When outreach starts
A candidate becomes eligible for outreach the moment they enter the Outreach stage. That happens automatically when:- Their resume passes review (or the job has resume scoring turned off), or
- A recruiter clicks Progress to Interview on a candidate in Resume Rejected (one at a time or in bulk from the Candidates table). Any scheduled resume-feedback email (or rejection email, if one was queued) is cancelled at the same time.
Scheduling the first attempt
Tenzo schedules each outreach attempt for the next valid slot inside your Outreach Hours, in the candidate’s local timezone.- Weekday window: configurable (default 8 a.m. – 9 p.m.).
- Weekend window: optional, configurable separately. Weekends are enabled by default.
- Timezone: taken from the candidate record. When a candidate is added, Tenzo sets the timezone from any value the ATS supplies, then falls back to the zip code, then to the candidate’s location point (for example a city/state look-up when there is no zip), then to the phone’s area code. If none of those are available, Tenzo uses your organization’s Default candidate timezone (see below); if that is left blank, Tenzo uses your organization’s timezone. UTC is used only if organization timezone data is missing.
Default candidate timezone
Default candidate timezone is an organization-wide fallback for candidates who have no timezone of their own. It only applies after Tenzo has exhausted the candidate-specific lookups above (ATS value, zip code, location point, area code) — a candidate who has any of those keeps their own timezone.- Set it under Admin → Organization & Users. It applies to your whole organization.
- Leaving it blank inherits your organization’s timezone (configured under the same Admin page).
- Set an explicit value when candidates are typically in a different region than your organization (for example, a US HQ with mostly European candidates).
Initial Outreach Method
Each job has an Initial Phone Outreach Method setting that biases how the first contact looks. There are exactly three options, shown as a three-way toggle:
Change this under Job Settings → Phone Call Outreach Settings → Initial Phone Outreach Method.
Override Outreach Hours for Initial Outreach. Below the toggle is a checkbox that lets the first outreach attempt go out as soon as the candidate is added, even outside your configured outreach hours. Outreach hours then apply only to follow-up calls and SMS. It is off by default, and it is unavailable when the method is set to Text first outside outreach hours — that option already handles the after-hours case on its own. This checkbox waives outreach hours only: if Applicant Outreach Delay is set, the first attempt still waits out that delay.
Video interview jobs
Some jobs are configured so the candidate completes their interview in the browser instead of by phone — controlled by the Call Type setting on the job. For these jobs, outreach is an email containing a link the candidate clicks to schedule and start their interview; Tenzo does not place an outbound phone call. The same retry budget and outreach-hours rules apply: each retry sends another invite email at the next valid slot. Link expiration is configurable under Job Settings → Video Interview Outreach Settings → Interview Link Expiration (default: no expiration).Retries
If a call ends in voicemail, no-answer, busy, or declined, Tenzo schedules a retry. Three settings control the cadence under Job Settings → Auto-Reschedule on Voicemail:
Every rescheduled attempt is re-bounded to outreach hours, so retries never fall outside your window. When the retry budget is used up without a successful interview, the candidate moves to Max Attempts - No Interview and Tenzo stops calling.
Incomplete interviews (Hung Up). If a candidate hangs up before finishing the scripted interview, Tenzo may schedule a follow-up call (subject to the same retry budget and outreach-hours rules). After grading, a normal screen counts as finished when all counted questions except at most one were answered — even if the candidate hung up before the wrap-up (for example when answers were carried over from a recent interview). A required knockout also counts as a finished screen as soon as that knockout ends the interview. Interviews with no questions to answer still need the wrap-up to count as finished. Tenzo stores that verdict directly instead of inferring it later from a fixed completion percentage.
Cooldown across jobs
When a candidate is added to a job and they’re already being contacted for another job at your organization, Tenzo holds them in a Cooling Down stage instead of starting a second outreach in parallel. Once the other outreach concludes, the candidate automatically resumes on the new job.Entry
A candidate is placed in Cooling Down when they’re added to a job and any of the following is true on another job at your organization:- They’re currently being reached out to.
- They have an outreach attempt queued up.
- They were called within your configured cooldown window.
While in Cooling Down
The candidate receives no outreach of any kind — no calls, texts, or emails — until they exit the stage.Exit
Cooling Down candidates exit automatically as soon as they’re ready:
The 14-day expiration takes precedence, so a candidate who has been waiting too long won’t suddenly receive a stale first contact.
