Does my client have to pay?
No. Your hiring manager needs no account, no card and no plan — and reading your shortlist never costs you a seat.
This is the question recruiters ask on their client's behalf, usually just before sending the first link. The answer is short: the hiring manager pays nothing and signs up for nothing. This article exists so you can forward it rather than retype it.
What your hiring manager can do without an account
You send one private link. Everything below happens in their browser, signed out, with nothing to install and nothing to join:
- Open the shortlist and read your note on each candidate.
- Open each candidate's front sheet and CV.
- Read the job description behind the shortlist.
- Select for interview or Pass on any candidate — you're notified either way.
- Leave a comment for you, and confirm an interview time you've proposed.
- Tell you they're no longer hiring for the role.
They type nothing but the comment itself. We ask for no email address, no name and no company details to let them in.
What it costs you
Nothing beyond your own plan. A hiring manager is not a seat: your workspace seats count the people who log in to your workspace, and someone reading a link you sent never becomes one of them. Your plan meters three things — tailoring sessions, candidate CVs added per month, and seats — and none of them moves when a client opens a shortlist. Send to as many hiring managers as you like.
The two limits, stated honestly
One — the link obeys you. It carries no expiry date of its own, but pause it and the page becomes a neutral "This shortlist link is paused" notice with no candidate on it; close the role and it becomes a closed notice. Both are reversible, and both take effect immediately — the candidates' documents stop being served at the same moment as the page.
That is deliberate. The people on your shortlist consented to being shown to a specific client for a specific role, so a link you cannot revoke would be the wrong product. It also means we will not tell your client the link works forever, because that is a promise you get to break.
Two — your own GDPR retention window still applies. When a candidate record passes the retention window set on your workspace, that person's details are anonymised in place — including behind a shortlist link that is still open. The link keeps working and your client sees no error; the candidate simply becomes Candidate (anonymised) and the pitch you wrote is cleared. It is measured from the age of the candidate record, not from the day you sent the link, so a long-standing candidate you submitted last week can be caught by it.
That is the retention promise doing its job, not a fault — but it is the second reason we won't tell your client a link is good forever. If a client may want to come back to a shortlist months later, check the retention window on your workspace before you send it.
Two things this does not mean
- Your client sees a signed-out A1 Jobs site. The page carries our normal header, which offers a login and a sign-up to anyone who wants one. Nothing on the shortlist is behind it — but they will see the buttons, so it's worth saying "you won't need those" when you send the link.
- If they later want their own workspace, that's a separate thing — and it's also free to start. It has nothing to do with reading your shortlist.
Interviews
When your hiring manager confirms one of the times you proposed, the calendar invite goes to the candidate. Your client confirms in the portal; they don't get a calendar file from us.