rather than creating a parallel record.
We deliberately do not build the CV scoring layer that most recruitment AI sells. The rest of the pipeline is administrative and safe to automate; that part is not.
How the process works, step by step
A recruiting agent usually takes four to six weeks, and the scope conversation about scoring happens at the start.
-
Step 1
Free hiring review
We measure your application volume, acknowledgement rate and how long scheduling actually takes.
-
Step 2
Scope agreed
We confirm what the agent will and will not do, including our position on candidate scoring.
-
Step 3
Acknowledgement live
Every applicant starts receiving a reply, which is the fastest improvement available and carries no risk.
-
Step 4
Scheduling added
Panel booking goes live once interviewers agree how their availability should be treated.
-
Step 5
Pipeline reporting
Stage tracking and stall reporting follow, once enough candidates have moved through to show a pattern.
Quality assurance and how we work
The commitments attached to a system that touches hiring.
- It never scores or ranks candidates. A model trained on who you hired before reproduces whatever pattern is in that history, invisibly and at scale. We will not build it.
- It never rejects anybody. Rejection is a decision about a person and it stays with your hiring team, including the wording that goes out.
- It answers only from your advert. Candidate questions are answered from your own role information, so it cannot invent a salary band or a start date.
- Candidate data stays yours. Applications remain in your systems, are not exported to us, and no public AI model is trained on them.
- We say no to scoring requests. Clients ask for automated shortlisting regularly and we decline it rather than building it quietly with a disclaimer.
Frequently asked questions about recruiting agent
Does it screen or shortlist candidates?
No, and we will not build that. A model trained on your past hires reproduces whatever pattern is already in that history, invisibly and at scale.
Can it rank applicants for us?
No. We decline this request rather than building it quietly with a disclaimer attached. Ranking people is your hiring team decision.
Does it reject anybody?
Never. Rejection is a decision about a person and stays with your team, including the wording of the message.
So what does it actually do?
Acknowledges every application, answers candidate questions, books interviews across panel diaries and tracks pipeline stages.
Will it reply to all applicants?
Yes, which is entirely administrative and currently the most common failure in hiring at volume.
How does it answer candidate questions?
From your own advert and role information, so it cannot invent a salary band, location or start date.
Can it schedule panel interviews?
Yes, and this is where most calendar delay sits, so it is usually where the time saving shows first.
Will it reduce our time to hire?
Removing scheduling delay usually does. We measure against your current figures rather than quoting a number.
Does it work with our ATS?
Most common systems, yes, writing into your existing records rather than creating a parallel pipeline.
What if we have no ATS?
It can run standalone, though we will usually suggest a simple one, since a pipeline with no system behind it is hard to report on.
Can it handle high volume adverts?
Yes, and volume is where it matters. Eight hundred applications is exactly the case where acknowledgement breaks down manually.
Does it send interview reminders?
Yes, which reduces candidate no shows and protects your interviewers time.
Can candidates reach a person?
Always. Anything the agent cannot answer from your role information goes to a recruiter.
Does it work over WhatsApp?
Yes, and for many roles in Kenya this reaches candidates far more reliably than email.
How long before it is acknowledging applicants?
Four to six weeks, with the scope conversation about scoring happening at the very start.
Can agencies use it for client roles?
Yes, with candidates and pipelines separated by client.
What hiring reporting comes with it?
Volume by stage and where applications stall, which usually points at one specific step rather than the process generally.
Does it help with job adverts?
It can draft from your own role information, though the final wording stays with you since it sets expectations you must meet.
Is candidate data protected?
Yes. Applications stay in your systems, are not exported to us, and no public AI model is trained on them.
What does hiring administration cost per role?
Application volume and role count determine it, quoted against your own hiring figures before anything is agreed.
Glossary of terms
Hiring terms in plain language.
- Applicant tracking system
- The software holding your candidates and their stage in the process, usually shortened to ATS.
- Pipeline stage
- Where a candidate has reached, from application through to offer.
- Time to hire
- The elapsed time from advert to accepted offer, which scheduling delay inflates more than anything else.
- Acknowledgement
- Confirming to an applicant that their application arrived, which most employers fail to do at volume.
- Panel interview
- An interview with several interviewers, which is the hardest kind to schedule.
- Candidate experience
- How applicants are treated regardless of outcome, which affects whether they or their friends apply again.
Related services in AI Agents
Talk to us about recruiting agent
Check how many applicants for your last role received any reply at all. That number is usually the place to start.
Start your project