By Kellie Lail
One of the most important things when it comes to hiring is making sure you are organized. You want to stay on track with where you are at in the hiring process with each candidate that you encounter, which can sometimes be overwhelming. This is where your IdealTraits subscription is really going to come in handy. Whether you’ve found your candidates by posting an ad through IdealTraits or through other sources, you can utilize the IdealTraits Hiring Stages to keep your candidates organized. This way you know exactly what step of the hiring process each individual candidate is in. You can even track things like your candidate’s apply date, when they completed the assessment, when you moved them through various hiring stages, and even their hire date. Remember, you can add candidates manually to the Applicant Tracking System if you have identified candidates through outside sources. Once you add the candidate to your account, you can send them the assessment and utilize all of the features of your IdealTraits subscription.
Let’s take a look at the different hiring stages that are in your IdealTraits account. The stages included with your subscription are:
- All – A complete list of active candidates in your account.
- Candidate – You’ve added a candidate manually but did not send the assessment.
- Assessment – A candidate has either applied to a job or been added manually and was sent the assessment.
- Assessment Complete – A candidate has completed the assessment.
- Phone Screen – You have designated that you are ready to Phone Screen a candidate.
- Interview – You have designated that you are ready to Interview a candidate.
- Offer – You have decided to extend an Offer to a candidate and are ready to create the Offer Letter.
- Hired – A candidate has accepted and signed the Offer Letter and you have moved the candidate to the Hired stage.
- Archive – You have decided that you will not be moving forward with the candidate and would like to remove them from your candidate list.
Moving candidates through the different stages is easy, and some of them even have automatic system features to save you time! To move Candidates through the hiring stages, you have two options. One, from within the Candidate Profile, you can locate the Stages dropdown in the top right corner of the profile. You can also use the Stages dropdown from the Candidate List in any hiring stage. Keep reading to learn more about the best ways to utilize the hiring stages and their built in features, and more information about how using the hiring stages can win you $1000!
Within the Candidate Profile
When you have entered a candidate profile to review their resume or assessment results and are ready to move them to the next hiring stage, you can do so using the blue dropdown menu at the top right of the profile. This dropdown will show the title of the hiring stage that candidate currently sits in. Just click the dropdown to view the menu and select the stage you would like to advance them to!
From the Hiring Stages List
When you go to your Candidates – All list, or navigate using the left hand Hiring Stages menu, you will see a column on the right side of the page titled Stages. In this column, you will see a dropdown menu with the title of the stage that the candidate currently exists in. To advance them to the next stage, just click this dropdown to view the stages menu and select their next destination.
Additional System Features
Assessment
For example, I’m running a business and I added myself as a candidate, but I’m ready to take the IdealTraits Assessment to learn more about my personality.
When I select the stages dropdown to move myself to the Assessment Stage, the system will automatically email the assessment to the email listed in the candidate profile.
Offer Letter
This time, I have a candidate who has completed the assessment, been phone screened, and completed the interview with an amazing outcome. Now, I am ready to extend an offer! I am going to locate the candidate in Candidates – Interview, because that is the last stage I had them in. Next, I’ll use the stages dropdown to move Anita Jobe to the Offer stage.
When I move a candidate to the Offer Stage, the system will give me the option to Generate and Send a customizable offer letter to my candidate.
You can learn more about customizing the offer letter and tracking the candidates engagement with the offer by checking out this article in our Help Center.
Rejection Letter / Archive Tags
When you’re moving a candidate to the Archive stage via either of the methods listed above, the system will prompt you to add a tag to the profile or send a rejection letter.
Tags are an awesome way to leave yourself a note about the candidate in case you’d like to revisit their profile in the future. You can use an existing tag from our list, or even create your own! You can also preview the rejection letter options right from that popup screen. Learn more about utilizing tags and rejection letters when archiving a candidate by checking out this article in our Help Center.
Hired Stage
Once a candidate has accepted the offer and signed the offer letter, they will automatically be sent to the Hired Stage and their direct manager will be emailed a message letting them know the offer has been accepted. If you do not identify a direct manager’s email when generating the Offer Letter, this email will be sent to the address you use to log into IdealTraits.
Even if you do not use the offer letter through the system, but offer the position verbally over the phone or in person, you can use the Stages dropdown to manually move your new employee to the Hired Stage.
Make sure, no matter what, you are moving your new employees to the Hired Stage, even if you do extend the offer verbally. IdealTraits will maintain a record of your employee’s hire date that you can view from their profile and it will also keep track of your company’s average time to hire.
Don’t forget! We offer a number of filters that you can access within each hiring stage to organize your candidates even further. To utilize the filters, just look for this filter button at the top of the candidate list within each stage.
We have the options to filter candidates by Active Job Ad Title, Position Name, Personality type, and even by Star Ranking.
Not only is the use of the Hiring Stages incredibly important in helping you keep track of where your candidates are in the hiring process, but it also makes it easy to utilize some of the built-in features of the platform for ease and convenience. To encourage our clients to utilize the hiring stages to their best capacity, and to show you more of how this feature can benefit you and your hiring process, we are currently running a contest!
For your chance to win $1,000, be sure to utilize your hiring stages and send those Offer Letters! For every candidate moved to the Hired stage during Quarter 3 (July-September), you will have your name automatically entered into a drawing to win $1,000!