When a cold-outreach candidate replies with genuine interest, they appear in Sourcing → Qualified with their reply and a classification badge. You read the reply, then either hand the thread off to yourself or dismiss the lead.
Each lead card shows:
- Who they are — name, headline, location, current employer, LinkedIn profile
- The reply itself — the actual message they sent, plus the full email thread
- A classification badge — only warm classifications (interested, meeting request) reach this queue; everything else is filtered out upstream
- An off-limits badge, if relevant — leads currently employed at one of your clients are flagged, and a hard match disables handoff entirely
A Dismissed tab keeps the terminal leads (dismissed, bounced, unsubscribed) visible for audit — nothing vanishes silently.
Clicking Hand off to me CCs your handoff email into the live thread — the candidate sees a natural continuation of the conversation, and you take over from there in your own inbox.
- Open the lead and read the reply and thread
- Click Hand off to me
- Watch your inbox — you're CC'd into the live email thread
- Reply from your own mailbox and run the relationship: screening, submission, interviews
Until you've taken over, you can also send a short reply into the live thread from within PlacementFlow — it goes out under the same outreach persona the candidate has been talking to, useful for a quick "great — what's your availability?" before the formal handoff.
Dismiss marks the lead as consciously reviewed and closed. Their sequence already stopped the moment they replied, so dismissing sends nothing — it just clears your queue. Dismissed leads remain viewable on the candidate profile.
Speed wins placements, so the queue enforces freshness: a lead you've handed off but not actioned within 7 days is auto-archived to the dismissed view. The candidate record is untouched — you can always pick the thread back up from your inbox — but the queue stays a to-do list, not a graveyard.
- Classifies every reply so only genuinely warm responses reach this queue.
- Halts the candidate's remaining follow-ups automatically on any reply.
- Runs a full off-limits check (client domains, company identity, fuzzy company-name match) on every lead — and refuses a handoff that would poach from your own client.
- You approve every handoff. No candidate moves toward a client without a human clicking the button.
- Handoff refused with an off-limits message — the lead works at (or can't be cleared against) one of your protected clients. This is deliberate and fails closed; review the employer manually before doing anything.
- "This lead's reply was not classified as interested" — the reply classification isn't warm; read it yourself before considering a manual approach.
- "This lead is already being handed off" — the handoff fired twice (double-click or second tab); the first one won, and the CC is on its way.
- No CC arrived — check the campaign's handoff email address in the campaign settings; that's where the CC goes.