Reminders for interviews, start dates and guarantee periods
The four dates the Recruiting pack reminds you about, from a vacancy's closing date to the end of a guarantee period, and what consultants still diarise.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Recruitment businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
A placement can be lost over something as small as a forgotten Tuesday. The shortlisted candidate books a different interview for the same morning. The start date slips because nobody confirmed it with the client's HR office. Or the guarantee period quietly runs out while the consultant is busy on a new brief, and the agency only hears later that the new hire had been unhappy for weeks.
Recruitment desks live by dates, and most agencies keep them in a mix of calendars, sticky notes and one consultant's memory. The Recruiting & staffing pack in Achekam's Industry CRM keeps Vacancies, Candidates with their interviews, and Placements followed through the guarantee period, so the dates sit on the records that own them. Around four of those dates the pack sends reminders. Here is what they are, how they go out, and what your team still tracks by hand.
The four reminder points
The pack's reminders hang on four moments in the life of a vacancy:
| Date on the record | When the reminder comes |
|---|---|
| The vacancy's closing date | Tied to the closing date |
| A candidate's interview | The day before the interview |
| A placed candidate's start date | Tied to the start date |
| The end of a placement's guarantee period | 14 days before it ends |
Closing date. A closing date is a promise to the client: by then you will either send a shortlist or explain why there is none. A reminder on that date stops a quiet vacancy from drifting past its deadline unnoticed.
Interview, the day before. A nudge the evening before gives a candidate the chance to say they can no longer make it while there is still time to tell the client and offer another slot.
Start date. The first day is where offers fall through: a counter-offer accepted at the last minute, a missing contract, a client who forgot to arrange access. A reminder tied to the start date prompts the consultant to confirm both sides are ready.
The guarantee period ending, 14 days before. Agency terms usually promise a rebate or a replacement if the placed person leaves within an agreed guarantee period. Two weeks' notice of its end leaves time for a proper check-in with the client and the new hire before that guarantee period closes, rather than discovering a problem after the window has shut.
E-mail and in-app only
Reminders go by e-mail and appear inside the app. There is no SMS and no WhatsApp channel.
That matters in recruitment, where candidates often reply to a quick message on their phone long before they open an inbox. Two practical consequences follow:
- Keep e-mail addresses accurate. In this pack every candidate is a customer in their own right, never filed under the client, so the candidate's own record must carry an address they actually read.
- If your desk relies on WhatsApp for interview confirmations, keep doing that by hand. The pack's reminder is a backstop, not a replacement for the consultant's own message.
Off until an administrator switches each one on
Every reminder that goes out to a customer stays off until a workspace administrator switches it on. Activating the pack does not start e-mailing your candidates or clients.
That gives you a moment to decide, one reminder at a time, before anything is sent. A short checklist for that decision:
- Agree internally which of the four reminders candidates and clients should receive.
- Confirm that the candidates concerned have agreed to hear from you by e-mail, in line with your data-protection notice.
- Make sure vacancies, interviews and placements carry their dates, since a reminder can only follow a date that is on the record.
- Tell consultants which reminders are switched on, so nobody sends a duplicate message of their own.
Sent once, within a daily cap
Each reminder is sent at most once, and sending is limited by a daily cap. The pack is built to nudge, not to chase, and it is not a bulk-mailing tool for your talent pool.
Read that as a division of labour. If a candidate does not respond to the reminder before an interview, a consultant picks up the phone. If an interview is moved, update the date on the record and do not assume the candidate has been reminded about the new time; confirm it yourself.
What consultants still diarise
The reminders cover four dates. Much of the risk in a placement sits in between them, and the pack leaves these with your people:
- Offer and acceptance. The deadline a client sets for an offer, and the candidate's answer.
- Notice periods and counter-offers. The weeks between resignation and start date are when a current employer tries to keep the candidate.
- Checks. The pack runs no background checks and does no automatic CV parsing or candidate scoring, so screening and references remain a consultant's work.
- Client feedback. Chasing the client after each interview, so candidates are not left waiting.
- The fee. Invoicing the placement fee when your terms say it falls due. How that reaches your books is covered in posting placement fees to the ledger.
- Check-ins during the guarantee period. The placement workflow schedules check-ins until the guarantee period ends; the conversations themselves are yours. See the follow-up period after a placement.
Where the dates come from
Reminders are only as good as the dates behind them, and those dates come from your terms of business. In South Africa, APSO's codes of professional practice bind its member agencies and leave fees and guarantee periods to what the agency and client agree, so the length of each guarantee period on your placements should match the signed terms for that client, not a habit carried over from another one.
Before the pack goes live in your workspace, pull up a handful of recent placements and list every date that mattered in each one. Mark which of them the four reminders would have caught and which a consultant would still have needed to remember. That list becomes your desk routine on the day an administrator switches the reminders on.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
