Working with Applications

How the Applications screen works in Vakanssi, from the board and list views to moving candidates through stages, stage-move emails, and the candidate drawer.

The Applications screen is where you spend most of your hiring time. Every application to every job lands here, and you move each one along until it ends in Hired or Rejected. This page walks through the two ways to view the screen, what happens as you move a candidate, and everything inside the candidate panel.

A quick word on terms. A stage is a step in your hiring process, like “Interview” or “Offer.” The full set of stages a candidate passes through is your pipeline. Moving someone forward means moving them to the next stage.

To open the screen, click Hiring in the left sidebar of the WordPress admin, then click Applications.

Two ways to view: pipeline and list

The screen shows the same applications in two layouts. An Add application button sits right next to the heading, for recording a candidate by hand, see Adding an application by hand below. A Pipeline view | List view toggle sits beside that button, on the same row, and switches between the two layouts; Vakanssi remembers the one you picked.

Since v0.33.42, administrators and HR / Compliance also see a Customize stages link on that row. It opens the Pipeline settings tab, where your stages are set up, see The stages below.

• Pipeline view is a board: a set of columns, one per stage, with a card for each candidate. You drag cards from column to column. This is the day-to-day view for moving people forward.
• List view is a table, one row per application. It adds sorting, filtering, a Group by person option, an Export CSV button (for opening your applications in a spreadsheet), and bulk actions for handling many applications at once.

Pipeline view

A board like this is often called a Kanban board: work items as cards, moving left to right as they progress. Each column header shows the stage name and how many applications sit in it. Each card shows the candidate’s name and the job they applied to.

Use the Job dropdown above the board to focus on one job’s pipeline, or leave it on all jobs to see everything at once. The filter lives in the page’s URL, so it carries over if you switch to List view, and you can bookmark or share a link straight to one job’s board.

A fresh visit with no job in the URL always starts on all jobs. A search box narrows the visible cards as you type a name or email. On the board, type a full name first name first (“Dana Levi”). Since v0.33.23, List view and the Candidates screen also match a full name in either order.

The board loads up to 1,000 applications, in batches of 100, so it stays fast to open even on a busy pipeline. If a view has more than that, a notice above the columns tells you only the first 1,000 are showing and suggests filtering by job to see the rest.

If instead one of those later batches fails to fetch (for instance a dropped connection partway through), the notice says how many loaded and that the rest could not be fetched, and suggests reloading, a different wording so a genuine load failure is never mistaken for hitting the 1,000 cap. Either notice can be dismissed.

That red banner covers the REST API being blocked outright. A narrower failure can also show up mid-session, for instance a dropped connection: the board shows a Could not load the board message with a Try again button instead of looking like an empty pipeline with no candidates.

List view

List view is the one to reach for when you have a lot of applications. On top of the filtering and sorting, two features are worth knowing:

• Group by person collapses repeat applicants together, so someone who applied to three of your jobs shows up once instead of three times.
• Export CSV downloads the applications as a CSV file, a plain spreadsheet format that Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers all open. What you export matches what the table is showing, so filter or search first to narrow it down. The button shows only for roles that can export data (HR / Compliance and administrators).
• Since v0.34.8, with Scorecards Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license on, each exported row also carries the scorecard average and how many people scored.

The stages

New applications arrive in the first stage on their own. From there, you decide where each one goes. Every install starts with the same six default stages, in order:

These are a starting point, not a fixed list. An administrator or HR / Compliance can rename, reorder, recolor, add, or delete stages under Hiring, then Settings, then Pipeline, so your board can read however your team actually talks about hiring. See Settings reference.

Behind the name, every stage also carries a type: Open (active), Won (hired), or Lost (rejected). Hired and Rejected are just the default names for the Won and Lost types.

Rename a stage, or add your own extra closing stage, and the type still decides the behavior, not the label. Moving a candidate into any Won or Lost stage closes the application; the pipeline always keeps at least one Open stage, so new applicants never lose an entry point.

The board always shows every stage, but Won and Lost stages can collapse to save space. Uncheck Expand closed stages above the board and the closing stages shrink to a narrow strip that still shows the stage name and how many applications are in it, so a closed application never looks like it went missing. Click the strip, or drag a card onto it, to open it back up.

For most applications you never set a status by hand. Vakanssi works out the coarse status (active, hired, or rejected) from the stage they are in, so moving the card is normally the only thing you do. The one status you do set yourself is Withdrawn, for a candidate who pulls out or turns down an offer, see below.

