Everything you can do in Engage with applicants, you can now do with your hiring managers. Text a hiring manager from the ATS, and the conversation lives in Engage, with the full history logged back in the ATS. Every conversation, one place.
How Texting a Hiring Manager Works
One chat at a time. If you aren't already in a chat with the hiring manager, sending a text starts a new one.
One phone number. When Engage is enabled for your company, texts go to the hiring manager's first SMS-enabled phone number.
Internal participant. If the hiring manager has workbench access, they are added to the chat as an internal participant.
One person at a time. You can mention only one SMS recipient at a time in a chat.
Ways to Text a Hiring Manager
SMS and Combo modals. Send a text, or an email and text combo, from the hiring manager's profile. You can also schedule a combo that includes SMS content.
Sendouts. When you send candidates to a hiring manager, the SMS tab shows a single phone number. Send several candidates to the same hiring manager, and they receive every text in one conversation.
Mass text from Power Search. Text multiple hiring managers at once. When you send to 10 or more, you'll see a mass message alert first, and the chat closes automatically after sending. This is by design to keep your chat list clean. If one responds, it opens the chat and notifies you.
Communication templates. Submittal status templates (for employee submittals) and interview reminder templates can include SMS content for the hiring manager. These templates close an active Engage chat with the hiring manager once the text is sent and may start a new one. A tooltip appears in your workflow settings when Engage is enabled to remind you.
If the hiring manager is already in an active conversation, you'll see an Open Chat alert before the text goes out.
Seeing Hiring Manager Conversations in Engage
A dedicated sidebar section. Hiring manager conversations appear under their own With Manager section (the label follows your account's naming preference), separate from applicant conversations and internal chats.
Purple means hiring manager. External messages, icons, and the external message editor are purple for hiring managers. Applicants stay blue, so you can tell the two apart at a glance.
Contact details panel. Open the chat details panel to see the hiring manager's profile, notes, and activity, just like the applicant view. An icon takes you straight to their profile in the ATS, and an indicator on their name shows when they're in another chat.
Takeover. If a hiring manager is already in another conversation, the takeover confirmation works just like it does for applicants and refers to the Manager.
Delivery status. SMS status icons show whether each message is sending, delivered, or needs attention.
If you remove the hiring manager from a chat, they move into the internal section and the chat looks the same as before. Mention them again to add them back as a participant.
Seeing Hiring Manager Conversations in the ATS
Engage conversations with hiring managers are logged in the ATS automatically:
Contact and client Activity tabs. Each conversation appears as an activity row with a live preview of the latest message. Click View to open the full chat. These rows are read-only, so they can't be edited or deleted. An icon shows when a chat is still open or when a conversation couldn't be created, for example if the phone number is invalid.
Notification bell. When a hiring manager replies by text, the bell badges with a purple notification.
Timeline and Interlace. The hiring manager's timeline includes their Engage chats. Use Interlace to weave ATS activity and Engage conversations into one chronological view.
Power Search. In contact Power Search, use the Activity search field to search the messages in Engage chats and the comments on other contact activities.
Staying in Sync
The ATS activity and the Engage chat stay in sync as things happen, including internal and external messages, hiring manager replies, edited or deleted internal messages, participants being added or removed, someone leaving the chat, and the channel being closed.
Opting Out and Back In
Hiring managers can opt out of texts by replying STOP and opt back in by replying START.
Note: Each text conversation is one-on-one between your team and either a hiring manager or an applicant. Hiring managers and applicants are never combined in the same SMS conversation.
Questions? For questions about Engage, contact BrightMove Support by clicking the chat bubble in the lower right corner of your screen.