Every company has its own way of hiring: an HR screen, then a recruitment manager, a line manager and a hiring manager, or a panel of eight interviewers. The hiring process lets you lay those steps out on a canvas, say who handles each one, and decide what happens on its own: moving candidates on and telling the right people.
Step 1: Processes
A hiring process is a named list of steps, such as "Engineering roles" or "Hotel line staff". Each company can have several. The default one is the one new jobs start on.
Step 2: Steps
Each step has a name, a kind (Applied, Screening, Interview, Offer, Hired or Rejected), who handles it ("Line manager") and notes for that person on what to do.
Step 3: Automations
An automation moves a candidate on, or tells people, when something happens: a candidate arrives, interview feedback comes in, the AI score is ready, or a candidate has waited too long.
Step 4: People per job
On each job you pick the process and the people for each step. One process serves many roles, each with its own team.
The canvas
Go to Settings, then Hiring process. If your workspace has more than one company, the page shows the processes of the company picked in the company menu at the top left. The menu at the top of the page switches between the company's processes.
The canvas shows the open process:
- Steps run down the middle in the order candidates move through them. The board's columns follow the same order.
- Moves are solid branches on the right, from a step to the step an automation moves candidates to, labelled with what triggers them.
- Notifications are dashed cards on the left of their step, saying who is told.
Click a step, a branch label or a notification card to open it in the panel on the right. Click an empty part of the canvas to see the process itself: its name, what it is for, which jobs use it and its actions. Zoom and fit the view with the controls at the bottom.
Build and change a process
- Insert a step with the + between two steps, or Add step at the top left, which adds it before Hired and Rejected.
- Reorder by dragging a step up or down, or with the arrows in its panel. Applied always stays first.
- Edit a step in the panel: its name, its kind, Handled by, and Notes. The notes are shown to the people handling the step and are in the email they get when it is their turn.
- Remove a step with the bin in its panel.
Your changes are a draft until you publish them. While anything is unpublished, a bar above the canvas says so, with Discard and Publish. Undo and Redo are at the top right of the canvas (or Cmd or Ctrl and Z). Leaving the page with unpublished changes asks first.
A process always starts with one Applied step and has at least one Hired and one Rejected step, so every candidate has somewhere to go. A step that still has candidates in it cannot be removed: move them on first. Anything that keeps the process from publishing is marked on its step and explained in the panel.
Automations: what happens on its own
In a step's panel, Add automation adds one and opens it. Fill in when it fires, what has to hold, and what happens.
| Trigger | Only if |
|---|---|
| A candidate enters this step | Always, or the AI score is at least, or below, a number |
| An interviewer submits feedback | Always, or that feedback recommends hiring, or not hiring |
| Everyone on this step has submitted feedback | Always, or everyone recommends hiring, or anyone recommends not hiring |
| The AI score is ready | Always, or the score is at least, or below, a number |
| A candidate has been in this step for a while | After a number of days, from 1 to 90 |
Action either moves the candidate to another step of the process, or notifies people without moving anyone. A reminder after some days only notifies, once each time a candidate enters the step.
When your company has identity checks turned on, an automation on A candidate enters this step can also Request an identity check. The candidate gets the verification email without anyone clicking, and the check counts against your monthly identity check package like one a recruiter sends. It isn't offered on the first step, and it skips a candidate who already has a check open or was verified recently. See Identity checks.
Two examples:
- On a Line manager interview step: When everyone on this step has submitted feedback and all recommend hiring, move them to Hiring manager interview.
- On a Screening call step: When a candidate has been in this step for 3 days, notify the people on Screening call.
An automation's switch turns it off without deleting it. When an automation moves a candidate, the move appears in the activity log as made by a rule, and the people on the new step are told it is their turn.
Only one move happens per event: the first matching move of a step wins, in the order shown in its panel. The step the candidate lands in then runs its own automations, so you can chain steps.
Who is told, and how
A notification automation names who is told under Who is told. Pick any mix of:
- People on a step: whoever is chosen for that step on the candidate's job.
- Everyone on the job: the people chosen for any step of the job.
- The job's interview panel: the panel set on the job's Interview setup.