Settings
Configure under Settings → Candidate Cooldown Period at the org level, with per-job overrides. Set a value to 0 to disable cooldown for that candidate type.
The day count controls only the “called within window” trigger — active outreach and queued attempts on another job will always trigger cooldown, regardless of the day setting.
UI
Stage badges: Cooling Down (orange), Cooldown Expired (gray). Cooling Down tooltip: “This candidate recently received outreach for another job. Outreach will begin automatically once the cooldown period ends.” Cooldown Expired tooltip: “This candidate was not reached in time — outreach was canceled to avoid a stale first contact.”Channel choice at send time
Right before each outbound attempt, Tenzo re-checks the situation and picks a channel:- Phone line type. If the candidate’s number is a landline, fixed VoIP, pager, or any other non-SMS-capable line, Tenzo skips SMS and falls back to a phone call (with a companion email when an email integration is connected). Non-fixed VoIP numbers (such as Google Voice) can receive texts, so they stay eligible for SMS. The line type check runs automatically and is cached for 30 days.
- Contact preferences. Tenzo respects per-channel consent. If a candidate is opted out of texts, the system tries email as a fallback. If a candidate is opted out of calls, calls are skipped; texts and email are still allowed because each channel has its own consent. The candidate record shows the current state of all three, and each change appears in the History tab (see Consent on the Candidate Record).
- International calling. By default, outbound phone interviews are only placed when the candidate’s number shares the same country calling code as the outbound number Tenzo is dialing from. Calls between the US/Canada (
+1) and Mexico (+52) are also allowed. If a destination is outside those rules, that call attempt is cancelled and the candidate stays in their current stage — Tenzo does not move them to Invalid Contact for this reason. SMS and WhatsApp are unaffected. Support can enable unrestricted international calling for an organization or individual job when needed.
When a candidate calls our number
If a candidate dials the phone number Tenzo is using to reach them, Tenzo handles the inbound call automatically:- Known number. If the inbound caller ID matches a candidate we’re already in touch with, the call resumes their most recent interview (or starts a new one for the active job). Exception: if that interview is a video interview, Tenzo rejects the dial-in and texts them (SMS or WhatsApp) to use the web interview link instead of starting a phone session.
- Unknown number. If the caller ID doesn’t match any candidate, Tenzo runs a short verification and then asks for their full name. How the caller proves who they are depends on the organization: when an email integration is connected, they read back the 8-character code from the bottom of their outreach email; for SMS-only organizations (no email integration, so there’s no code to send), they’re instead asked which phone number they applied with, or have been receiving texts from, and that number is matched against the one on file. After a successful match, an incomplete interview normally starts or resumes in the same call. If the interview is already complete, Tenzo gives a farewell and closes the call; if prior interview continuity is unavailable, Tenzo asks the candidate to try again later and closes the call without starting screening.
Phoneless candidates
When a candidate is added with an email but no phone number, Tenzo doesn’t drop them. Instead:- Phone-call jobs. Tenzo sends an outreach email (the same one it would send as a companion to SMS) and re-tries the email on the normal retry cadence. The candidate can dial the recruiter number from any phone and verify their identity to start their interview — see When a candidate calls our number above (for these email-equipped candidates that means reading back the code from the email footer). The verification flow also captures their number on the candidate record, so subsequent outreach can use it.
- Video interview jobs. The candidate receives the standard invite email with the scheduling link. If they don’t have a phone on file when they reach the interview page, they’re prompted to enter one before they begin.
What stops outreach
Outreach is halted — pending attempts cancelled, no new ones scheduled — when:- The candidate moves to Not Interested, Consent Revoked, Canceled, Dispositioned, Fraud Rejected, Failed Knockout, Opted Out, AI Interview Scheduled, Cooling Down, or another terminal stage. See Interview Stages for the full list.
- The candidate has no usable phone and no email on file, or an SMS/call hits an invalid-number error from the carrier — the candidate moves to Invalid Contact. Candidates who have email-on-file (and email consent) but no phone get an outreach email instead and remain in Outreach — see Phoneless candidates below.
