What a candidate pipeline is
A candidate pipeline (خط إمداد المرشحين), also called a recruitment pipeline or a hiring pipeline, is the whole set of candidates moving towards one specific vacancy, distributed across defined stages that run from first contact to the acceptance of an offer.
What makes a candidate pipeline a pipeline and not a list
A list of names for a vacancy is not yet a candidate pipeline. Four features turn it into one:
- Stages with an entry condition and an exit condition. Both conditions are written down for each stage. A stage that carries only a general title, with nothing written about what brings a candidate into it or what takes a candidate out of it, does not meet this condition.
- One position for each candidate. A candidate is in one stage at any one moment, never in two at once.
- Dated movement. When a candidate moves from one stage to another, the move is recorded with the day on which it happened.
- A known end. The candidate pipeline closes either with a hire or with the cancellation of the vacancy. It does not stay open without a decision.
A candidate pipeline begins when the job requisition is approved. The job requisition is the manager’s request to open the vacancy; it is not the candidate’s application for it.
What a candidate pipeline shows
The total number of candidates in a candidate pipeline says nothing on its own. The useful reading is the pass rate between each pair of consecutive stages, because the pass rates show where the candidate pipeline stops moving.
Example. A vacancy receives 120 applications. Of those applicants, 30 pass to telephone screening (a prescreening interview), 12 pass to the interview, 3 pass to the offer stage, and 1 accepts. The pass rates between consecutive stages are:
- Application to telephone screening: 30 out of 120, or 25%.
- Telephone screening to interview: 12 out of 30, or 40%.
- Interview to offer: 3 out of 12, or 25%.
- Offer to acceptance: 1 out of 3, or about 33.3%.
Two transitions in the example are equally narrow, at 25% each: application to screening, and interview to offer. The first of them is the first gate the applicants meet, and only a quarter of them passed it. Measured against every applicant, the single hire gives a selection ratio of 1 in 120, or about 0.83%, a figure that by itself does not say at which stage the other 119 left.
The 25% at the first gate can be explained in two opposing ways. The job advertisement may be attracting people who do not meet its requirements, or the screening criterion may be narrower than the role actually requires. What tells the two explanations apart is an examination of the reasons for rejection that were recorded at that stage, not the number.
Candidate pipeline and talent pool: the difference
A talent pool is a standing group of people that is not tied to any particular vacancy. The organisation keeps it and follows it up, so that it can return to the people in it when a vacancy opens. A candidate pipeline is temporary by nature: it belongs to one open vacancy and ends when that vacancy closes.
The relationship between the two runs in both directions. The talent pool feeds the candidate pipeline when a vacancy opens. When the candidate pipeline closes, a candidate who was not hired returns to the talent pool if that candidate meets the condition the organisation has set for keeping people under follow up.
Candidate pipeline and applicant tracking system: the difference
The candidate pipeline is the flow of candidates itself. An applicant tracking system is the tool that displays that flow: the stages are defined in it, and the status of each candidate at each stage is recorded in it.
A candidate pipeline also exists without such a system, but it then remains spread across the memory of the people who follow it. The system, for its part, neither creates the stages nor sets the conditions for moving between them. It displays what the organisation has set.
Where a candidate pipeline fills from
Candidates enter a candidate pipeline through four routes. The routes describe how a candidate arrives; source of hire, by contrast, counts the people hired in a period by the channel they came from.
- Talent sourcing. It reaches people who have not yet applied. Its role ends once there is an interested candidate, and at that point the candidate enters the candidate pipeline.
- Application to the job advertisement. It is the source that reaches people who are looking for work now.
- Employee referral. A current employee puts a candidate forward for the vacancy.
- The record of an earlier candidate. It is retrieved from the candidate database.
What distorts the reading of a candidate pipeline
Four conditions distort the reading of a candidate pipeline:
- A stalled candidate. It is a candidate who has stayed in the same stage for weeks without a decision, and who is counted inside the candidate pipeline while being outside it in practice.
- A stage with no exit condition. Moving a candidate on becomes a personal judgement, and the pass rates lose their meaning.
- One pipeline for different vacancies. Its figures combine roles that cannot be compared with one another.
- Deleting rejected candidates. When those who left a candidate pipeline are deleted from it, its pass rates are calculated on those who remained and no one else, so the rates rise although nothing has improved.
What a candidate pipeline does not tell you
A candidate pipeline measures movement, not outcome. A wide and fast candidate pipeline can end in a hire who does not stay. Whether that hire lasts is a question of quality of hire, and the answer is not known on the day of the hire.
A full candidate pipeline also does not necessarily mean a lower vacancy rate. The vacancy rate is a snapshot of the number of empty positions at one moment, and vacancies can open faster than they close however full the candidate pipeline is.
This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.
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