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Overview

This page explains how a candidate typically moves through Tenzo from the moment they’re added to a job to a final disposition. For a definition of each stage by name, see Interview Stages.

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Entry points

A candidate’s first stage depends on how they enter Tenzo. Applicants synced from your ATS only enter Tenzo once their ATS application reaches the org’s configured start stage for that job — Tenzo doesn’t sync or act on an application before then, even if the candidate applied earlier. If no start stages are configured, Tenzo does not pull new applicants from the ATS (Workday can still match configured start workflow steps). Candidates already in Tenzo stay there. Candidates added from sourcing, uploads, or other Tenzo-only paths can exist on the job without an ATS application when Create ATS Application is set to If passed or No creation.
  • Most candidates start in Outreach, where Tenzo begins reaching out to schedule or conduct an interview. If the job has resume scoring configured, candidates pass through a brief, transient Awaiting Review step first while Tenzo scores the resume — most users never see this stage in the UI. Candidates whose resumes fail scoring land in Resume Rejected instead of Outreach.
  • Candidates start in Cooling Down when they recently received outreach for another job and are still inside that cooldown window.

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The happy path

Most candidates who go all the way through Tenzo follow this sequence:
  1. Outreach — Tenzo reaches out to schedule or conduct an interview.
  2. AI Interview Scheduled (optional) — for video interviews, the candidate books a time and waits for the slot.
  3. Call Completed — the interview finishes and results are available for review.

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Common branches

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Resume rejection

If the candidate’s resume doesn’t meet the job’s requirements, they land in Resume Rejected. A recruiter can override this from the candidate’s profile or the Candidates table (per row or in bulk) with Progress to Interview, which sends the candidate to Outreach so Tenzo will reach out anyway.
Candidates in Resume Rejected can also request a re-review themselves, which moves them to Re-review so a recruiter can take a second look.

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Max attempts exhausted (phone outreach)

If Tenzo uses all configured outbound attempts for phone outreach without finishing the interview, the candidate lands in one of two terminal stages depending on outcome: Max Attempts - No Interview (no interview progress—for example voicemail or zero scored progress on screened calls) or Max Attempts - Interview Not Completed (partial interview progress but not finished). The split is keyed on the candidate’s best engagement across all attempts: any answered question (completion rate above 0%) routes to Interview Not Completed, while zero engagement routes to No Interview. Tenzo stops dialing either way; the candidate may still self-schedule from a previously sent video invite where your flow supports it (then AI Interview Scheduled → Call Completed). Some older candidates may still show Outreach Attempts Exhausted instead of those split stages.
This same engagement gate decides whether an interview summary is generated. Interview Not Completed candidates engaged with the interview and receive a summary even though they never finished it; No Interview candidates never engaged and have no summary. The completion-rate threshold (default 80%) that marks a candidate above threshold for ATS stage moves is a separate check (see Above / below threshold vs call status).

