Ask three recruiters on the same desk what “shortlisted” means and you will often get three answers. One moves a candidate after a good phone call, another only after a full interview, a third as soon as the CV looks right. Your Applicant Tracking System should hold, for every pipeline stage, a short written definition of what must be true and recorded before a candidate may enter that stage. With those entry criteria in place, a stage means the same thing for every recruiter, every vacancy and every report, and the pipeline becomes something you can plan on rather than a set of personal habits.
The stages differ per segment, but the need is the same. Recruitment agencies need a clear line between a candidate who is interesting and a candidate who may be presented to a client. Staffing desks need to know which candidates are actually available and checked for a shift or assignment. Secondment teams need to separate a professional who is proposed from one who is confirmed. Executive search firms need a longlist and a shortlist that the client can trust. In-house recruitment teams need hiring managers to read the same stage in the same way.
What goes wrong without entry criteria
The same patterns show up on many desks:
- Candidates are moved to “presented” before the client has received anything, because the recruiter intends to send the profile later that day
- A shortlist holds candidates whose availability, salary expectation or notice period nobody has checked yet
- Conversion between stages looks very different per recruiter, simply because each one uses the stages differently
- A colleague takes over a vacancy and cannot tell which candidates in a stage are really ready for the next step
- Hiring managers stop trusting the pipeline overview and ask for a separate spreadsheet instead
None of this is caused by bad recruiters. It is caused by stages that were named but never defined.
What to write down per stage
- Purpose — one sentence on what the stage is for, such as “candidates the recruiter has spoken to and considers suitable”
- Entry criteria — the facts that must be true before a candidate enters, for example a recorded screening call, confirmed interest in this vacancy and a checked availability date
- Required fields — the information that must be filled in on the candidate or the application, such as the candidate source, the notice period or a written interview outcome
- Who may move candidates in — any recruiter on the vacancy, or only the owner of the role
- Expected time in the stage — the period after which a candidate should have moved on, which is the basis for alerts on candidates stuck in a stage
- Ways out — the stages a candidate can go to next, including rejection or withdrawal with a recorded reason
Keep each definition short enough to read in half a minute. If a stage needs a page of explanation, it is probably two stages.
Let the Applicant Tracking System check the criteria
Written definitions help, but they work best when the Applicant Tracking System checks them at the moment of the move. When a recruiter moves a candidate into a stage, the system asks for the required fields that are still empty and does not complete the move until they are filled in. The move itself is recorded like every other stage change: who moved the candidate and when. For stages that involve a client, such as presenting a candidate, the system checks that the candidate’s consent is recorded first. Where a stage needs a judgement rather than a field, ask for a short written note instead of a tick box, so the reasoning stays with the candidate.
Avoid making every field mandatory everywhere. Each stage should only ask for what is genuinely needed at that point. Too many required fields early in the pipeline lead to placeholder values, and placeholder values are worse than empty ones.
Keep the number of stages small
- Use as few stages as your process really has; most desks need between five and eight
- Give each stage a name that says what has happened, not what the recruiter hopes will happen
- Do not create a stage for waiting; use a next-action date on the candidate instead
- Use the same stage set for comparable vacancies, so reports can be compared across recruiters and clients
- Review the definitions once per quarter with the team, and record what changed and from which date
Report on stages you can trust
Once entry criteria are in place, the Applicant Tracking System can show how many candidates entered each stage, how many moved on, and how long they stayed, per vacancy, recruiter, client or source. These figures only mean something if a stage meant the same thing throughout the period, so note the date of every change to the definitions and do not compare periods with different definitions as if they were the same. Use the same discipline as in reliable time-to-fill reporting: actual counts from your own records, the number of candidates behind each figure, and no general benchmarks you cannot verify.
Where artificial intelligence may help — and where it must not
Artificial intelligence may point out candidates who sit in a stage while a required field is empty, compare how different recruiters use the same stage and suggest where a definition is unclear, or summarise interview notes so the recruiter can fill in the outcome faster. It must stay secondary. Artificial intelligence does not replace recruiters, does not decide that a candidate meets the entry criteria and does not move candidates between stages on its own. The Applicant Tracking System holds the definitions and the record; recruiters make the call.
A practical week to get started
- List the stages you use today and write down, with the team, the purpose and entry criteria of each one
- Merge or remove stages that turn out to mean the same thing, or that are only used for waiting
- Set the required fields per stage in the Applicant Tracking System, starting with the stages that involve a client
- Go through the candidates in today’s open vacancies and move back anyone who does not meet the criteria of their current stage
- Record the date from which the new definitions apply, so later reports start from a clean line
Expect the pipeline to look smaller after the first week. It is not; it is now showing what is really there.
Define the stage, then move the candidate
A pipeline is only as useful as the agreement behind each stage. Write down what must be true before a candidate enters a stage, let the system check it at the moment of the move, and keep the definitions the same for everyone. Then explore the product or book a demo — we walk through pipeline stages and entry criteria in BoldATS for your segment.