Every stage in your job pipeline needs a category. The category you pick determines how that stage is counted in reports, milestone metrics, and submission tracking — so getting it right matters.
Here's a breakdown of each stage category and when to use it.
Recruiter Screen
Use this for: Stages where your internal recruiter evaluates a candidate before involving the client. This includes initial screening calls, resume reviews, or any internal assessment step.
Why it matters: Lets you track how many candidates your team screened versus how many were actually submitted to the client — a useful measure of sourcing quality.
Company Submission
Use this for: Stages where you send or present candidate details to the client. This is the formal handoff from your team to the hiring company.
Why it matters: This is one of the most important categories in Recruiterflow. It powers submission metrics across jobs, clients, recruiters, and time periods — and feeds into milestone reporting. If your pipeline has a submission step, it must use this category for the numbers to show up correctly.
Client Screen
Use this for: Stages where the client reviews submitted candidates and decides who to move forward to an interview. Think of it as the client's shortlisting step.
Why it matters: Tracks how many of your submissions made it past the client's initial filter — a direct signal of submission quality.
Client Interview
Use this for: Stages where the client interviews the candidate. This can cover single or multiple interview rounds — map each round to this category.
Why it matters: Drives interview-level metrics including client interviews per job, per recruiter, per client, and over time. Also calculates your Submission-to-Interview and Interview-to-Hire ratios in milestone reports.
Reference Check
Use this for: Stages involving background or reference checks, typically after interviews are complete and the client is close to making an offer.
Others
Use this for: Any stage that doesn't fit the categories above — internal hold stages, waiting stages, or anything specific to your workflow. Assigning this category ensures the stage is tracked without distorting the metrics tied to the categories above.
System-Defined Stages (Not Editable)
In addition to the categories above, Recruiterflow has five fixed system stages that are applied automatically and cannot be renamed or removed:
Sourced — Candidates added directly by a recruiter via Recruiterflow or the Chrome extension.
Applied — Candidates who applied through a job board or your careers page.
Offer — Candidates who have received an offer from the client.
Hired — Candidates who have accepted the offer and been placed.
Disqualified — Candidates removed from the pipeline. This stage runs parallel to the entire pipeline and can be reached from any stage.
These stages are system-controlled, so they don't need a category assigned — they're handled separately from your custom pipeline stages.
Questions about pipeline setup? Reach out to our support team anytime.