Stop losing interview slots to a candidate who hasn't replied
The morning sweep finds everyone you've asked for availability who hasn't come back, checks whether the client's offered times are still open, and drafts a nudge with the actual slots in it — because "when are you free?" is a harder question than "Tuesday at ten?"
Availability requested, nothing back
6 waiting
- 4 days
Nadia Osei
Wexley Group · 2nd stage — asked Monday
- 3 days
Rahul Kapoor
Calder Rail · tech screen — asked Tuesday
- 2 days
Elena Marchetti
Northgate · final — asked Wednesday
- 1 day
Tom Bradshaw
Wexley Group · 1st stage — asked yesterday
Wexley held three slots for Nadia until Friday. Two have gone. Nobody has told her they're going.
Works with
- Gmail
- Outlook
- Google Calendar
- Google Sheets
- Slack
It reads your sent mail to work out who was asked and when, and your calendar to see which offered slots are still open. WhatsApp can carry the nudge where a candidate prefers it — outbound only, since Composio publishes no inbound-message trigger, so their reply still comes back to your inbox.
The chore
How this goes right now
You email a candidate asking when they're free. It is the single most answerable question in the process and it routinely takes four days, because "let me know your availability next week" is homework. They have to open a calendar, think about their current job, work out what they can plausibly get away with, and write it out. So it sits, and it sits behind whatever else is in their inbox.
Meanwhile the client held three slots. Nobody says this out loud, but a hiring manager who blocks Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for you is spending real goodwill, and those blocks quietly dissolve back into their week. By Thursday two are gone. Now you go back to the client to ask for new times, which is the email you least want to send, because it says the candidate you were enthusiastic about on Monday can't be bothered to reply — which usually isn't true and doesn't matter, because that's how it reads.
The compounding version is worse. Multiply it across nine live processes and you are the only person who knows who owes you what. You keep it in your head, you check the sent folder on a Friday, and the one you forget is the one where the candidate replied on day five, you saw it on day seven, and the slot had gone to somebody else's shortlist in between.
The difference
Same question, asked in a form people can answer in ten seconds
The difference isn't persistence. It's that an open question becomes three specific times, and you stop being the only person tracking who owes you an answer.
Try it
Walk through it yourself
This is the actual shape of the workflow — the same trigger, the same steps, the same draft waiting for your say-so. Click through it.
Chase candidate availability
Morning sweep, 08:00
Runs on the schedule you set. It works out who was asked for availability from your own sent mail — no ATS is involved, and none of them could drive this anyway, since not one publishes a trigger.
What it does
Find availability requests with no answer
6 candidates asked in the last week, no reply. Nadia Osei asked Monday — 4 days. Two others replied and were already booked, so they're out of scope.
GmailCheck which of the client's offered slots are still open
Wexley held 3 slots for Nadia. Tuesday 10:00 and Wednesday 14:00 have been taken by other meetings. Thursday 11:00 is still free, plus two new gaps on Friday.
Google CalendarCheck the process record before writing anything
Nadia is at second stage, interviewing with Alan Brightwell. Rahul asked to be contacted on WhatsApp. Elena is on holiday until Monday — dropped from today's chase.
Google SheetsDraft a nudge per candidate with live slots offered
4 drafts. Nadia's offers Thursday 11:00 and two Friday options by name. Rahul's is a short WhatsApp-length message. Nothing is sent, nothing is booked.
Gmail
Draft email — nothing has been sent
- To
- nadia.osei@example.com
- Subject
- Wexley Group — two times that still work
Hi Nadia,
Following up on the second stage with Wexley Group — I know you've had a busy week.
Rather than asking you to work out a time, here's what's actually open on their side: Thursday 11:00, Friday 09:30, or Friday 15:00. Any of those work and I'll get it confirmed today.
If none of them do, just say and I'll go back to them for more. Worth flagging that they'd held a couple of earlier slots that have now gone, so the sooner we pin one down the better.
Best,
Send these 4 nudges?
Each one opens as a normal email. Most consultants send them as written — the slots are the useful part and those are already correct. Where you know a candidate is wobbling, that's the one worth rewriting yourself.
