The structural reason it slips #
Every other job on a recruitment desk has something forcing it. Compliance has a start date. Payroll has a cut off. An interview has a time in a diary. An invoice has terms.
The update has none of that. It is unbilled, undated and invisible until it has been missing for long enough to matter, which makes it the perfect candidate for the bottom of a list.
Worse, the update that matters most is the one that is hardest to justify sending. When a client has not come back with feedback, the honest message is that there is no news. A consultant looking at that message thinks it is a waste of everyone's time.
What "keeping people updated" actually contains #
It is not one job. Listed out, a desk is running something like nine separate streams:
- Acknowledging an application, so somebody knows a human has it
- Telling a candidate their CV has gone to a client
- Confirming an interview and what to expect
- Saying that feedback is still outstanding
- Delivering feedback, good or bad
- Rejecting people who were never shortlisted
- Updating the client on a shortlist that is taking longer than promised
- Checking in after a placement starts
- Keeping in touch with people you would place again
Most of those are status messages. Two or three are conversations. Treating all nine as the same job is why the whole category ends up being done badly or not at all.
The admin underneath the updates #
Before anyone can be updated, the record has to be right, and that is its own tax. Firefish, a supplier to the sector, describes the daily work in a way most consultants would recognise.
copying candidate details into your CRM, cleaning half-complete candidate profiles, checking if a record already exists, fixing job titles, hunting for mobile numbers, updating notes, parsing CVs, adding people to talent pools, and switching between systems
That is a supplier describing a problem it sells against, so read it as a description rather than a measurement. As a description it is accurate.
The Totaljobs research published on 15 August 2025, covering 748 HR leaders and 2,025 jobseekers, put 3 hours per vacancy on post interview notes alone within 17.7 hours of manual admin per vacancy. That study looked at in house recruiters rather than agencies, and an agency carries the same note taking plus a second audience to relay it to.
There is also a record keeping reason to get this right. Regulation 29 of the Conduct Regulations requires records about work-seekers and hirers to be kept, and to be producible within two business days of a request. A CRM that is only as current as the last quiet afternoon is not a record you would want to rely on.
Which parts run on rules #
Runs on rules
- Acknowledging an application
- Confirming a CV has been sent
- Interview confirmations and reminders, covered in interview scheduling
- Flagging that feedback is overdue. The trigger is a date, the action is always the same
- Rejecting people who were never shortlisted, in form. It is the update most often skipped
Needs a consultant
- Delivering interview feedback. It is specific, it is often awkward, and it is why they use you
- Telling a client their process is losing them the candidate. That is a commercial conversation
Aftercare in the first weeks of a placement sits across both. The prompt is rules, the call is not.
What to do with that #
The useful question is not whether messages can be sent automatically. It is which of those nine streams your desk is currently dropping, and what they are worth.
On most desks the answer is the middle of the list: the "still waiting" update and the rejection for people who never got close, both of which are pure repetition and both of which shape whether anybody answers your call next time.
Count it before you change anything. The free tools put a number on repeated work from your own figures, and the free audit does it across the whole desk, including the parts covered in chasing candidates for compliance packs, which competes for exactly the same hour of the day.