Setup Considerations: pipeline stage design

What this achieves

Stages are the columns candidates move through, and they are shared configuration rather than something set per role. Getting them right before candidates are in flight matters, because moving the columns while people are sitting in them is what makes a pipeline unreadable.

Decision 1: how many stages

Every stage is a wait for the candidate and a decision for you. Three or four between application and offer is enough for most mid-market hiring; more than that and the pipeline becomes a queue nobody clears.

Count backwards from what you actually need to know. A stage that exists because “we always do a second round” is a stage that adds a week and no information.

Example: HC Corp hires engineers through a phone screen, a technical interview, and a final round. Adding a fourth stage would add a fortnight to a hire it already loses candidates from.

Decision 2: what each stage is for

Give each stage one job. Two stages assessing the same thing produce two opinions on the same evidence, which feels thorough and tells you nothing new.

Option	Description
Phone	A short conversation, typically to confirm basics and interest.
Video	A remote interview.
Technical	An assessment of the craft.
Onsite	An in-person round.
Panel	Several interviewers together.
Culture	How the person works with others.
Case Study	Work on a realistic problem.
Other	Anything your process needs that these do not describe.

Example: at HC Corp the phone screen establishes interest and salary expectation, the technical interview establishes the craft, and the final round establishes how the person works with the team. Nobody covers two of those.

Decision 3: one shared pipeline, or several

You can define several pipelines, and one of them is marked as the default. The pipeline board builds its columns from the default: Applied, then the default pipeline’s stages, then Offered and Hired.

That has a practical consequence worth knowing before you build several. The board a recruiter works from reflects the default pipeline, so a second pipeline is a definition you hold rather than a second board shape.

Option	Description
One default pipeline	Simplest. Every board reads the same, and everyone knows what stage three means.
Several pipelines	Useful for recording genuinely different processes, with the default carrying the shape your board shows.

Example: HC Corp defines one standard pipeline covering engineering and commercial hiring, rather than a pipeline per department that would leave its recruiters reading a different board each week.

Decision 4: what interviewers are asked to judge

Each stage carries an interviewer count and a set of scorecard criteria. The criteria are the definition of what that stage assesses, and they are worth writing even where the interview itself is a conversation.

Be aware of the boundary: the criteria describe the stage. There is no screen in recruiting that captures a completed scorecard against a candidate, so whatever your interviewers record, the comparison between them happens in your conversation rather than in a scored table.

That is an argument for fewer, clearer criteria. Three things every interviewer is asked to form a view on beats ten nobody can hold.

Decision 5: naming stages candidates will hear

Candidates are told which stage they are at by the people talking to them. Names that mean something outside your company — “Technical interview” rather than “Round 2” — save an explanation on every call.

What is expensive to change later

Decision	Cost of changing later
Changing stages while candidates are in flight	High. People sitting in a stage that no longer exists have to be placed somewhere, and your record of how long each took stops comparing like with like.
Which pipeline is the default	Medium. It changes the board every recruiter works from.
Adding a stage	Medium. It lengthens the process for everyone, including the candidates already in it.
Scorecard criteria	Low. They are guidance for the next interview, not a stored score.
Stage names	Low, as long as you tell the people using them.

What happens next

Build the stage list in the recruiting templates, mark the pipeline you want as the default, and confirm the board shows the columns you expect before candidates start arriving.