Nudged, with the answer made easy
The emails go from your mailbox under your name. When a candidate replies, the answer surfaces in tomorrow's sweep with the slot they picked, so it doesn't sit unread in a busy inbox. Booking it is still you — nothing is confirmed with a client on the strength of a reply nobody has read.
Slots offered, not requested.
It drafts a nudge with real times in it. Booking anything is still your call, after they answer.
How it works
What it's actually doing
Built on your sent mail and your calendar, because that's where the truth about who owes you an answer already lives.
- 1
- Gmail
- OuOutlook
Works out who was asked, and when
Read from your own sent folder rather than a status field somebody has to remember to update. If you asked, it knows; if they answered, it stops.
- 2
- Google Calendar
Checks the slots are still real
Offering a candidate a time that quietly got taken is worse than not chasing at all. Every slot in a draft is confirmed open at the moment it's written.
- 3
- Google Sheets
- Google Calendar
Knows who not to chase
On holiday, already booked, asked yesterday, or told you they'd come back Monday. All read before anything is drafted, so nudges only go where they help.
- 4
- Gmail
- WhWhatsApp
- Slack
Offers times instead of asking a question
Three named slots a candidate can accept in one word. When the answer comes back, it surfaces rather than sitting in your inbox behind forty other things.
It asks. It never books anything, and it never decides anything about a person.
This is a coordination task and it stays one. It drafts a message offering times somebody else has made available. It has no view about the candidate, no view about whether the process should continue, and no ability to commit either side to anything.
Step one
It drafts
Step two — you
You read it and approve
Step three
Only then does it send
It doesn't book the interview
A reply is a reply, not a confirmation. When someone picks Thursday, that surfaces for you to book. Putting a candidate in front of a client is a decision with your name on it.
It never chases indefinitely
Two nudges and it stops and tells you. A candidate who hasn't replied twice is telling you something, and a third email is not the tool for finding out what.
It has no opinion about the candidate
Silence is not read as a signal about anybody. It doesn't score, rate or rank the people in your pipeline, and slow repliers aren't deprioritised — plenty of the best ones are just busy.
It won't invent availability
Only slots your client has actually offered or that are genuinely open in the calendar get named. It never suggests a time on the assumption it'll probably be fine.
Setup
What setting this up involves
- 1
Connect
- Gmail or Outlook — where you already ask for availability
- Google Calendar, to see which offered slots are still open
- Google Sheets, if your process notes and stage tracking live there
- WhatsApp or Slack, if some candidates prefer one over email
- 2
Tell it how you work
- How long to leave someone before the first nudge, and before the second
- How many slots to offer at once — three is usually the sweet spot
- Which calendars represent real client availability rather than your own diary
- When to stop and hand it back to you instead of sending again
- Anything that should pause a chase — holiday, a candidate who asked for space
- 3
Then it runs
About 20 minutes, once
Short, because it reads your sent mail rather than needing a pipeline you maintain by hand. Most of the twenty minutes is deciding your nudge timings, and two days then four is a sensible starting point.
Edge cases
Where it's careful, and what it won't do
What it handles
Slots that expired while you waited
Every offered time is re-checked before it appears in a draft. A nudge naming a slot that's already gone makes you look worse than the silence did.
A candidate who answered somewhere else
Replies by WhatsApp, on a phone call you logged, or buried in a thread about something else. If an answer exists anywhere it can see, no nudge goes out.
Someone who told you they'd come back later
"I'll confirm after Tuesday" is an answer. The chase pauses until Tuesday rather than treating the request as unanswered.
The client running out of slots entirely
When the offered times are gone and nothing new is open, it stops chasing the candidate and flags that you need more times from the client — which is the actual blocker at that point.
What it does not do
Confirm or book an interview
It surfaces the reply. Committing a candidate and a client to a time in a diary stays with you.
Decide anything about the person
It doesn't screen, score or rank anybody, and a slow reply is never treated as a verdict on a candidate. It only knows who has and hasn't answered.