- The person reached at the candidate’s phone number confirms it is the wrong number by text or during a voice call. On a voice call, Tenzo asks one clarifying question about whether the candidate is reachable at that number. If they already said something unambiguous — for example “you have the wrong number” or “I’m not [name]” — and then disconnect before the interview continues without confirming the candidate can be reached here, Tenzo still moves the candidate to Wrong Number. If someone confirms the candidate is reachable at this number but currently unavailable (e.g. at work), Tenzo does not treat it as a wrong number. A transcribed different name followed by a real interview is treated as the intended candidate.
- The retry budget is exhausted (the candidate moves to Max Attempts - No Interview).
- The job is paused. Routine outreach stops immediately, but a phone screen the candidate already scheduled still happens at that time — see Pausing a Job. Booked video interviews still depend on Allow interviews. When you unpause, Tenzo first checks interview result reuse (when enabled): if the candidate completed an identical interview while the job was paused, the existing result is applied and the application completes without restarting outreach. Otherwise Tenzo re-evaluates cooldown: candidates return to Outreach if no cooldown applies, or to Cooling Down if another job’s outreach is still active.
- Your ATS reports the candidate has been rejected or withdrawn — Tenzo cancels pending attempts and moves the candidate to Dispositioned.
Not Interested vs. Consent Revoked
These two stages look similar but behave very differently. The right one is chosen automatically based on what the candidate said.
Tenzo reads inbound SMS replies and routes the candidate to the right bucket automatically. A reply like “not interested in this role right now” lands in Not Interested. A reply like “remove me from your system” is treated as a possible opt-out, so Tenzo first sends a short confirmation question asking whether they’d still like to hear about future opportunities. If they say no (or the reply is unclear), the candidate goes to Consent Revoked — texting and AI calling are turned off (email stays intact). If they say yes, the candidate lands in Not Interested for this job only and stays eligible for other roles. A keyword-level
STOP goes straight to Consent Revoked without a confirmation step.
If a candidate does not speak the outreach language but may speak another language supported by the job, the message does not mark them as Not Interested. The candidate remains in Outreach, and normal language handling continues. If the candidate clearly cannot speak any language supported by the job, Tenzo treats that as an incompatible job requirement and moves them to Not Interested.
Sourced candidates also have a separate path to Not Interested that does not go through SMS. Outreach emails sent to sourced candidates (for example no-answer, thank-you, job-paused, and job-resumed messages) include a not interested link in the footer. Clicking it opens a web page where the candidate can confirm or cancel — the stage only changes after they confirm. Applicants see a withdraw-application link instead; this email link is for sourced candidates only.
The legacy Do Not Contact stage is no longer applied — opt-outs now land in Consent Revoked.
Other automated touches
Beyond the prospecting flow above, Tenzo can send a handful of other scheduled communications. Each has its own setting and obeys the candidate’s email preferences:- Rejection email. Optionally sent after a candidate is thumbs-downed or dispositioned in the ATS, after a configurable delay (default 48 hours, adjustable 0–336 hours per org/job), rounded to outreach hours. Not sent for a Resume Rejected outcome (that sends the resume feedback email instead). Off by default. Enable under Settings → Rejection Emails. A thumbs-down only schedules the email if Tenzo also rejects the candidate in the ATS. Skipped at send time if they are no longer thumbs-down or dispositioned.
- Resume feedback email. Sent on the same cadence as rejection emails. On by default. Configure under Settings → Resume Feedback Emails. Uses the same delay setting. Skipped at send time if the candidate is no longer Resume Rejected.
- Scheduling reminders. Pings to a candidate who agreed to schedule a call but hasn’t picked a time. These honor outreach hours.
- Meeting reminders. SMS reminders 24 hours and 1 hour before a scheduled interview. Not bounded by outreach hours, because the meeting time itself is what’s being respected.
- Video interview reminder emails. For candidates who self-scheduled a video interview, separate email reminders go out before the scheduled slot. Configure under Job Settings → Video Interview Outreach Settings → Reminder Emails (count and spacing are both configurable; default is 7 reminders, 12 hours apart).
Where to configure
Org-level defaults can be overridden per job. When a job sets its own value, that value fully replaces the org default for that job.
Related
- Interview Stages — what every stage means and how a candidate gets there
- Candidate Stage Lifecycle — the high-level pipeline view
- Available Settings — the full settings reference, with screenshots