Hiring process
Hiring means taking someone on to do a job. The hiring process is the sequence of steps an employer follows to get there: define the role, attract candidates, choose between them and make the appointment.
Four stages, in a fixed order
The CIPD recruitment factsheet divides the work into four stages: defining the role, attracting candidates, managing the application and selection process, and making the appointment. Your own labels may differ, and a small team can run two stages in one afternoon. The order is what holds. A role nobody has defined cannot be advertised well, and nobody can be appointed before someone has been chosen.
Selection is the stage with the most moving parts: screening, interviews, perhaps a work sample, then a decision. Each of these can be run lightly or in depth, which is why two companies can both say they have a hiring process and mean very different amounts of work.
Where it starts and where it stops
It starts before the job ad. For a first hire in the UK, GOV.UK’s step-by-step guide lists checks that come ahead of its recruiting step: whether the person is an employee, whether you can afford the hire, a safe workplace, registering as an employer, workplace pensions and Employers’ Liability insurance. That list is UK-specific. Other countries have their own, and it is worth finding yours before the role goes live.
It stops at the appointment. Onboarding has its own entry.
Three neighbours are easy to mistake for the process itself. A hiring funnel measures how a group of candidates moved through it. Writing the process down before the role opens is the job of a hiring plan, and asking every candidate the same questions is structured hiring.
How many steps one role deserves
The choice a small employer actually faces is how much process a single role warrants. Add a step when someone owns it and can say what it decides. A phone call that rules people out earns its place. A second interview that repeats the first mostly adds waiting for candidates.
The tool you use adds its own question: does moving a candidate tell them anything? In Join it does not, unless automations are configured (Join help). Either set up the message or send it yourself, because the process includes what candidates hear, not only what your team does.