A tour of the Hiring menu

A screen-by-screen tour of everything under the Hiring menu in wp-admin, from Hiring HQ and Applications to Jobs, Settings, and the one-time Import tool.

Once Vakanssi is installed, a Hiring item appears in the left sidebar of wp-admin (the private dashboard of your site). Everything you do, from posting jobs to reviewing applications to changing settings, starts there.

Hover over Hiring and a submenu unfolds: Hiring HQ, All Jobs, Add New Job, Applications, Candidates, Settings, Tools, Documentation. You only see the items your role can open. (While you are still finishing the setup wizard, a temporary Setup item appears too. Importing jobs and applications happens on the Tools screen; see Tools below.)

Four things are worth knowing before we start:

• Clicking Hiring itself opens Hiring HQ, the dashboard. Since v0.37.9, Hiring HQ leads the submenu for this reason: before that fix, WordPress’s own ordering put All Jobs first instead. Recruiters, Hiring Managers, and HR / Compliance accounts with no other WordPress role also land on Hiring HQ when they log in.
• The Hiring menu often carries a small red count. That number is how many active applications nobody has opened yet. When it climbs, the Applications screen is where to go.
• Candidates and a few features inside other screens belong to Pro modules. They exist only in the Pro build, with a valid licence and the module switched on; the free plugin does not show them at all. See Free vs Pro.
• Documentation, at the bottom of the submenu, opens this site in a new tab and is visible to anyone who can view applications, not just administrators. Most cards on the Settings and Tools screens also carry a small Learn more link in their header that jumps straight to the matching page here.

Hiring HQ

Your home base. Hiring HQ opens with a Today row of exactly what needs doing right now, then your pipeline, then (on Pro) hiring analytics, and finally your open applications by job, latest applications, and upcoming interviews. Everything on it respects what your role is allowed to see.

• Getting started. While setup is unfinished, a checklist sits above everything else: Run the setup wizard, Set your company name, Publish a careers page, and Publish your first job. Since v0.33.5, it starts collapsed once you have published roles and candidates in the pipeline. Each step shows only for a role that can act on it, and the checklist disappears once every step you can see is done.
  • Sample data from the setup wizard’s demo seed does not count toward either published roles or candidates in the pipeline: the checklist stays open on a site whose only job and only active application are the sample ones.
• Today. Since v0.33.1, four queues: Unviewed applications, Offers out awaiting a decision, either Interviews next 7 days (with the Interviews module on) or In the pipeline, and Open roles. The first two name how long their oldest item has waited, turning amber past a week or red past two. Open roles turns amber when a role published at least 14 days ago still has no applicants.
• Pipeline. Since v0.33.4 its subtitle reads Candidates by current stage: a bar per hiring stage for every candidate there, all time, active, hired, or rejected alike. A stage is tagged Most waiting when it holds the most candidates of any stage, but only once it holds at least five. The first stage (your inbox) and the Hired and Rejected stages are never tagged.
• Hiring analytics Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license. With the Analytics module on, Hiring HQ grows reporting bands here (Performance, Where candidates drop off, and Sources & jobs), with a date range control and a CSV export. Analytics has no separate menu item; it lives on this screen. See Analytics.
• Open applications by job, Latest applications, Upcoming interviews. The footer cards. If the Interviews module is switched off, its card says so and points to where it is switched back on, instead of showing an empty list.

Applications

Every application to every job, tracked through your hiring stages. This is where you spend most of your time.

• A Pipeline view and List view toggle, an Add application button, and (for roles that can edit stages) a Customize stages link sit beside the heading. Pipeline view, shown above, is a board of columns you drag people between; List view is a sortable table with bulk actions for when you have a lot of applicants.
• One column per stage, each with a count: New, In Review, Interview, Offer, Hired, Rejected.
• Cards show the candidate’s name, the job, how long ago they applied, a star rating once they have been scored, and a paperclip when a CV is attached.
• Click any card to open the candidate drawer, a panel with contact details, CV preview, cover letter, notes, interviews, and stage buttons in one place.
• Add application opens a form for recording a candidate who did not apply through the site itself, someone who emailed you, was referred, or was sourced by your team. Choose the job, fill in their name and email, and optionally a phone, CV, cover letter, and source.
  • They land in your entry stage exactly like anyone who applied themselves; the only difference is Vakanssi does not send them the applicant confirmation email, since they did not submit the form.

