Work the candidate pipeline

What this achieves

The pipeline board shows everyone applying for one role, arranged by the stage they have reached. It is where a recruiter moves people forward, and where a stalled candidate becomes visible.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Recruiting → Pipeline.
Choose a requisition from the picker at the top. The list holds open requisitions.
Read the columns from left to right — this is your process, in order.
Open the candidates you need to assess before deciding anything.
Select Advance on a candidate’s card to move them to the next stage.
Select Reject to end their application, and enter a reason when asked.

Reading the board

The columns are Applied, then the stages of your default interview pipeline in order, then Offered and Hired. Each column shows how many candidates are in it.

Each card shows the candidate’s name, how long they have been in their current stage, their status, and their assessment result where the role required one.

Option	Description
Days in stage	How long since the candidate last moved. The card’s edge changes colour as this grows, so a stalled candidate stands out without being counted.
Status	Where the application stands.
Assessment result	The score against the job profile, where an assessment was required.
Advance	Moves the candidate into the next stage. It is not offered on a candidate who has been offered or hired.
Details	Shows the candidate’s current stage and status.
Reject	Ends the application. You are asked for a reason.

Example: Sophie Clarke opens the HC Corp engineering board and sees two candidates in the technical interview column, one of them eleven days in stage with a warm edge on the card. That candidate is chased before anything else on the board.

Advancing moves one stage at a time

Advance moves a candidate to the next column in order. There is no way to drag someone across two stages, which is deliberate: a person who skipped the technical interview should not read as having passed it.

Advance after the stage has actually happened, not when it has been booked. Time in stage is the number that tells you where your process is slow, and advancing early makes a slow stage look fast.

Rejecting

Rejecting asks for a reason, and the reason is required to complete it.

Write a reason that would make sense to a colleague reading the pipeline in six months, not one that only makes sense today. “No commercial payments experience” is useful; “not a fit” is not.

Rejected and withdrawn candidates leave the board. They are not lost — the application stays on the candidate’s own record with its outcome — but the board shows live candidates only, so it stays a picture of the work still to do.

Example: a candidate rejected at HC Corp’s final round disappears from the board while their record keeps the application, the stage they reached, and the reason. If a second requisition opens later, the record is still there to search.

The board shows one requisition at a time

The board is per requisition. A candidate applying for two roles appears on both boards, and each application progresses on its own — advancing one does not move the other.

What happens next

A candidate who has been through your stages is ready for an offer, which is drafted against their application rather than against the candidate. Candidates you rejected keep their history, and their records stay searchable in the talent pool for future roles.