Non-negotiables are the questions a candidate must answer — and pass — before anything else happens. You mark them in the question builder with the Ask before review toggle, and they're asked first on every channel: WhatsApp, web chat, and the SMS-linked form.
- Open your questionnaire in the builder — either the AI Questionnaire Builder on a role, or a template at Settings → Screening Templates
- Find the question you want to gate on
- Toggle Ask before review — the question is now badged Non-negotiable
- Save the questionnaire
Non-negotiables move to the front of the conversation automatically. You don't need to reorder anything.
The behavior is consistent everywhere:
| Channel | What happens |
|---|
| WhatsApp | Asked in-chat right after the greeting, before the lead reaches your review queue |
| Web chat | Asked as the first questions in the screening conversation |
| SMS | The candidate gets a web link; the form asks non-negotiables first |
Two guarantees hold on every channel:
- Answers carry forward. Once a candidate has answered a non-negotiable, the deep screening stage never re-asks it.
- The gate fails closed. A wrong answer — or a missing one — to a question configured as a hard disqualifier knocks the candidate out, with the question that fired logged as the reason. Skipping a knockout can't beat it.
PlacementFlow also appends one built-in non-negotiable to every questionnaire: the candidate's best contact email, asked last, so passing candidates are always reachable.
The best non-negotiables are objective and binary — a clear pass or fail the candidate can answer in one line:
- Right to work — "Are you legally authorized to work in [country]?"
- Location — "Which city and country are you currently based in?"
- Salary band — "Is a base salary in the range of X–Y workable for you?"
- Notice period — "Can you start within [timeframe]?"
Keep the list short — around three. Every extra gate question costs completion, and cold-sourced candidates are the most drop-off-sensitive.
- Subjective qualities ("strong communicator", "team player") — these belong in the scored deep screen, where the AI can weigh a real answer.
- Years of experience as a hard cutoff — treat it as a weighted, scored question instead. Hard experience gates silently reject flexible, strong candidates.
- Anything about where someone is from — nationality, citizenship, or origin. You may require that a candidate resides in or is authorized to work in a place; you may never gate on where they're from. Requirements should be phrased as confirmations of the role's needs, asked identically of every candidate.
- Asks your non-negotiables conversationally, first, on whichever channel the candidate uses
- Evaluates knockout answers deterministically and logs which gate fired
- Never invents gates: only questions you explicitly marked act as knockouts, and borderline or ambiguous cases are held for your review rather than auto-declined