Call recording laws
Recording interview calls in Missouri
Missouri is a one-party consent state. If you are a participant in the call, you may record it. Telling the candidate anyway is still the professional standard.
Missouri is a one-party consent state. If you are a participant in the call, you may record it. Telling the candidate anyway is still the professional standard.
Last reviewed July 2026. General information, not legal advice.
What Missouri law says
Missouri follows a one-party consent rule under its state wiretap law and the federal baseline (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)), which allows a participant to record a conversation. As a participant in the interview, you may record the call without the candidate's permission.
What this means for recruiter calls
Legally, a recruiter in Missouri can record their own candidate calls without asking. Practically, you should ask anyway. Candidates talk to recruiters in other states, compare notes, and expect transparency. A surprise recording that surfaces later costs more in trust than the disclosure ever would.
There is also a harder legal reason to ask: the one-party rule only reliably protects you when everyone on the call is in a one-party state, and you usually cannot control where the candidate answers from.
The interstate problem
Recruiting calls cross state lines constantly, and it is not settled which state's law governs a call between, say, a one-party state and California. Courts have applied the stricter state's law. The only policy that scales is to treat every candidate call as if it were in an all-party state: disclose, get a yes, and log it. That habit makes the choice-of-law question irrelevant.
How to record candidate calls safely in Missouri
Disclose at the top of the call
Before substantive conversation starts, say you are recording and why. Use the same script every time so it becomes automatic.
Get a clear verbal yes
A nod on video is not something you can point to later. Ask the question and let the candidate answer it.
Log when and how consent was captured
Note the date, time, and method. If a question ever comes up months later, the log is what protects you.
Keep the recording under your control
Every third party that touches the audio is another place consent questions multiply. Recordings that never leave your own machine keep the answer simple.
How HireScribe handles consent
- A consent gate prompts you to inform the candidate before recording starts and logs a timestamped attestation.
- Jurisdiction-aware: tell it where the call parties are and it reflects one-party vs all-party rules.
- Your disclosure script lives in Settings, so every recruiter says the same correct thing every time.
- Recordings, transcripts, and summaries stay on your machine. No cloud vendor to add to the consent question.
FAQ: recording interviews in Missouri
This page is general information for recruiters, not legal advice. Laws change and individual situations differ. For specific questions, talk to an employment lawyer licensed in Missouri.