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Candidate-driven branches

Candidates can steer the flow with their responses during outreach:
  • Opted Out (HUMAN_REVIEW_REQUESTED) — the candidate explicitly declined to interview with AI (web/video form, individual opt-out link, in-call opt-out, phone or SMS, or an org pre-apply opt-out) and asked for a manual review. This stage is only for human-review requests: asking not to be contacted goes to Consent Revoked, and a plain job decline goes to Not Interested. This stage is no longer used for missing consent. When required consent is missing on file (phone or web), the candidate goes to No Consent instead (see below).
  • No Consent (NO_CONSENT) — Tenzo has no consent on file to contact the candidate on any usable channel, so outreach can’t proceed. This means consent was never granted, as opposed to Consent Revoked, where the candidate had consent and later opted out.
  • Interview Accommodation Requested — the candidate asked for an accommodation for the interview process itself.
  • Work Accommodation Requested — a scored answer in a completed interview was flagged for work accommodation review and is waiting on a human reviewer. A candidate whose score already meets the passing threshold on their raw answers skips this stage, and flagged Info questions do not hold it. Despite the similar name, this is unrelated to Interview Accommodation Requested — see Interview Stages.
  • Re-review — the candidate asked Tenzo to re-review their application after a rejection or completed interview.
  • Not Interested — the candidate declined the role outright. On an AI phone screen the agent gives a brief polite close and ends the call.
  • Consent Revoked (CONSENT_REVOKED) — the candidate opted out of the channel(s) they were reachable on (texted STOP, asked by SMS or email not to be contacted, asked not to be contacted during an AI phone screen — the AI confirms they are being removed from the contact list and ends the call — or had consent revoked upstream in your ATS), leaving no usable channel. Tenzo revokes only the channels the candidate operated within: an SMS opt-out revokes texting and AI calling but leaves email intact; an email opt-out revokes only email. Opting out of a web/video AI interview is a request for manual review and lands in Opted Out, not here. (To view everyone who has revoked consent across your accessible jobs, filter the Interviews page by Interview Stage = Consent Revoked.)
  • Do Not Contact (DO_NOT_CONTACT) — a legacy stage retained for historical records. It is no longer applied to new candidates; opt-outs now land in Consent Revoked instead.
  • Not eligible for outreach (SKIP_OUTREACH) — Tenzo is not allowed to start AI outreach for this candidate and job. This can happen because your organization’s ATS or policy rules block AI outreach (for example an active placement or excluded candidate status, such as a Bullhorn excluded status or a JobDiva “unavailable” candidate), or because the job-level AI Resume Review Only setting is turned on. This does not move the candidate to an ATS “do not contact” pipeline stage, and it’s recoverable when the blocking condition clears — but recovery is not automatic from the status change alone. For Bullhorn excluded-status recovery, Tenzo re-evaluates full org outreach eligibility (owner checks, placements, consent, and other policy rules) and confirms the latest stage history shows the park came from that excluded-status path before moving the application back to Outreach. Parks from other reasons (for example an invalid calling stage at dial time) stay parked. AI Resume Review Only recovery still requires turning that setting off for the job. Some integrations (such as Innova Bullhorn) can write a configured VRA submission status when this stage is applied.
  • Dispositioned (DISPOSITIONED_IN_ATS) — the application was rejected, withdrawn, or moved out of the configured start stage in your ATS.
Opted Out, No Consent, Interview Accommodation Requested, Work Accommodation Requested, Re-review, and Consent Revoked wait for a recruiter to act (or, for Consent Revoked, for the candidate to re-consent over SMS or email); Not Interested ends Tenzo’s automated work on the candidate for this job. Four exceptions apply to Not Interested, Consent Revoked, and Do Not Contact. A candidate who calls in and completes a graded interview is automatically re-engaged back to Outreach, without waiting for a recruiter. Because they reached Tenzo by phone, this restores AI-calling consent only — their texting consent stays suppressed until they separately text in. A candidate who submits the web interview form without the AI opt-out box is re-engaged the same way (this also applies to Opted Out), whichever channel opted them out; it restores AI consent only where a channel opt-out had removed it (Opted Out itself never changes consent), and it does not apply while their texting is still suppressed by an SMS opt-out. And a candidate who texts in asking to be reconsidered (“actually I’m interested”, “can you reach back out”) is re-engaged too (this also applies to Opted Out): texting in restores their texting consent only where an opt-out had removed it, and a clear request to come back moves the job back to Outreach and restarts the text conversation; a text never restores AI calling consent that a channel opt-out removed (Opted Out leaves consent untouched, so there is nothing to restore). Any other text from one of these stages gets no automated reply; on Opted Out it is left for the recruiter who owns the conversation. And a candidate who emails in asking to be reconsidered is re-engaged the same way (this also applies to Opted Out): emailing in restores their email consent only where an opt-out had removed it, and a clear request to come back moves the job back to Outreach; an email never restores texting or AI calling consent. Any other email from one of these stages gets no automated reply; on Opted Out it is left to the recruiter.
Multi-job behavior: Consent fields live on the candidate record and apply across jobs, so a channel opt-out moves the candidate to Consent Revoked on every job that depended on the revoked channel. Policy-based Not eligible for outreach is evaluated per candidate when they are synced or added. No Consent can appear on each job where that candidate is added without sufficient consent.

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Auto-rejections

A few stages happen automatically without recruiter input:
  • Failed Knockout — the candidate answered a required knockout question in a way that disqualifies them, or — when interview result reuse applies — a prior failed-knockout result was reused without a new interview for this job.
  • Fraud rejected — automated checks flagged the application as high fraud risk.

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Cooldown

When a candidate is added to a job while still inside a cooldown window from recent outreach on another job, they land in Cooling Down. From there:
  • They move to Outreach automatically when the cooldown ends, and Tenzo begins reaching out as normal.
  • They move to Cooldown Expired if they sit in cooldown past the maximum wait (14 days). At that point, outreach is cancelled to avoid a stale first contact.
  • If interview result reuse is enabled and the candidate recently completed an identical interview for another job, they move directly to Call Completed or Failed Knockout with the reused result — no new outreach happens. This can only happen once the application is synced at the start stage, same as any other entry into Tenzo.

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Recruiter overrides

Recruiters can manually shift candidates between stages from the Tenzo app:
  • Cancel moves a candidate to Canceled and stops all further activity.
  • Progress to Interview on a rejected candidate (one at a time or in bulk from the Candidates table) moves them back to Outreach.
  • Dispositioning a candidate in the connected ATS moves them to Dispositioned in Tenzo.

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How stages reach your ATS

Certain stage transitions in Tenzo automatically trigger movements in the connected ATS — for example, Resume Rejected writes the candidate back into the ATS’s rejected bucket, Opted Out moves them into a human-review bucket, and stages like Not Interested or Failed Knockout eventually map to a dispositioned state in the ATS. When a Consent Revoked stage is configured in your ATS integration settings, Tenzo also moves the linked ATS application into that pipeline stage (best-effort) when a candidate opts out. The exact mapping depends on which ATS you’ve connected and how it’s configured. See ATS Integrations for provider-specific behavior.