Adding an application by hand

Not every candidate arrives through the public form, some apply by email, get referred by a colleague, or get sourced by your own team. For those, click Hiring, then Applications, then the Add application button next to the heading.

The candidate lands on the board in your entry stage, exactly like anyone who applied themselves. It reuses the same secure intake as the public form, so their CV goes through the same type check and protected storage, and if they have applied before, they are matched to their existing candidate record instead of creating a duplicate.

If they already have an active application for this same job, adding them again returns that existing application rather than creating a second one. A CV you picked in the form is not added to it; attach it from the Overview tab instead (see below).

The one difference from a public application: since they did not submit the form themselves, Vakanssi does not send them the “thanks for applying” confirmation email.

Anyone who can edit applications sees the Add application button on the Applications screen. See Roles & permissions for who that is (Recruiters, HR / Compliance, and administrators, not Hiring Managers).

Moving a candidate

To move someone on the board, drag their card to another column and let go. The move saves right away. You can also move a candidate from inside their panel using the Move to buttons, and in bulk from the list view.

When a move emails the candidate

Moving a candidate into Rejected or Hired (or any other Lost or Won stage) always stops and asks first with an Email the candidate? prompt, whether or not that stage’s email is set to send automatically. That way you always know, and you always choose. What the prompt says depends on the Rejection or Offer / hired template’s automatic-sending setting:

• Automatic sending on: the prompt says the move sends the email, and you choose Send email & move or Move without emailing.
• Automatic sending off, the Offer / hired template’s default, for instance: the prompt says sending is off, and Send email & move still sends it for just this candidate.

The list view’s bulk Move to action works the same way for a Won or Lost stage: it always stops to confirm first, and states plainly whether the selected applications will be emailed, following the stage’s own automatic-sending setting. If that email is off, the confirmation says so instead of moving everyone through silently.

Unlike moving one candidate at a time, a bulk move has no override, you cannot choose to send anyway or skip it for just that batch.

Ordinary moves between the middle stages, like New to In Review, never ask. On their own they email nobody. The exception is a stage that has an Email Automation Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license rule: entering it sends that stage’s email.

Since v0.33.40, a bulk move into such a stage confirms first and says each candidate will receive that stage’s automated email. Choosing Move without emailing on the prompt above covers automated stage emails too. What the emails say, which ones are on by default, and how to edit them is all in Emails.

The candidate panel

Click any card on the board, or a name in the list, and the candidate’s panel slides open. Everything about that application is in one place, so you can review a person without leaving the screen. The candidate’s name and the job they applied to sit at the top; click the job title to open it (its editor if you manage jobs, otherwise the public job listing).

If the panel fails to load a candidate, for instance a dropped connection, it shows a Could not load this candidate message with a Try again button rather than an empty panel.

A pair of arrow buttons on the panel’s title row, before the close button, steps you to the next or previous candidate without closing the panel, handy for working through a stack of new applications one after another. Where Vakanssi knows the full sequence, a counter such as “3 of 27” sits between the arrows.

• On the board, the sequence is the column the card was sitting in when you opened it, so moving the candidate to another stage while you review does not change where the next arrow takes you.
• In list view, the sequence is the rows you are currently seeing, in whatever sort, filter, or search you have applied. Stepping past the last row on a page loads the next page and opens its first candidate for you, so paging never interrupts the walk.

The Left and Right arrow keys do the same job as clicking, as long as you are not typing in a field or working inside another open dialog. An arrow dims and stops responding once you reach either end of the sequence.

The whole control hides when there is nothing to step to, for instance a candidate opened from a link before the board has finished loading it.

Across the top of the panel you can:

• Move stage using the same buttons as the board, including the Email the candidate? prompt on moves into Rejected or Hired.
• Edit details, to fix a typo in a name, email, or phone number, or to add or correct their source, LinkedIn profile URL, and country. The LinkedIn field only appears if you have it turned on under Settings, then Application form.
• Print / PDF, to turn the application into a clean one-page sheet you can hand to an interviewer or save as a PDF. It carries the contact details, the cover letter, and the name of the CV file (not the CV itself), and, with Screening Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license on, the candidate’s screening answers and the Does not meet requirements flag if they earned it.
• Delete, to permanently remove the application, see Deleting an application below.
• Assigned to Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license, with Collaboration on, sets who owns the application, right in the header so the owner is visible at a glance. See Collaboration.