- A role: everyone whose role in the company is, for example, Hiring Manager or Admin.
- Named people: teammates, the same on every job that uses the process.
Under How, choose In the app (under the bell), By email, or both. Emails are sent in each person's own interface language, with a button that opens the candidate. Each person is told once, however many of the groups they belong to.
Separately from automations, when a candidate reaches a step, everyone chosen for that step on that job is told in the app and by email that it is their turn. Nobody is told when a job switches processes, and candidates who are rejected, withdrawn or hired are never moved or notified.
Start a new process
New flow opens a gallery. Pick a card to open an unsaved copy on the canvas; nothing is created until you select Save flow.
- Ready-made: the Standard hiring process (below), High-volume hiring (one screening call, one interview and a reminder so nobody waits), and Senior hire with a panel (the hiring manager first, then a panel interview).
- Your templates: processes your workspace saved with Save as template in a process's panel. Every company of the workspace can start from them. Named people are left out, since each company has its own.
- Blank flow with only Applied, Hired and Rejected, or a copy of one of the company's processes. Duplicate in a process's panel does the same.
Make default in a process's panel sets the one new jobs start on.
The standard hiring process
Every new workspace, and every company you add, starts on the standard hiring process as its default. It is written in the language you use the app in when it is created, and you can change all of it.
| Step | Kind | Handled by |
|---|---|---|
| Applied | Applied | Recruiter |
| Screening call | Screening | Recruiter |
| First interview | Interview | Hiring manager |
| Final interview | Interview | Interview panel |
| Offer | Offer | Hiring manager |
| Hired | Hired | Recruiter |
| Rejected | Rejected | Recruiter |
Each step also has notes on what the person handling it does. It comes with five automations, all of them safe to leave on:
- On Applied: when the AI score is ready and the score is 75 or higher, notify the people on Screening call.
- On Screening call: when an interviewer submits feedback and recommends hiring, move them to First interview.
- On First interview: when everyone on this step has submitted feedback and all recommend hiring, move them to Final interview.
- On First interview: when everyone on this step has submitted feedback and anyone recommends not hiring, notify the people on this step.
- On Final interview: when everyone on this step has submitted feedback and all recommend hiring, notify the people on Offer.
Ask ari about a process, or let it build one
Ask ari how a process works, for example "What happens after the first interview for Engineering roles?" or "Who is told when a candidate waits in Screening?". It reads the process itself (its steps, the notes, every automation and who it tells) and, for a job, the people chosen for each step, and answers from that. Everyone in the workspace can ask; teammates are named only to people who can see the team.
To change an existing process, ask ari, for example "Change the Engineering hiring process: tell the interview panel by email when anyone says no." ari opens the process on its canvas and makes each change there, where you see it and can undo it: steps and their notes, automations, who a notification tells (the people on a step, everyone on the job, the interview panel, a role or named teammates) and whether by app, email or both, and automations that request an identity check when a candidate enters a step. Nothing is saved until you select Publish on the card ari shows. Only Owners and Admins can ask ari to change a process.
To start a new process, ask ari to set up a hiring process. It opens a new, unsaved process on the canvas (the standard process to start with) and asks how your process goes: the rounds in order, who handles each step, and what should happen on its own. From your answer it drafts the whole process, steps and automations, and the canvas shows it. It then asks for a name and what to change, and changes single steps or automations as you ask. You can edit the draft yourself at any time.
Nothing is saved until you select Save flow on the card ari shows in the chat, or in the bar above the canvas. See ari as a guide and helper.
Choose who handles each step
Open a job, then Interview setup. The Hiring process card at the top shows the job's process and its steps.
- Pick the process under Flow. Switching moves the job's candidates to the matching steps of the new process and clears the people chosen for the old steps. Nobody is notified by the switch.
- Under each step, choose a teammate under Add a person and click the plus. Up to twelve people can handle one step. The cross on a name removes them.
You can set the same up while creating a job, on the wizard's last step.
Who can change what
Only Owners and Admins can build, change and publish hiring processes and save templates. Everyone else in the workspace can open the canvas to see how the process works, read-only. Choosing the process and the people for a job needs permission to manage jobs. See Roles and permissions.