Recruitment Virtual Receptionist and Phone Screening
Every candidate call answered.
Candidates ring after work. Frontly picks up, answers role questions and takes details.
The short answer
What is Frontly's AI phone screening and recruitment virtual receptionist?
Frontly is an AI receptionist that phone screens candidates and books interviews for Australian recruitment agencies and HR teams. It runs screening calls over a list you load, asking your questions and recording the answers for your team to decide. As your recruitment virtual receptionist and answering service, it also answers candidate and client calls 24/7, with every call in your Frontly dashboard.
THE PROBLEM
More Applicants Means More Calls Than Your Team Can Make
16.4%
year on year in applications per job ad on SEEK, the highest level on record. Every extra applicant is another first-round phone screen waiting for a recruiter.
Source: SEEK Employment Report, June 2025
21x
lower odds of qualifying a lead when first contact comes at 30 minutes instead of 5, in a US sales study. A candidate who applies this morning and hears back next week is the same problem.
Source: MIT / InsideSales Lead Response Study, 2007
23%
of 2,241 US companies audited never replied to a web enquiry at all. A candidate ringing about a role deserves an answer while your consultants are in interviews.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2011 (US)
HEAR IT FOR YOURSELF
Your AI Receptionist Is Ready to Take a Candidate Call
Call our AI agent right now. It answers a candidate's question about a role and takes their details the way it would for your agency. No signup required.
Test Call
Talk to the AI agent right now from your browser. Hear exactly how Frontly will sound for your business.
HOW IT WORKS
Inbound Live in About an Hour. Screening Campaigns Scoped With You.
Connect Your Phone
Forward your agency line or use a dedicated AI number. No hardware changes, and your consultants keep taking calls when they can.
We Help Set Up Your First Workflow
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your own screening questions, interview slots and role details. After launch you change them in the visual builder.
Go Live
Frontly answers candidate and client calls, runs screening and interview campaigns over the lists you load, and records every answer in your dashboard.
WHAT FRONTLY HANDLES
Every Candidate and Client Call, Handled
From a candidate asking if a role is still open to a hiring manager phoning in a new job order, this recruitment virtual receptionist and answering service takes the calls your consultants can't while they're in interviews. Flat monthly rate, every call captured in your Frontly dashboard.
Candidate screening calls
Asks the screening questions you set, such as right to work, location, availability, licence or ticket, salary range and notice period, and records each answer.
Interview booking and changes
Offers the times you set, books the interview during the call, and moves or cancels it when the candidate calls to change.
Role and status questions
Answers whether a role is still open, where the interview is and what to bring, from the job knowledge you provide. Application outcomes stay with your team.
Client and hiring-manager calls
Takes new job orders as a structured message and warm transfers urgent client calls to the account manager with a spoken briefing.
After-hours candidate calls
Candidates are at work 9 to 5 and ring in the evening. Frontly answers, takes their details and passes them to the consultant for the morning.
Availability and shift messages
For labour hire, takes availability updates and can't-make-my-shift messages, logs them and routes them to your on-call coordinator. It does not roster.
OUTBOUND CAMPAIGNS
Outbound Campaigns Over Your Candidate Lists
Load a list and Frontly works through it, retrying unanswered numbers and logging every outcome. Do Not Call Register screening and legal calling windows are built in, and anything promotional goes only to an opted-in list.
Candidate screening campaign
Frontly rings every candidate on your shortlist, asks your fixed screening questions and records each candidate's answers, so your team starts from the facts and makes the call.
Interview scheduling campaign
Frontly calls shortlisted candidates, suggests the open interview slots and books each person who says yes, without a consultant playing phone tag.
Interview reminder campaign
The day before, Frontly calls every booked candidate to confirm, and finds a new time for anyone who can't make it, so you know who is coming.
Talent-pool reactivation campaign
Frontly phones your opted-in talent pool to ask whether they are open to new roles or available for temp work, and records each answer for your team.
Visual Workflow Builder
Script Your Screening Calls Without Code
Your First Workflow, Built With You
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your own screening questions, interview slots and role details: exactly what the AI asks and what it records.
Your Questions, Nobody Else's
You write each screening question for each role. Frontly asks them as written and records the answers, so every candidate hears the same ones.
Rules for Every Kind of Call
Send a candidate to the right consultant, a hiring manager to the account manager and a payroll question to your office, each on its own path.
Change It Yourself
Edit questions, interview slots and role details any time in the visual builder, without waiting on us.
Branch by Role or Time of Day
Handle a warehouse shift role differently from a senior search, and after-hours calls differently from office hours.
Cross-Call Memory
Your AI Remembers Every Candidate
- Returning candidates recognised the moment they call
- Earlier screening answers and booked interviews recalled automatically
- No asking a candidate to repeat their notice period or availability
- Full call history on every caller before your consultant picks up
Frontly Dashboard
Every Answer Captured While Your Consultants Are in Interviews
Screening Answers in One Place
Each candidate's answers arrive as structured fields next to the call, so your team compares them without relistening.
Full Transcript on Every Call
Read exactly what the candidate said before your consultant makes the decision. Frontly records the answers; people decide.
Summaries Sent to Your Phone
Email or SMS the message or booking to the consultant the moment the call ends.
Outcomes You Can Count
Every call ends with a labelled outcome, so you see screens completed, interviews booked and messages taken.
Live Status Across the Agency
See what came in overnight on one screen, and which calls were put through to consultants.