Below that, a row of tabs is your workflow:

• Overview is the first thing you read: the candidate’s cover letter, their CV and any other files they attached (or that you attached yourself, see below), and their history with you (whether they have applied before).
• On Overview, if a candidate reapplied to the same job with a corrected CV, both files stay on the application: the newest carries a Latest badge and its upload date, the older one shows dimmed underneath, so it is always obvious which one to read.
• Details holds the person’s own information. With Candidates Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license (Sourcing & CRM) on, this is where the Candidate tags control lives: add or remove the person’s tags right from here, shared with every application they have ever made, see Tags. The tab only appears when there is something to show.
• Notes are private notes for your team that the candidate never sees. Plain notes are free: post one, then edit or delete your own at any time. Anyone with rights to delete applications can also remove someone else’s note, useful for cleanup. With Collaboration Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license you can also @mention a teammate to loop them in. A count next to the tab name shows how many notes the application has.
• Interviews is where you schedule and track interviews for this candidate. With Scheduling Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license on, this same tab is also where you propose interview slots for the candidate to pick from, instead of fixing a time yourself, see Interviews.
• Scorecard Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license collects your team’s structured ratings against a shared set of criteria, so a decision rests on evidence rather than the loudest opinion. Since v0.36.0, a site without Pro shows no Scorecard tab and no preview of one. See Scorecards.
• Screening Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license appears when the candidate answered screening questions, listing their answers and a Does not meet requirements badge if an answer failed a rule.
• Activity is the history log for this application, newest first, showing the 30 most recent entries: when it arrived, each stage move and who made it, and each email that went out, with its subject line. A Send email button here lets anyone who can edit applications write and send a one-off message to the candidate, see Emails. It shows only while Email & Notifications is on.

Since v0.33.43, a candidate flagged by a screening rule is also marked outside that tab: a Screened out marker on their board card and List view row, and a Does not meet requirements badge in the panel header.

The candidate’s card on the left is their identity rail: name, job title, status, star rating, a Mark withdrawn link (for anyone who can edit applications), and their contact details. With Candidates Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license on, a View full profile link takes you to their record in the Candidates database.

Rating a candidate and marking them withdrawn

In the identity card, under the candidate’s name, is their status and a row of four stars labelled Team rating. Click a star to set a rating from 1 to 4, or click the star you already set to clear it back to unrated. The rating shows on the board cards, in the list view, and in your CSV export.

It is one shared marker, not your private opinion: anyone who can evaluate applications can change it, and the last change wins. That is Recruiters, Hiring Managers, HR / Compliance, and administrators; Hiring Managers can set it since v0.37.0. If you also use Scorecards, that is the number with names and reasoning behind it, and the panel shows both so they are not mistaken for each other.

Next to the status, anyone who can edit applications also sees a Mark withdrawn link. Use it when a candidate pulls out or turns down an offer, a real state distinct from Rejected, so it is never counted as one.

A withdrawn application shows a Reopen link in its place; reopening puts it back into whichever status its current stage implies (active, hired, or rejected). See Roles & permissions for who can edit applications.

A withdrawn candidate is marked wherever you see them, not just inside the panel: their board card dims and picks up a Withdrawn badge, and their list row shows the same badge next to the name, so you never mistake one for an active application at a glance.

Deleting an application

Sometimes an application should not exist at all, a test submission, spam that slipped past the filters, or a formal erasure request handled outside the usual data export and erasure flow (see Privacy & Data Retention).

The candidate panel’s Delete button removes it for good: the application itself, its CV, notes, interviews, scorecard, and email history all go with it. It is restricted to Administrators and HR / Compliance, the same people who can use the Applications list’s Delete permanently bulk action, see Roles & permissions.

Vakanssi deletes the stored CV file first and only removes anything else once that succeeds. If a stored file cannot be removed (rare, usually a filesystem permissions problem), nothing is deleted: the application is kept, and the bulk action shows a warning telling you which applications could not be deleted so you can fix the cause and try again.

See Deleting an application says a file could not be removed if this keeps happening.

Attaching or removing a CV yourself

Not every candidate arrives with a file already attached, maybe they applied by email, were referred, or were sourced by your team. On the Overview tab, anyone who can edit applications sees an Upload CV button (Add file once one is already on file).

Pick a file and it goes through the same checks as the public apply form, its type and content are verified, and it is stored in the same protected storage folder. The accepted file types and the size limit are whatever you set under Settings, then Application form (PDF, DOC, and DOCX by default, up to 5 MB).

Click Remove next to a file to delete it permanently, useful for a file added by mistake or an outdated version. A file you attach this way is treated exactly like one the candidate uploaded themselves: it counts toward GDPR export and erasure, and the automatic retention purge, with no extra steps. See Roles & permissions for who can edit applications (Recruiters, HR / Compliance, and administrators, not Hiring Managers).