Handing Over a Candidate Pipeline: What Was Said on the Last Call

A recruiter leaves, or goes on leave, or a search moves to the desk in another country. The pipeline transfers cleanly in the system: twelve candidates, stages recorded, notes attached. Two weeks later three of the twelve have gone quiet and one has taken another offer without telling anyone.

What the ATS does not hold

An ATS records process. Stage, dates, documents, scheduled activity. All necessary, none of it sufficient.

What it does not hold is the state of the relationship. Whether this candidate is genuinely looking or testing the market. What they said about their current manager. That they will not move for less than a specific number but have not said so formally. That their partner's job is the real constraint and the location question is not negotiable in the way the notes suggest.

None of that fits a field. All of it determines whether the placement happens.

The three things that transfer

Item	What good looks like
Where each candidate really is	Not the stage. The honest read: actively looking, curious, or being polite. Plus what would move them.
What was said on the last call	In their words. The specific sentences about money, timing, and what is wrong where they are now.
Client sensitivities	What this client rejects and why, who actually decides, and what has already been promised about the process.

The middle row is the one that saves placements. A candidate who told your colleague "I would move for the right team but I am not doing another commute like this" has given you the whole brief, and the next recruiter needs that sentence rather than a summary of it.

Telling the candidate

Candidates notice a handover faster than clients, because the relationship is thinner and their attention is higher. The signal they pick up on is repetition: a new person asking a question they already answered.

Two things prevent it. The outgoing recruiter introduces the new one by name, briefly, before the change, so it is not a surprise. And the new recruiter opens with what they already know rather than a discovery question. "Marco mentioned the commute is the thing, and that timing is tied to your bonus in March" tells the candidate the handover was competent and costs nothing.

Candidates leave processes because they feel like a record rather than a person. A handover is the moment that feeling is most likely to arrive.

Client sensitivities

Search clients accumulate history that is never written: the candidate profile they rejected twice without articulating why, the hiring manager who says yes in the room and blocks afterwards, the promise about only presenting three at a time.

Write these as specific observations rather than character judgements. "Rejected two candidates from consultancy backgrounds without giving a reason, both times at final stage" is usable. "Difficult client" is not.

Include what has already been promised about the process, because that is where a new recruiter most easily breaks trust without knowing they have done it. The same principle as the account handover checklist.

When the desk is in another time zone

For search firms running a research or delivery desk abroad, this is not an event. It happens every day, in both directions, and the same three things have to cross the seam every evening.

The volume makes documents impractical. Nobody writes a briefing note per candidate per day, so the context travels in calls and chat and then does not travel at all when the person is offline. The researcher in another zone hits a question at 10:00 their time, the consultant who spoke to the candidate is asleep, and the follow up either waits a day or goes out uninformed.

This is what StandIn is built for. At the end of the day the consultant spends about ninety seconds on a brief: what moved, what is open, what is blocked, what is next, mostly drafted from the work that already happened. Overnight, the researcher can ask where a candidate really is or what was said on the last call, and get an answer from that brief in the consultant's words, with a source under it. It never guesses, and when the answer is not there it says so and names who to ask, which is the right outcome when the alternative is contacting a candidate on an assumption. See working across time zones.

Common Questions

How much of this should go in the ATS?

Whatever fits, and be aware that candidate notes may be visible to the candidate under data protection rules in many jurisdictions. Write everything as though it might be read by the person it describes, which is good discipline regardless.

What if the recruiter has already left?

Go to the candidates early and be straightforward. "I have picked this up and I want to check I have it right" works far better than pretending to full continuity and then getting a detail wrong.

Should the client be told the search has changed hands?

Yes, by the outgoing consultant, with a named replacement and a reason. Clients discover it anyway, and discovering it accidentally reads as the search being deprioritised.

How long should the overlap be?

Long enough for one joint conversation with each active candidate and each client contact. Count it in conversations rather than days, because a fortnight of overlap with no joint calls transfers nothing.