Recruitment is a speed game. The agency that reaches a strong candidate first, responds to a client’s brief fastest, and keeps the process moving without delays wins the placement. The agency that misses a callback, loses context between conversations, or lets a candidate go cold while switching between tools loses it.
Most Irish recruitment agencies have invested in their ATS, their job boards, and their LinkedIn presence. Fewer have thought carefully about their phone infrastructure — despite the fact that the phone is still where most placements are actually won or lost.
A Bullhorn analysis of agencies comparing integrated and non-integrated communication setups found that agencies using integrated platforms placed candidates 12.1% faster and converted 17.9% more submissions into placements. (Source: Staffing Hub / Recruiting News Network, 2026)
The Specific Problems Recruitment Agencies Have With Phone Systems
Candidates Call Once and Move On
Top candidates — particularly in competitive sectors like technology, finance, and healthcare — are fielding approaches from multiple agencies simultaneously. If a consultant doesn’t answer, the candidate calls the next agency. They don’t leave a voicemail. They don’t wait. Research consistently shows that 80% of callers who reach voicemail hang up without leaving a message, and most contact a competitor within minutes. (Source: Hiya State of the Call Report)
In recruitment, the window between “candidate calls” and “candidate is gone” is measured in minutes, not hours.
Calls Go to Personal Mobiles
The typical setup in many Irish agencies: consultants use their personal mobile numbers with candidates and clients. This creates several problems:
- When a consultant is in an interview or meeting, their mobile is unavailable — and there’s no backup
- When a consultant leaves, they take the candidate and client relationships with them — including the call history, the WhatsApp conversations, and the contact numbers that belong to the business
- There’s no record of what was discussed, agreed, or promised on any of those calls
- The agency has no visibility into how many calls are being made, missed, or abandoned
No Context on the Callback
A candidate calls back about a role they discussed last week. The consultant who handled it is out. Whoever answers has no record of the conversation, doesn’t know which role the candidate is interested in, and has to start from scratch — or worse, pretend to know and get it wrong. That candidate’s experience of the agency is permanently coloured by that interaction.
Admin Eats Into Billing Hours
Manually logging calls to the CRM after every conversation, updating candidate records, writing call notes — these are hours every week that could be spent sourcing, interviewing, and placing. For a consultant billing on an hourly or placement fee basis, this admin overhead has a direct cost.
What a Recruitment Agency Phone System Needs to Do
Route Calls to the Right Consultant Automatically
An inbound call from a candidate interested in an IT role should reach the IT desk, not the finance desk. A call from an existing client should reach their account manager. Skills-based routing and IVR menus make this automatic — callers reach the right consultant without having to explain themselves to whoever happens to answer.
Hunt groups ensure that if the primary consultant is busy, the call rolls to the next available person on the same desk rather than going to voicemail.
Give Every Consultant a Business Number That Works on Mobile
With Dromlik, each consultant has a dedicated Irish business number that works through an app on their existing mobile. Candidates and clients call a business number, see a business number on callbacks, and every conversation is logged — regardless of which device the consultant used.
When a consultant leaves, their number stays with the agency. Call history stays in the CRM. Candidate and client contacts remain company assets, not personal ones. New consultants picking up existing portfolios have full context from day one.
Log Every Call to Your CRM Automatically
No manual data entry. Every call — inbound and outbound — logs automatically to the relevant candidate or client record in your CRM: time, duration, outcome, and a recording link. New callers are created as contacts automatically. Screen pops surface the full record before the consultant even says hello.
This is where the placement speed advantage comes from. When a consultant calls a candidate back and already has their notice period, current salary, visa status, and the roles they’ve discussed all visible on screen, that conversation is more efficient, more accurate, and more likely to convert.
Integrate With Your Existing ATS and CRM Stack
Dromlik integrates natively with the platforms Irish recruitment agencies actually use:
- Bullhorn — the most widely used ATS in the Irish market, with click-to-call, screen pops, and automatic call logging
- Salesforce — used by larger agencies managing complex client relationships
- HubSpot — increasingly popular with mid-size agencies managing client pipeline alongside candidate database
- Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk — used by agencies running lean operations
- Zendesk — for agencies with structured client support functions
- Dynamics 365 and Odoo — for agencies using Microsoft or open-source stacks
- Custom CRM via REST API — for agencies on proprietary or niche systems
The integration isn’t superficial. Click-to-call from inside the CRM, bidirectional contact sync, automatic call logging with recording links, and new contact creation on inbound calls from unknown numbers — the system works with your existing stack rather than alongside it.
