An AI teammate for recruitment agencies.
Shortwork works in the background across the roles you are running. It watches for what needs you: a candidate going quiet, a counteroffer forming, a pay band slipping behind the market. Then it drafts what comes next, in your voice.
Nothing sends without you. The agent drafts and waits for your approval. That is the default.
Why an agency needs one
Most of it moves while you are busy with something else.
A good recruiter is not missing things through carelessness. They are on a call, writing a spec, running an intake. The day is full. The things that decide a placement rarely announce themselves, and they almost never happen while you are looking straight at them.
- Goes quietA candidate who was keen on Thursday has not replied since, and nothing marks the silence.
- TurnsA counteroffer forms over a weekend, in a conversation you are not part of.
- ScattersWhat you agreed sits in an email, a Slack thread and a note on the record, and never in one place.
- DriftsA pay band that was right in June is behind the market by September, while the role is still open.
Tell Shortwork what to keep an eye on. It keeps watching.
- Silent candidate radar
Watches for candidates who go quiet and nudges them before you lose them.
Runs every weekday at 08:00
- Counteroffer risk flag
Warns you when a candidate near offer is likely to receive a counteroffer.
Runs whenever a candidate reaches offer stage
- Salary benchmark check
Checks every new role’s pay band against the market and your placements.
Runs every Monday at 07:30
You describe these in plain English once. They run on their own, and what they find arrives on Today.
Who does the work
Meet the agents behind Shortwork.
Different personalities, different approaches, one colleague working alongside your team. Your workspace is set up with one of them, and you set how it works from there.
Your workspace colleague
The Analyst · Recruitment · technical hiring
Nadia
- Rigorous
- Objective
- Sharp
Scores the fit cold, then tells you why in one line.
Same colleague, a different way of working. No one approach is good at all of it, which is why there are several.
- It works while you do not
- The standing tasks you set run on their own schedule. What they find is waiting on Today.
- It is there when you want it
- A chat dock on every screen, which takes the context of whatever you are looking at.
- It works the way you tell it to
- Set the tone, the shape of an answer and the rules it must honour. It holds them in every conversation after that.
- It never acts alone
- It drafts and waits. Nothing sends without you.
How it works
Three steps, and then it is running.
Shortwork sits beside the tools you already run your desk on. It does not replace your ATS, your inbox or your calendar, and it does not ask your team to work somewhere new.
- 01
Connect the tools the work already lives in
Mail, calendar, chat and your ATS, connected one at a time and each to your own account. Shortwork reads what you connect and nothing else, and disconnecting revokes its access at the provider rather than only hiding it here.
Nothing is migrated. Your records stay where they are.
- 02
Say what to keep an eye on, in plain English
You describe a standing task the way you would explain it to a colleague: watch for candidates going quiet, flag a counteroffer risk before an offer stage, check a pay band against the market. It runs on its own schedule from then on.
What a task finds arrives on Today, with the thread it came from.
- 03
Read what it drafted, then send it yourself
The reply, the update, the follow-up: written in your voice and left waiting for you. You edit it, approve it, or leave it. The agent has no way to send on its own.
Nothing sends without you. That is the default, and there is no switch.
Your agency gets its own private workspace, built when you join. That part usually takes a few minutes, and you can write your first message while it finishes.
You stay in control
Nothing sends without you.
The standing tasks run on their own, and the agent writes on its own. It stops at the point where something would leave your agency.
Two candidates have gone quiet on Senior DevOps
Draft
The agent drafts. You review. You decide.
See it work
Two workflows, and you drive them.
Not a recording. Step through the intake the way a recruiter would, then open what a standing task found this morning.
Forwarded from TechCorp · 09:14
Read
What it reads from
It works with the desk you already have.
Each person connects their own accounts, and an agent only ever reads what that person connected. This is the list as it stands today, not a roadmap.
ClickUpwork_management
Gmailcommunication
Google Calendarcalendar
LoxoATS
Microsoft Teamscommunication
Outlook Calendarcalendar
Slackcommunication
Not connected yet
Outlook Mailcommunication
Running on an ATS that is not here? Tell us which one. Which systems the first agencies run is what decides the order they get built in.
Before you ask
The questions we get asked first.
Do we have to move off our ATS?
No. Nothing is migrated and nothing is imported. Shortwork reads from the tools you connect and your records stay where they are. If your ATS is not one we connect to yet, the rest still works: mail, calendar and chat carry most of what a standing task watches for.
Can it email a candidate or a client without me?
No. It writes drafts and they wait for you. The agent has no path to send: approving and sending is something you do, every time, and there is no setting that changes it.
What can it actually see?
Only the accounts a person has connected, and only for that person. Your colleague connecting their mailbox does not give you their inbox, or the other way round. Disconnecting revokes access at the provider itself, so it stops there too, not just in our screen.
Where does our data live?
Each agency gets its own private workspace, built when you join, rather than a shared pool with other agencies in it. Candidate details and the conversations you have with your agent are never attached to product feedback or a support message, because there is no field able to carry them.
Read the privacy pageHow does the rest of the team get in?
You invite them one at a time. Each person gets their own sign-in, sets their own voice and connects their own accounts, so what the agent reads follows the person rather than the agency.
How finished is this?
It is early and we say so plainly. Shortwork is in its first round with a small number of agencies, built against the roles they are actually running. If we both want to proceed after a call, you get a working version inside your stack within two weeks.
Something else? team@agentylab.com reaches the people building it.
The pilot cohort
Early, and shaped by the first few agencies.
Shortwork is in its first round, built with a small number of recruitment agencies against the roles they are actually running. What those teams find is what gets built next. It only works at this size.
- 01Reply
Within 48 hours, from team@agentylab.com.
- 02Call
If there is mutual fit, 30 minutes with the founders.
- 03Ship
If we both want to proceed, a working version inside your stack within two weeks.
A sentence or two on the shape of your team and the parts of recruitment you would want Shortwork to take on is plenty.