Reach candidates on the channel they actually read

We are specific about this because vendors usually are not. WhatsApp is generally available for India-market recruiting at Wave 1. That is where the sending infrastructure has been running, where the provider relationships are established, and where real volume has already been through the pipes. If you run an India delivery centre, a US-IT staffing bench with sourcers in Hyderabad or Pune, or a domestic Indian permanent desk, WhatsApp is a working part of the product from the first day of the trial.

US WhatsApp sending is Wave 2. The blocker is not the code path; it is Meta template approval against the sending number and message category, which is a queue nobody outside Meta controls. Until a template is approved for your number, a US desk should plan on email and phone, with WhatsApp available as an inbound channel where candidates message you first. We would rather write that here than sell a US trial on a channel that will not send in week one.

WhatsApp separates messages into two kinds. Inside twenty-four hours of a candidate's last inbound message you are in an open session and can send free-form text, documents, images and voice notes. Outside that window you can only send a template that was approved in advance. Every recruiter who has used WhatsApp seriously has been caught by this once, usually at hour twenty-six with a half-typed follow-up that quietly fails to deliver.

The composer shows the window rather than hiding it. When the session is open you see the time remaining on the conversation. When it has closed, the free-text box is replaced by the approved templates you can still send, so the recruiter picks one instead of discovering the failure the next morning. Sequence steps behave the same way: a step that falls due outside an open session resolves to its template variant, or waits, rather than silently dropping.

A template is a fixed message body with numbered variables, submitted to Meta and approved by category before it can be sent outside a session. Approval takes anywhere from minutes to several days and can be rejected for tone, for a promotional framing, or for reading like a broadcast. Recruitment templates that get approved and get answered tend to be short, specific, and obviously about a role the person might want.

Surhires stores your approved templates with their variable mapping to CRM fields, so first name, role title, client city, rate and consultant name fill from the structured record rather than being pasted in by hand. Each template carries its live status, which means a recruiter cannot select one that is still pending or has been rejected. The library is per tenant, because your approvals belong to your number and not to ours.

Every candidate record carries whether messaging consent was captured, when it was captured, through which channel, and what wording the candidate was shown. Consent can arrive from a web form, an application, a career-portal checkbox, or a recruiter recording a verbal agreement during a call. It is a typed field on the record rather than a line in a notes box, so it can be filtered, reported on and exported.

Suppression is enforced at send time rather than at list-build time. When a candidate replies STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE, the record is suppressed for that channel immediately, and every queued message, sequence step and bulk send re-checks the suppression state in the second before it goes out. A list assembled on Monday cannot message somebody who opted out on Tuesday afternoon. Whether a given campaign is lawful still depends on how you configure and send it; what the product gives you is the field, the keyword handling and a single enforcement point.

The failure mode of WhatsApp recruiting without a CRM is familiar. The conversation lives on one recruiter's handset, and when that recruiter leaves, the relationship, the promises made about rate and start date, and the evidence of both leave with them. A shared business number changes the arithmetic. Inbound messages route to the owning recruiter, appear in the candidate's activity stream next to email and call notes, and stay readable by the desk after a handover.

Inbound handling also does useful work before a human reads it. Replies are classified by intent, so a clear yes raises a task and moves the record while an out-of-office does not. Follow-up nudges chase a conversation that went quiet at an interval you set, and stop the moment the candidate answers. Nothing is sent on a candidate's behalf and nothing is auto-negotiated; the assistance stops at drafting, classifying and reminding.

It does not turn a cold list into a warm one. WhatsApp is a permissioned channel and it punishes bulk sending to people who did not ask for it: quality ratings drop, template categories get restricted, and sending limits tighten on the number your whole desk depends on. The right use is a candidate you have already spoken to, an applicant who applied to you, or a pool that opted in knowingly.

It is also not a replacement for the telephone. WhatsApp is excellent for confirming a slot, chasing a document, sending directions to an interview and keeping a passive candidate warm between roles. It is a poor place to negotiate a salary, deliver a rejection or manage a counter-offer. The product will not stop you doing any of that; it will keep an exact record of what you did.