Outbound Campaign Manager
Screen, Schedule and Remind With Campaigns
Screening at Scale
Frontly works through your whole shortlist, so first-round phone screens stop taking a recruiter's afternoon.
Interviews Booked, Reminders Sent
Frontly books the slot and calls the day before, so you know who is coming while there is time to fill a gap.
Same Builder, No New Tool
Script each campaign in the same visual builder you used for inbound calls.
Results Tracked per Campaign
See completed screens, interviews booked and no-answers for each campaign, so you know which job ad or list to run again.
INTEGRATIONS
Works with the software recruitment already runs on
Connect your AI receptionist to the software your team already uses, so Frontly can check availability, manage bookings and capture caller details as part of your reception workflow.
Recruitment
Team messaging
Integrations support Frontly's reception and caller follow-up workflows. Available actions depend on the connected software and your setup.
Integration allowances vary by plan. See Pricing for what's included.
Not on the list, or need a specific workflow? Tell us what you use and what you'd like Frontly to handle. We'll check what's possible.
ANSWERING SERVICE OR AI
Should a recruitment agency use an answering service or an AI receptionist?
An answering service takes a message from a candidate or client and waits for a consultant. An AI receptionist answers at once and can also phone screen candidates in bulk, asking your questions and recording the answers. For an agency, that moves screening off consultants' desks, with your team still deciding who goes forward.
Where a staffed answering service still wins
A seasoned consultant builds relationships. Candidates weighing a career move, and clients briefing a sensitive senior role, want a person who listens, reads between the lines and builds trust. That judgement and rapport is the core of the job, which is why Frontly records answers for your team to decide rather than deciding for them.
Where Frontly wins
Screening calls are repetitive: availability, right to work, pay expectations, location. Frontly asks your questions across a list you load, books interviews, and answers candidate and client calls at any hour, so consultants spend their time on the conversations that need a person.
Most businesses end up running one or the other rather than both. If you are weighing it up properly, the full cost and capability breakdown is in Frontly against a human receptionist.
Bigger organisation?
National recruitment groups and high-volume hiring
Enterprise builds screening and scheduling experiences to measure, connected to your group's own recruitment systems during the call. Own-cloud or on-premise deployment, SLA-backed uptime and a dedicated account manager.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Frontly calls each candidate on a list you load, asks the screening questions you wrote and records every answer against the call. Your team reads the answers and transcript in the dashboard and makes the decision. Frontly collects the answers; it does not shortlist, rank or reject anyone.
Frontly asks the fixed, job-relevant questions you set, such as right to work, location, availability, licence or ticket, salary range and notice period. You write them in the visual builder and can change them per role. Because every candidate hears the same questions, the answers are easy to compare.
No. Frontly asks your questions, records the answers and passes them to your team, and a person makes every shortlisting and hiring decision. That keeps the judgement, and the accountability, with your consultants. Frontly does not source candidates, rank CVs or reject applicants.
No. You decide every question Frontly asks, and screening should stay on job-relevant questions. Never put age, family or carer status, pregnancy, disability, race or religion into a script. Frontly does not give legal advice, so have your adviser check your screening questions and how your privacy policy covers automated calls.
Yes. Frontly offers the interview times you set, books the slot during the call and moves or cancels it when the candidate rings to change. It can send an SMS or email confirmation afterwards, and every booking lands in your Frontly dashboard with the call transcript.
Run an interview reminder campaign. Frontly calls every booked candidate the day before, asks them to confirm, and offers a new time to anyone who cannot make it. You learn who is not coming while there is still time to fill the slot, instead of finding out in reception.
Calling candidates about a role is not the same as pitching your agency to employers. Frontly screens every number on every list you load against the Do Not Call Register and keeps to legal calling windows, and business-development calls to prospective clients go only to an opted-in list. Whether a particular call counts as telemarketing is a question for your adviser; Frontly does not give legal advice.
JobAdder and Bullhorn are both listed as Requires vendor approval, so the software company approves the connection first and we make that request with you. Your consultants are not left waiting: screening answers, interview bookings and transcripts land in your Frontly dashboard from the first call, and inbound answering is live in about an hour.
Screening add-ons work inside one product and mostly make outbound screens. Frontly also answers the candidates and hiring managers who ring you, warm-transfers urgent client calls to the account manager, reports outcomes per campaign, speaks more than 40 languages, and comes with a first workflow set up with you.
Yes. Frontly answers every candidate call 24/7, including evenings and weekends when candidates are free to ring back. It answers role questions from your job knowledge, books interviews and takes messages, and your consultant sees the full transcript in the dashboard the next morning.
KEEP EXPLORING
Keep exploring Frontly for Recruitment
Go deeper on the capabilities, comparisons, and guides that matter most.
24/7 inbound answering
How Frontly answers every call, qualifies the caller, and books the job in your dashboard.
How inbound worksOutbound campaigns
Recalls, follow-ups, arrears, and lead reactivation dialled automatically at scale.
Run outboundAfter-hours answering
Candidates ring back after work, when your consultants have gone home. See how evening calls are answered.
See after-hoursVirtual receptionist cost in 2026
What human and AI receptionists actually cost in Australia, and where each wins.
Read the guideReady to Screen Candidates and Book Interviews Without the Phone Tag?
Standard inbound answering goes live in about an hour, and screening campaigns are scoped with you. Flat monthly rate. No commitment beyond the plan you pick.