Customize and Manage Your Hiring Workflow with Stages

Hiring stages define the workflow candidates follow as they move through your recruiting process. Each opening can have its own customized hiring workflow, allowing you to tailor the process to fit the needs of a specific role or hiring team.

When creating a new opening, you can copy the hiring stages from an existing opening or build a completely custom workflow. After an opening has been created, you can edit its hiring stages at any time.

Edit Hiring Stages

Watch the video here, or read on below!

Edit Hiring Stages

To update the hiring workflow for an existing opening:

1. From the left navigation menu, click Openings.
2. Select the opening you want to edit.
3. Open the Job Settings tab.
4. Scroll to the Hiring Stages section.

From here you can:

• Edit an existing stage.
• Change the order of stages by dragging and dropping them.
• Add new stages.
• Assign a stage owner.
• Delete eligible stages.

The first stage in the workflow is where new applicants are placed when they apply. By default, this is the Screening stage, but you can rename or replace it to fit your hiring process.

Add a New Hiring Stage

Select + Add a New Stage to create an additional step in your workflow.

You can create one of three stage types:

• Interview stage
• Review stage
• Plain stage

Each stage type is designed for a different part of the hiring process.

Interview Stages

Interview stages help organize scheduled interviews and include additional interview-specific settings.

When creating an interview stage, you can configure:

• Stage coordinator (the stage owner)
• Interview title
• Interview type or medium, such as:
  • Phone
  • Video conference
  • Google Meet
  • Zoom
  • In-person
  • Other
• Interview duration
• Meeting location or static meeting link for supported meeting types

The stage owner is responsible for candidates while they are in that stage of the hiring process.

Review Stages

Review stages are used when one or more reviewers need to evaluate a candidate.

When configuring a review stage, you can specify:

• Stage coordinator
• Reviewers
• Optional instructions or notes
• Whether review requests are sent automatically or manually after a candidate enters the stage

Review stages help streamline collaborative hiring by notifying reviewers and collecting feedback in one place.

Offer Stages

Offer stages are great as your final stage. When you're about to send an offer letter to your candidate.

Plain Stages

Plain stages are general workflow stages without interview or review functionality.

For each plain stage, you can:

• Rename the stage.
• Assign a stage owner.

The stage owner can be an existing Trakstar Hire user or a new user invited by email.

Change a Stage Type

You can convert an existing stage from one type to another.

For example, you can change:

• A plain stage into an interview stage.
• A plain stage into a review stage.
• An interview stage into a plain stage.
• A review stage into a plain stage.

Important: Converting an interview or review stage to a plain stage permanently removes the interview or review settings associated with that stage. Those settings cannot be recovered.

Assign Stage Owners

Each hiring stage is designed to have a single owner who is responsible for candidates while they are in that stage.

If multiple people perform similar responsibilities, consider creating separate stages for each owner rather than assigning multiple users to one stage.

Reuse Hiring Workflows

You do not need to recreate your hiring workflow for every opening.

When creating a new opening, use the Copy Details From option to copy hiring stages and other opening settings from an existing opening. This helps maintain consistency across similar roles.

Delete a Stage

You can delete a hiring stage only when all candidates currently assigned to that stage have reached a decision status, such as:

• Hired
• Rejected
• Other completed hiring outcomes

Once the stage no longer contains active candidates, it can be removed from the workflow.

Are Candidates Notified When Their Stage Changes?

No. Moving a candidate to a different hiring stage does not automatically notify the candidate.

If you want to communicate the change, you can send a message using Candidate Messaging after moving the candidate to the new stage.