Build a recruiting agent that coordinates candidates by email

Recruiting teams already coordinate much of the candidate journey through email: answering questions, proposing interview times, sending reminders, and following up after a conversation. An AI agent can reduce the repetitive work while leaving high-impact decisions with people.

This walkthrough shows the integration boundary. Your ATS and calendar remain the source of truth; e2a gives the recruiting agent a real inbox, authenticated inbound delivery, threaded replies, and an approval path for sensitive messages.

See the complete recruiting agent use case for the workflow overview.

The workflow

1. A candidate replies to [email protected] or sends a hiring question.
2. e2a delivers the message with structured sender-authentication evidence.
3. The agent retrieves the candidate, role, and hiring-stage context from the ATS.
4. It answers a routine question or coordinates an interview.
5. Rejections, offers, and sensitive updates wait for human approval.
6. The agent follows up in the same conversation and updates the hiring system.

Receive candidate email

The Python SDK can listen for inbound mail over WebSocket. The same workflow can use a signed webhook, REST polling, or MCP when the agent runs locally:

from e2a.v1 import AsyncE2AClient

async with AsyncE2AClient(api_key="e2a_...") as client:
    async for event in client.listen("[email protected]"):
        if event.type != "email.received":
            continue

        message = event.data
        candidate = await ats.lookup_by_email(message["header_from"])

Use the authentication evidence as an input to your policy. A passing domain authentication result does not prove that the message content is safe or that a particular person authored it.

Coordinate an interview

The agent can connect the email to the ATS and calendar, then reply with the next available options:

        slots = await calendar.find_open_slots(
            interviewer=candidate.interviewer,
            constraints=candidate.preferences,
        )
        reply = await recruiting_agent.compose_schedule(
            candidate=candidate,
            slots=slots,
            conversation_id=message["conversation_id"],
        )

        await client.messages.reply(
            message["delivered_to"],
            message["message_id"],
            {"text": reply},
        )

The conversation_id connects the email exchange to your agent's session or workflow state. e2a handles the email reply headers and recipient routing; your application decides which slots are actually available.

Keep high-impact messages with a human

Candidate communication can materially affect a person's opportunity, so start with a narrow approval policy. Hold messages such as:

• Rejections or disposition updates
• Offers and compensation details
• Changes to an interview process
• Requests for sensitive personal information
• Messages to an unfamiliar recipient

e2a's per-agent human-in-the-loop queue lets a reviewer approve, edit, or reject a held message through the dashboard, API, SDK, CLI, MCP tools, or a secure review link.

Approval is a communication safeguard, not an employment-policy engine. Keep authorization, retention, access control, and hiring decisions in the systems and policies your organization already uses.

Connect the hiring workflow

Once the basic loop works, add explicit application actions:

1. Parse the candidate's reply into a typed intent.
2. Validate that intent against the current ATS stage and recruiter policy.
3. Ask for human approval when the action changes candidate status or sends a high-impact message.
4. Write the approved state change to the ATS.
5. Reply in-thread and record the conversation identifier for later turns.

This keeps the agent's tools narrow and makes each workflow transition auditable.

What to build next

• Start with one recruiting inbox and one role-specific workflow.
• Add the scheduling agent pattern for multi-turn coordination.
• Use MCP for a local recruiting assistant or SDKs for a hosted service.
• Enable human-in-the-loop approval before connecting production candidate communication.

The goal is not to replace the ATS or recruiter. It is to give the agent a trustworthy email boundary so it can handle the coordination work while people retain control of consequential decisions.