A recruitment workflow is the set of steps every role and candidate goes through, from taking the job brief to checking in after the placement. For a small agency, a good one has seven stages (intake, sourcing, screening, interviews, client feedback, offer, aftercare), lives in one system, and tells everyone exactly what happens next.
Without one, every recruiter does it their own way, candidates sit in limbo and follow-ups depend on someone’s memory. With one, you fill roles faster, clients get a consistent service and new starters know what good looks like from day one. This guide is for agencies of 1 to 20 people.
A recruitment workflow is the repeatable sequence of stages, tasks and handovers that takes a vacancy from brief to placed candidate. It’s the “how we do things here” of your agency, written down and built into your CRM.
It’s slightly different from your recruitment process. The process is the big picture (win the client, fill the role, get paid). The workflow is the day-to-day steps inside it: who does what, in what order, and what triggers the next step.
A clear workflow means fewer dropped candidates, faster shortlists and a service your clients can rely on, whoever in your team is working the role.
Most agency workflows follow the same seven stages, from taking the brief to looking after the candidate once they’ve started.
| Stage | What happens | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Job intake | Take a full brief: role, salary, must-haves, interview process, timescales, fee | Terms signed and job live in your CRM |
| 2. Sourcing | Search your database, advertise, headhunt | You have a longlist |
| 3. Screening and shortlisting | Call candidates, check skills, salary, notice and motivation | A shortlist is ready to send |
| 4. Interviews | Send CVs, book interviews, prep candidates | Interviews done |
| 5. Client feedback | Chase feedback quickly, pass it on to candidates | Decision made |
| 6. Offer and placement | Manage the offer, negotiate, handle resignation | Candidate accepts and starts |
| 7. Aftercare | Check in on day one, week one and month one | Rebate period passed |
Take a proper brief, because a vague brief creates a vague shortlist.
Ask about the must-haves versus the nice-to-haves, the real salary range, why the role is open, who’s interviewing and how quickly they want to move. Agree your terms before you start work, and log the job in your CRM with the fee so you can see its value.
Search your own database first, then advertise and headhunt.
Your existing candidates are the fastest and cheapest place to start. Then post the advert and go after passive candidates. There’s a full guide on candidate sourcing if you want to tighten this stage up.
Call every candidate before you send them, and check the four things that kill deals later: salary, notice period, location and motivation.
Write notes on every call so anyone in the team can pick it up. Send a short, strong shortlist rather than ten “maybes”. A CV formatting tool keeps every CV on-brand and saves a lot of fiddling in Word.
Book interviews quickly and prepare candidates properly, because an unprepared candidate reflects badly on you.
Tell them who they’re meeting, the format and what the client cares about. Call them straight after for their feedback.
Chase feedback within 24 to 48 hours, because time kills deals.
The longer a client takes, the more likely your candidate takes another offer. Pass feedback on honestly, good or bad, and never leave a candidate waiting without an update.
Know your candidate’s limits before the offer lands, and stay close through resignation.
Ask “if the client came back with this figure, would you accept?” before you negotiate. Then prepare them for a counter-offer, and keep in touch through the notice period.
Check in after the first day, first week and first month.
It protects your fee if something’s going wrong, builds loyalty, and often tells you what the client is hiring next. Here’s more on keeping candidate experience strong all the way through.
Use a handful of clear stages for candidates, because too many stages means nobody updates them.
A simple set that works for most agencies:
Track these on a drag-and-drop board so you can see every candidate at a glance. Giig’s free recruitment pipeline tool gives you jobs, interview and company pipelines out of the box. If you want your own stages, custom pipelines on Giig Plus let you rename and add stages to match how you work.
Write it down, put it in one system, automate the repetitive steps, keep people updated and measure it. That’s most of it.
Measure how long each stage takes and how many candidates make it through, so you can see exactly where things stall.
If CVs aren’t turning into interviews, your screening or your brief needs work. If offers are being turned down, look at salary conversations earlier. Recruitment reporting on Giig Plus shows these without building spreadsheets.
The usual mistakes are too many stages, too many tools, and stages nobody actually updates.
Related reading: the three pipelines every small agency needs and what to track on a recruitment dashboard.
A recruitment workflow is the repeatable set of stages a vacancy and its candidates move through, from job intake to aftercare after the placement. It defines who does what and in what order, and it’s usually built into your recruitment CRM as pipeline stages, tasks and automations.
For most agencies: job intake, sourcing, screening and shortlisting, interviews, client feedback, offer and placement, and aftercare. Candidates inside that move through simpler stages like contacted, shortlisted, sent to client, interview, offer, placed and follow-up.
The process is the big picture of how you win and fill roles. The workflow is the detailed, day-to-day steps inside it: the stages, tasks, handovers and triggers. In practice people use the terms interchangeably, but the workflow is the bit you build into your CRM.
Use pipeline stages in your CRM and attach actions to them, like an email or a task when a candidate moves stage. Add reminders for follow-ups, email templates for updates and CV parsing for data entry. On Giig Plus, triggered actions on custom pipelines do this automatically.
Usually six to eight. Enough to show where every candidate is, few enough that your team actually updates them. If a stage never changes what anyone does next, remove it.
A recruitment CRM and ATS with pipelines, notes, tasks and email in one place. Giig’s Free Forever plan includes jobs, interview and business development pipelines. Paid plans start at £14.99 per user/month +VAT, with no contract, cancel anytime.
A recruitment workflow doesn’t need to be clever. It needs to be clear, consistent and in one place, so every role moves forward and nobody gets forgotten. Keep the stages simple, automate the boring steps, and check the numbers every month.
Want your workflow in one system? Start on Giig for free. No credit card, no contract.
