Two hundred and fourteen applications.One person decides.
Hiring is the most human thing a company does and, underneath, the most mechanical. The mechanical half is where the month goes: posting, reading every application to the same standard, collecting what is missing, finding a slot. Below is one real vacancy narrowing to one hire, with the two points a person decides marked on the drawing.
Every one of the 214 was read. Not the first forty, and to the same standard at two in the morning as at nine. What the agent did not do is reject anybody. The narrowing between 214 and 38 is a person advancing candidates, one at a time, with their reasons written down.
Illustrative from a demonstration workspace. The funnel is drawn for legibility rather than to scale, since a true scale would make the last three stages invisible.
A record you can be shown, challenged on, and audit.
Two candidates from that funnel. One moved forward and one did not, and both have the same thing written against them: the criterion, the finding, and the evidence behind the finding. The second one is the important one, because a system that only explains its yeses is not explaining anything.
Four met, one partly met. Put in front of a person with the gap named, not advanced automatically and not rejected. The travel answer is a conversation, not a disqualification, and only a person can decide that.
Strong on experience, stopped on a hard requirement. The reason is written down, the two requests are timestamped, and the record can be reopened by a person if the certificate turns up. Nobody has to reconstruct why this happened.
Their first week was built before they arrived.
Onboarding is the part everybody agrees matters and nobody has time for, because it is twenty small obligations spread across four people. Here it is for the one hire, assembled from the role, the location and the delivery schedule that already existed.
- Contract issued, signed and filed to the recordAgent
- Documents requested from the new starter and collectedAgent
- Start date confirmed to the delivery teamAgent
- Access provisioned at 08:00, not on ThursdayAgent
- Introductions posted to the team with a short profileAgent
- Safety briefing booked with the field leadAgent
- Shadowing on the retrofit, assigned from live capacityAgent
- Tools and protective equipment issued and loggedPerson
- First supervised job on the fit outAgent
- Fifteen minute check in with the managerAgent
- Outstanding certification chased directly with the candidateAgent
- Payroll details confirmed and the record closed outAgent
- Week one review booked with the team leadAgent
- Feedback written to the record, both directionsPerson
Access was live at eight on the first morning. Not on Thursday, after two messages to somebody in another team. That one detail is most of what a new starter remembers about their first week, and it costs nothing to get right when the start date is on the same record as everything else.
The same checklist runs in reverse when somebody leaves. Access revoked on the last day rather than a fortnight later, equipment logged back in, and the handover written while the person is still there to write it.
Automated screening is regulated, and increasingly so.
Every other page on this site can tell you about its controls. This one has to be more careful than that, because the rules here are real, they differ by jurisdiction, and they are moving.
Nothing on this page is legal advice. Take counsel for every place you hire in, and treat notice, auditing and candidate disclosure requirements as a precondition of turning screening on rather than as a task for afterwards.
Hiring, onboarding, and what a person actually costs.
Headcount is a cost and a capacity number.
Bring your hardest open role.
The one that has been open too long, with the scorecard you would actually use. We will run it through screening on the call and show you the record it produces for a candidate it does not advance.