Full docs: Working with applications.

Candidates Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

Your people database: everyone who ever applied or was sourced, one row per person, across all jobs.

• Where Applications tracks each application, Candidates tracks each person. Apply to three roles and you still appear once.
• Add candidate records people who never applied through the site (a referral, a conference contact). Find duplicates helps you merge the same person entered twice.
• Tag people with any labels that help you find them again, then filter by source or tag, or search by name and email.

Full docs: Candidates.

Jobs

Every job you have posted, open or closed, in one list. This is where jobs are created and edited.

• Add New Job starts a new listing, either its own item in the Hiring menu or the button at the top of this screen; see Creating jobs.
• Hover a row and click Duplicate to clone that job as a new draft, description, details, and taxonomy terms included, handy for reposting a similar role.
• The Applications column shows how many people applied to each job. Click the count to jump to that job’s applications.
• Departments and Locations are two ways to group jobs (Engineering, Sales, Berlin, Remote, and so on). They are taxonomies, WordPress’s word for categories. You set a job’s Department in the editor sidebar and its Location in the Job details box. Candidates can filter your careers page by department (shown as team).

Full docs: Creating jobs.

Settings

Every site-wide preference, on one tabbed screen.

The tabs run left to right. The free plugin has six:

• General. Your company identity, how long candidate data is kept, and what happens to it if the plugin is removed.
• Jobs & Careers. Your job web addresses, Google-for-Jobs data, and front-end styling.
• Application form. Uploads, applicant fields like LinkedIn, and the built-in defences on your application form, plus optional CAPTCHA (extra checks) for high-volume roles.
• Emails. Your sender identity, the team notification address, and the templates candidates receive; see Emails.
• Interviews. Defaults for scheduling and calendar invites.
• Pipeline. Rename, reorder, recolor, add, or delete your hiring stages; see Settings reference.

On the Pro build, five more tabs join them while their module is running: Automation Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license (after Emails), then Screening Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license, Scorecards Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license, Collaboration Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license, and Integrations Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license at the end. A Pro tab whose module is off, or not licensed, is simply not there, and the free plugin never shows one. See Settings reference.

Full docs: Settings reference.

Tools

A second administrative screen, next to Settings, with four tabs: Status, Import, Features, and Data. Like Settings, it opens only for administrators and the HR / Compliance role.

• Status. The Getting started checklist (with Run setup again), a System status card (database tables, unique indexes, protected CV storage, job links, version, and schema), an email test, a support report you can copy for help, and a compatibility test you can run on demand; see Settings reference.
• Features. Turn each Vakanssi module on or off; see Features.
• Import. An Import jobs (CSV) card for bulk-creating jobs from a spreadsheet with a column-mapping step. When Vakanssi detects data from another hiring plugin (WP Job Openings, Simple Job Board, WP Job Manager), a Migrate from another plugin card joins it, bringing jobs and applications across, CVs included, without changing the original data.
  • The migration is also offered as a notice at the top of your Hiring screens and as a step in the setup wizard. The Import tab itself appears only while at least one of the two importers is switched on.

• Data. Export and housekeeping tools for your Vakanssi data; see Backups & data.

Full docs: Import and Import jobs from a CSV.

Setup

While your first-run setup is unfinished, a Setup item sits here that reopens the setup wizard. Once you finish, it disappears from the menu; re-run the wizard from Tools, then Status, then the Getting started card’s Run setup again button (since v0.32.18).

Where to go next

You have seen every screen. Now follow the flow end to end: post a job, watch applications come in, and work them through your stages. Or read the recruiter journey for the whole story in one sitting.