How Tellam works
Updated
Tellam is a referral collector for recruiters and hiring teams: one link out to the people you trust, and every name they send back lands sorted and credited. The best people come recommended, so Tellam keeps it simple: ask the people you trust, let them reply however they like, and watch good names land tidy and credited on your side. Here is the whole village, one little house at a time.
Your village, the people you trust
It all starts with your village: a small pool of referrers whose taste in talent you would bet on. Each one is just a name, maybe an email or mobile, a tag or two (frontend, adelaide), and whether they are around right now. No logins. No forms. Nothing for them to fill in.
And because you already know each villager, whatever they send back ties straight to them. That is all attribution really is.
One little link, paste it anywhere
Open a role and Tellam hands you one little link: tellam.app/for/senior-sre. Nothing to integrate, no webhooks to wire up. Drop it into an email, a WhatsApp, a group chat, a DM, wherever your people already hang out.
Send someone their own personal link and it quietly carries a tag, so anything they reply gets credited to them without a soul lifting a finger. Share the plain link in a group and it still works a treat: people pop their name on, and Tellam matches it to your pool.
One link, everyone in your village.
Email, chat, SMS, socials. The link does not mind which. Every reply tumbles into the same place, so you are never stitching together five inboxes.
They reply the way people actually talk
No form, no fields. Your villagers just answer in their own words, usually a few names in one breath:
Three referrals, thirty seconds, zero fields. The kind of message a clunky form would have scared right off.
The windmill turns. One mess in, clean rows out.
Tellam reads that little ramble and splits it into one tidy row per person. It pairs a name with a LinkedIn link when they clearly belong together, keeps the half-remembered bits, and never makes upa profile or a URL. When someone is hedging (“he’s on LinkedIn somewhere”), it gets a low-confidence flag for you to peek at, never a quiet guess.
Every name remembers who vouched
Here is the bit we care about most. Every candidate row carries the name of whoever pointed you their way. If two villagers vouch for the same person, Tellam keeps both and tags the later one a duplicate, so nobody loses credit for a good intro.
Every row keeps a thread back to who vouched.
You take a peek. Nothing leaves without your nod.
Names land in a simple review list. Approve, tweak, or pass on each one. Nothing goes anywhere until you say go. Give a candidate the nod and Tellam can mirror them straight into your Google Sheet, or pop them into your CRM. Both optional, both happily quiet until you set them up.
Email replies are welcome too
Some folks just hit reply, and that is grand. An emailed answer finds the right role and the right villager on its own, from the address it came from or the tag on the reply. Do not recognise the sender? They wait politely in an Unmatched tray instead of vanishing. And if the same message turns up twice, Tellam only ever logs it once.
Email, chat, smart link, all one pipeline.
Private by design
Your workspace is yours alone. Every recruiter gets their own private village — candidate details, referrers, and the raw replies stay scoped to your account, kept around just so you can re-read what someone actually said.
Tellam vs the usual way
Most teams collect referrals with a form, or with an inbox and a spreadsheet. Here is how the three compare on the things that decide whether people actually refer.
| Question | Referral form | Inbox + spreadsheet | Tellam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effort for the referrer | Fill in fields, often an account | Write an email you then retype | Reply in their own words |
| Several names at once | One submission per person | Split by hand | Split into one row each |
| Who gets credit | Whatever they typed | Whoever you remember | Tied to the referrer automatically |
| Same person twice | Lost or overwritten | Easy to miss | Kept, both referrers credited |
| Where names end up | The form tool | Your inbox | A review list, Google Sheets or your CRM |
Questions, answered
What is Tellam?
Tellam is a referral collector: you keep a small pool of people you trust, share one smart link per role, and let them reply in plain words. AI sorts those replies into tidy candidate rows and credits whoever vouched.
Who is Tellam for?
Tellam is for recruiters, founders, and hiring managers who fill roles through their network. If your best hires come from someone saying "you should talk to…", Tellam turns those replies into a credited candidate list without asking anyone to fill in a form.
Do referrers need an account or to fill out a form?
No. There are no logins and no forms. A referrer just replies however they like — a name, a company, a LinkedIn link, a line on why — over the smart link or by email, and Tellam untangles it.
How does Tellam credit who referred someone?
Each role link can be personalised per referrer so anything they send is automatically attributed to them. Shared links still work: people add their name and Tellam matches it against your pool of referrers.
Where do the referrals end up?
Every candidate lands as a tidy row on your side and is mirrored live to a Google Sheet or CRM, with the same person de-duplicated across roles and referrers.
Does Tellam make up candidate details?
No. Tellam only keeps what the referrer actually wrote. It pairs a name with a LinkedIn link when they clearly belong together, flags anything uncertain as low-confidence for you to review, and never invents a profile or URL.
How much does Tellam cost?
Tellam is free during early access. Sign in, set up a role, and share your link — there is no card required to start.
That is the whole loop: ask your village, let them talk, and get back a tidy, credited list of people worth meeting. No forms. Just good people pointing you toward other good people.