
Welcome back to Let's Talk Recruit — the series where we bring you real stories, product insights, and community highlights from the world of recruitment. Our last post covered how Resume Harvester can take the follow-up out of hiring.
This edition is different, which covers the honest story of what happened when the Zoho Recruit team left the office and went to meet the people who use this product every single day.
Over 5 days in March 2026, we travelled across India — Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, and sat in rooms with recruiters from staffing agencies, corporate HR teams. We heard about the workflows they've built, the problems they're still solving, and the features they wish existed. Every conversation made Zoho Recruit better.
Where we went
We hosted meetups across five cities this year, each offering a great environment for open discussions, hands-on demos, and networking among recruitment professionals.
- Hyderabad – WeWork, Raja Pushpa Summit · March 9
- Bangalore – COWRKS, Residency Road · March 10
- Mumbai – WeWork, Bandra Kurla Complex · March 11
- Delhi – The Muse Sarovar Portico · March 12
- Chennai – Radha Regent, Arumbakkam · March 13
Attendees included staffing agencies, corporate HR teams — making for rich, cross-industry conversations at every stop.
Attendance highlights
This year's community meetups saw strong participation across all five cities — 109 attendees from 174 registrations. But the headline isn't the total. It's the momentum.

Bangalore nearly tripled its 2025 turnout — growing from 13 attendees to 31, the highest single-year jump in the tour's history.
A recurring ask across every city: make these meetups more frequent — ideally once every two quarters. The opportunity to ask questions directly, learn best practices in person, and connect with fellow Recruit users is something no webinar has quite replaced.
What we heard
Feedback sessions were the heart of these meetups. Users shared their challenges, workarounds, and the features they're waiting for. The conversations weren't abstract — they were specific, operational, and direct. Five themes rose to the top across every city.
AI & Zia — More control, more customization
The question is no longer “Can AI help?” — it’s “Can we control how it helps?”
Many of you asked for simple yet powerful additions like a Regenerate option for Zia summaries, the ability to guide Zia using prompts, better matching beyond just skills, and alerts when a strong candidate shows up.
At the core, the expectation is clear: AI should work with recruiters, not just for them.
Approval Workflows — Built for real organizational complexity
Hiring processes aren’t always straightforward — and your approval workflows reflect that.
You’re looking for features like SLA tracking, skip-approver options for urgent cases, multi-level offer approvals, and clear visibility on where things are stuck. Mobile access was another big ask.
In short, your workflows are complex — and you need the system to handle that smoothly.
Integrations — The Zoho ecosystem, flowing together
Smoother Zoho People sync, Zoho Meeting for interview scheduling, multi-signatory Zoho Sign support, LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect, and better WhatsApp candidate management. Users see Recruit as one part of a larger HR stack — and want it to behave that way.
Reporting — Pipeline visibility at depth
Many teams want a better view of what’s happening across their hiring pipeline.
Requests included job-level insights, approval timelines, SLA dashboards, and recruiter performance tracking.
Right now, some of this is being managed outside Recruit and the goal is to bring it all into one place.
Candidate Experience — Accuracy without the manual work
A lot of feedback focused on reducing manual work while keeping data accurate.
Things like phone number-based duplicate checks, document collection before offers, mobile-friendly forms, and reusing workflows for returning candidates came up often.
The idea is to keep candidate data clean without extra effort.
These conversations don't just inform the roadmap — they reshape how we think about the product. When you hear the same problem described six different ways across five cities, you stop treating it as a feature request and start treating it as a design principle.
Meetups in motion
From the forum-style open discussions in Hyderabad to the rapid-fire Q&A in Bangalore, every room had its own character. Here’s a quick glimpse of all the action from the sessions. From first-time attendees to long-time Recruit users, every meetup was filled with energetic discussions and product deep-dives.

Why these meetups matter
Community meetups give us something no survey, support ticket, or feature request can: the full picture. When we're in the room, we see how you move through a workflow. We hear what you say to a colleague. We notice what you skip — and what you double back to. That context changes everything.
We're grateful to every person who registered, attended, stayed back, and shared openly. Whether you asked the hard question during Q&A or quietly walked through a use case one-on-one with the team — you made Zoho Recruit better this month.
Let’s Talk Recruit!
Have you attended a Zoho Recruit meetup — or wanted to? Tell us in the comments: what city should we visit next, what topic you'd want on the agenda, or a feature you've been waiting to discuss face-to-face with our team. Your input shapes the next one.