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Overview

A permanent phone number is a dedicated inbound number assigned to a single job. Candidates can call or text this number at any time to begin the screening process. Tenzo collects the candidate’s name, optionally collects their email, creates their application, and then routes them to the appropriate interview experience based on the job’s call type settings.
Permanent phone numbers are a Beta feature. Contact support to purchase and configure numbers for your organization.

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How it works

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Inbound voice calls

When a new candidate calls the permanent number, Tenzo answers with a configurable initial greeting and collects the candidate’s name through a spoken conversation. By default, the candidate then transitions directly into the screening interview on the same call. Jobs can enable Collect Candidate Email on Intake Calls under Settings > Job Setup > Advanced Configuration to ask new voice callers for and confirm an email address before starting the interview.

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Inbound text messages (SMS and WhatsApp)

When a candidate texts the permanent number, Tenzo collects their name and email through a conversational SMS or WhatsApp exchange. What happens next depends on the job’s call type setting:
The job’s applicant call type setting (Phone vs. Video Interview) determines which path is used. This is the same setting that controls how applicants are interviewed when added through other channels.

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Number reputation screening

Carriers and call-analytics networks recycle phone numbers, so a newly purchased number can arrive already carrying a spam reputation from a previous owner. To prevent that, Tenzo screens every number for spam reputation immediately after purchase, using one or more independent reputation sources depending on the carrier.
  • If any source flags the number as likely spam, it is automatically released back to the carrier and never provisioned to your organization.
  • The purchase fails with a message asking for a different number to be selected, and another one can be tried straight away.
  • Numbers that come back clean — or for which no reputation data is available yet — are kept and provisioned as normal.
This screening happens automatically. There is nothing to configure.

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Where to configure

Permanent phone numbers and their intake behavior are configured at the job level:
  1. Open the job in the editor.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Job Setup > Advanced Configuration.
  3. Toggle the setting on and select (or purchase) a phone number.
When the job uses video interviews, the interview link is delivered via the channel the candidate used to text:
  • SMS: The link is sent as a direct text message.
  • WhatsApp: The link is sent using a pre-approved WhatsApp interview-link template.
To control whether candidates also receive the link via WhatsApp template (instead of plain SMS), configure the Also send interview link via SMS and Send via WhatsApp settings under Video Interview Outreach Settings.
  • Interview Settings — configure call type (phone vs. video) for applicants and sourced candidates