Two audiences, opposite needs, one website
A recruitment website serves candidates looking for a role and employers looking to hire. They want different things and they are worth different amounts. Treating every chat identically means a hiring manager with a live vacancy waits behind a general enquiry about CV formatting — the most expensive queue-ordering mistake an agency can make.
Split the conversation at the door
Asking a single question at the start — are you hiring, or looking for a role — routes each side to the right consultant and sets the tone. It also lets you staff sensibly: employer enquiries to the consultants who close business, candidate enquiries to the team who screen and place.
Qualify candidates without interrogating them
Chat is good for the first few facts: the kind of role, location or remote preference, availability, whether they already applied. It is not the place for a full screening call. Gather enough to route them properly and book the real conversation — a chat that turns into a twenty-question interview loses people.
Vacancy questions are time-sensitive
A candidate asking whether a role is still open is telling you they are ready to apply. That answer is worth giving quickly, and when the role has been filled the same conversation is the natural moment to point them at something similar rather than losing them entirely.
Be careful with personal data
Candidates will offer more than you asked for — current salary, reasons for leaving, health circumstances, notice periods. Collect only what is needed to help them, keep CVs and identity documents to your normal secure channels rather than an open chat window, and be transparent about how what they share will be used.
How MyLiveChat fits
MyLiveChat is free forever for one agent, which suits an independent recruiter as well as a branch. Departments separate candidate and employer traffic, pre-chat forms capture the role reference and contact details, canned responses keep the repeat answers consistent, and transcripts give the consultant making the follow-up call everything that was already discussed.