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Explain in writing why a req is not filling

Today

The role has been open for weeks, the client thinks you are not working it, and the update you send is a candidate count. The real answer is the pay range, the four stage loop, and the five days to feedback, and nobody has written that down in a way the manager can act on.

With Claude

You paste your real activity and the actual candidate feedback, and get an update that groups what the market is telling you into themes and ends with two or three specific decisions the client has to make.

The prompt

Paste this into claude.ai and replace anything in brackets.

You are helping me write an honest status update to a client about a role that is not filling. Use only the facts I give you. Never estimate a number, a market rate, or a time to fill.

The role: [title, location and onsite requirement, contract or direct hire, pay range as posted]
How long it has been open: [weeks]
What we have actually done: [paste the real counts from our ATS: sourced, contacted, submitted, interviewed, offers]
What happened to the candidates who did not move forward: [list the real reasons, for example passed on pay, took another offer, client passed on skills, no client response]
What candidates have told us about the role: [paste the real quotes or close paraphrases, including anything about pay, schedule, the onsite requirement, or the interview process]
What has happened on the client's side: [for example days to feedback, interviews cancelled, scope changed midstream]

Write a client facing update with:

1. Three sentences a busy hiring manager can read on a phone: where the search stands and what has to change.
2. The activity, using only the counts I gave you, with no figure added or adjusted.
3. What the market is telling us, built strictly from the candidate feedback I pasted, grouped into themes, with each theme tied back to the feedback it came from.
4. The one to three things I am asking the client to decide, each written as a specific choice with the tradeoff named, for example widen the range, allow two days remote, or cut the loop from four interviews to two.
5. What we will do next regardless of their answer, with dates.

Rules. Do not blame the client and do not blame the candidates. Do not restate one of my counts in a way that changes its meaning. If the honest read is that this role cannot be filled as written, say so in one clear sentence and name exactly what would have to change.

What to skip in staffing and recruiting firms

  • Never use Claude to screen, rank, or score candidates. Do not hand it a stack of resumes to sort, do not ask it to build a shortlist, rate fit, or tell you who to submit. A tool that produces a score, a classification, or a recommendation that substantially assists a hiring decision is precisely what the EEOC's 2023 technical assistance on Title VII and New York City Local Law 144 are aimed at, and Local Law 144 covers employment agencies, not only employers. It requires an annual independent bias audit, a published summary of the results, and notice to candidates at least ten business days before the tool is used on anyone who lives in New York City. Illinois amended its Human Rights Act on the same subject effective January 1, 2026, and more states are moving. Bias in screening is the real risk here, not the paperwork. A human reads the resumes and owns the decision; Claude writes up the decision after it is made.
  • Candidate personal data does not belong in a consumer Claude account. Resumes carry home addresses and dates of birth and sometimes SSNs, and I-9s, background check results, drug screen results, and anything a candidate told you about a disability or an accommodation are further out of bounds. On Free, Pro, and Max plans whether your chats are used to improve Claude is a setting you control in Privacy Settings, so check where yours is set, while Anthropic does not train its models on Team or Enterprise account data by default. The habit that holds up in practice: first name and last initial, your own notes in your own words, and none of the candidate's actual documents uploaded.
  • Claude is not an employment law authority and it cannot see your ATS. Worker classification, exempt status, overtime, state pay transparency rules, ban the box timing, and what you may legally ask in an interview vary by state and keep changing, and Claude will state an expired rule with complete confidence. Draft with it, then verify with your employment counsel. And because it knows only what you paste in, it cannot tell you a candidate's real status, a submittal date, or whether a client has responded, so every count in a client update comes out of your system rather than out of a chat.

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Before you try it

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