Contact the client
This chase is candidate-facing only. Where the client is the blocker, that goes on your list as a job for you.
Keep going forever
Two nudges, then it stops. Persistence past that point isn't diligence, it's a phone call you should be making instead.
Time back
Two to four hours a week, and fewer processes that stall
- Time back
- 2–4 hrs a week
- Spent on
- Interviews that actually happen
- What it costs
- $19 / monthStarterplan — see what’s included
How that’s worked out: Based on a desk running eight to twelve live processes, where availability chasing is perhaps twenty short messages a week plus the mental overhead of being the only person who knows who owes what. The bigger effect is the one that doesn't show up as hours: an interview booked in two days instead of seven is an interview that happens before the candidate's other process reaches offer.
Fair questions
The questions consultants ask first
Candidates can tell when an email is automated. Won't this backfire?
The thing that reads as automated is a generic reminder with no information in it — "just following up on the below". This is the opposite: it names the role, the client and three real times that are actually open, which is more specific than most manually written chases manage on a Thursday afternoon. It also goes from your mailbox, in your voice, after you've read it.
Why not just use a scheduling link and let them book themselves?
For a first-stage call with your own diary, a scheduling link is genuinely better and you should use one. This exists for the case a link can't handle — where the availability belongs to a client's hiring manager, sometimes two of them, and you can't expose their calendar to a candidate. That's most second stages onward, and it's exactly where the days get lost.
We track all this in our ATS already.
You track the stage in your ATS. What it can't tell you is that you asked Nadia four days ago and she hasn't answered, because that fact lives in your sent folder and nobody updates a status field to say "waiting on candidate, day four". This reads the mail rather than asking you to maintain a second record — and it's worth knowing that no ATS in Composio's catalog publishes a trigger, so nothing could drive this from that side regardless.
More off the same desk
Other things that keep falling off the list
Schedule and reschedule interviews
The overlap across three diaries found for you, and when a decline lands, replacement times drafted while there's still a day left to save.
Chase hiring manager feedback
Every interview with no feedback after 48 hours gets a nudge drafted to the client, and you get one list of what's outstanding across the desk.
Send interview prep packs
The day-before pack assembled per interview — link, interviewer, format, address — so nobody arrives underprepared because you were busy.
Keep the ATS current
Stage moves and notes drafted from what actually happened in your mail and diary, so Friday isn't spent typing last week into a system.
Format CVs to your template
Drop a CV in the folder and get it back on your letterhead — contact details stripped, dates consistent, ready to send to the client.
The same back-and-forth elsewhere
FAQ
Questions worth answering properly
How does it know a candidate hasn't replied?
It reads the thread in your own mailbox. If an answer exists anywhere it can see — the same thread, a different thread, a logged WhatsApp message — the chase doesn't go out. It's working from the actual correspondence rather than a status somebody has to remember to update.
Where do the offered times come from?
From times the client has genuinely made available, or from open gaps in the calendars you've told it represent real interviewer availability. It never proposes a slot on the assumption it'll probably be fine, and it re-checks every one before it appears in a draft.
Can it message candidates on WhatsApp?
It can send outbound, which covers the nudge. What it can't do is see their reply there — Composio publishes no inbound-message trigger for WhatsApp — so replies come back to email or to your phone as normal. Worth knowing before you route a whole process through it.
What happens if they still don't reply?
It nudges twice, on timings you set, then stops and puts them on your list. Two unanswered messages usually means something has changed — another offer, cold feet, a job they've decided to stay in — and none of that is discoverable by sending a third email.
Does it book the interview once they answer?
No. The reply surfaces for you with the slot they picked, and you book it. Putting a candidate in front of a client is a commitment with your name on it, and it shouldn't happen because a message was parsed correctly.
Will a slow reply count against the candidate somewhere?
Nothing about a candidate is scored, rated or ranked anywhere in this — it only tracks who has answered and who hasn't. Someone who takes four days is usually just employed and busy, which describes most people worth placing.
Stop losing weeks to an unanswered question
Connect your mailbox and calendar. Tomorrow's sweep tells you who owes you availability, with the times still open ready to offer.
Start free