Where AI Changes the Equation
Niamh: AI Pre-Screening That Saves Hours Every Day
The highest-volume, lowest-value calls in any recruitment agency are initial candidate screening calls. Asking the same questions — are you eligible to work in Ireland, what’s your notice period, what are your salary expectations, are you actively looking — takes consultant time that could be spent on higher-value work.
Dromlik’s AI receptionist — Niamh — handles this initial screening layer. When a candidate calls in response to a job posting or direct sourcing outreach, Niamh answers, asks the configured screening questions, captures the answers (visa status, notice period, salary band, role interest), and routes qualified candidates through to a consultant. Candidates who don’t meet the criteria are handled appropriately without consuming consultant time.
The consultant receives a structured summary of every screened call — candidate name, number, answers to every screening question — before they speak to that person. The conversation that follows is better informed and faster.
Research from RecruitBPM (2026) found that 42% of candidates disengage specifically because scheduling or interview coordination took too long. Pre-screening that happens immediately — 24/7 — removes one of the biggest early-funnel dropout causes.
AI Call Summaries for Every Conversation
Beyond screening, Dromlik’s AI transcription generates a summary of every call — key points discussed, commitments made, next steps agreed. No note-taking during the call, no reconstruction after it. The summary logs to the CRM alongside the recording.
For compliance, training, and dispute resolution — if a candidate or client later disputes what was agreed — the recording and transcript are immediately accessible.
After-Hours Candidate Capture
Many candidates can only engage with agencies outside their working hours — evenings and weekends. With Niamh answering 24/7, a candidate calling at 8pm gets a proper response: screening questions asked, details captured, summary sent to the relevant consultant for the morning. Candidates who would otherwise have hit voicemail and moved on are captured and in the pipeline before the working day starts.
Protecting Your Business When Consultants Leave
This is the issue most agency owners don’t want to think about until it happens. A consultant leaves, taking with them years of candidate relationships built on their personal mobile, WhatsApp conversations that can’t be retrieved, and client contacts who only have that consultant’s number.
With Dromlik, every call made or received on a business number is a company asset. Call logs, recordings, and contact history are in the CRM — not on a personal device. When a consultant hands in notice, access is revoked immediately. New consultants picking up their portfolio have complete call history, existing candidate context, and no gap in continuity.
Every WhatsApp message, call, and SMS sent through Dromlik is logged to your CRM and owned by the agency — not the consultant’s personal phone.
Omnichannel: Candidates Don’t Just Call
Modern candidates — particularly in technology and financial services — communicate across multiple channels. WhatsApp messages about role details, SMS responses to outreach, calls to discuss offers. Without a unified inbox, these conversations are fragmented across personal devices and apps, invisible to the rest of the team.
Dromlik’s Orbit plan brings calls, SMS, and WhatsApp into a single inbox alongside call history. A consultant handling a WhatsApp message from a candidate can see their last three calls, the screening summary, and the consultant notes — in the same view. Nothing falls between the cracks of a channel switch.
Irish Local Numbers for Every Region You Cover
A Dublin 01 number on outbound calls to Dublin clients. A Cork 021 number for your Munster operation. A Belfast +44 28 number for Northern Ireland placements. Local numbers signal local presence and generate higher answer rates than unknown or out-of-area numbers — particularly important when cold-calling candidates who don’t recognise the number.
Dromlik provides Irish local numbers across 15 area codes and covers Northern Ireland, all from €5/month per number, managed from one platform.
What It Costs
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Nucleus | €12/user/month | Core calling, routing, voicemail, call recording, mobile app |
| Orbit | €22/user/month | CRM integration, omnichannel (calls, SMS, WhatsApp), supervisor tools, AI transcription |
| AI Receptionist (Niamh) | +€100/month | 24/7 candidate screening, after-hours capture, AI summaries |
For a 10-consultant agency on Orbit with Niamh: €320/month. One additional placement per month covers the annual cost many times over.
Annual billing saves around 20%. See the full pricing breakdown.
Stop losing candidates to missed calls and slow follow-up
See how Dromlik integrates with Bullhorn, HubSpot, and Salesforce — with automatic call logging, AI pre-screening, and business numbers that stay with your agency when consultants move on. Free 7-day trial, no setup fees.
