Hired is an introductory platform, so the first contact needs to come through Hired as an interview request between the company and the candidate. If a candidate is already in your database but not in process nor has recently been interviewed, you should be reaching out via Hired. This is how we track your success with our product.
Sending an interview request to a candidate begins a conversation thread in the platform, which allows you to communicate easily with each candidate in your pipeline (see: 'Managing Candidate Interview Processes'). As a best practice, we encourage our customers to respond to or follow up with candidates within 24-48 hours. You can expect responses from most candidates within this time frame as well.
If your communications are taken outside of the Hired platform at any point in the process (i.e. working through your ATS, coordinating interviews with other team members via personal email, etc.), you still must update the status within the Hired platform and/or inform your Hired Support Team.