BerniePortal’s Recruiting feature lets employers create custom hiring stages that match their internal hiring process. Hiring stages are the ordered steps a candidate moves through after applying—for example Application received, Phone screen, Face-to-face interview, or Reference checks.
Hiring stages work in two layers:
- A hiring stages template in Recruiting Settings. This is the shared list of stage names your organization maintains.
- The stages selected for each job. When you create a job, you choose which template stages apply to that job and in what order.
Candidates are moved through the stages that belong to the job they applied to—not through every stage in the template.
Who can manage hiring stages
You can manage the hiring stages template if you are signed in as:
- The employer, or
- A Recruiting feature administrator
Hiring team members may see Recruiting Settings for other items (such as email notifications), but the hiring stages template is managed by the employer or a Recruiting feature administrator.
To open the hiring stages template
- Sign in to BerniePortal as the employer or a Recruiting feature administrator.
- In the top navigation, select Recruiting.
- In the secondary (sub) navigation under Recruiting, select Settings.
- In the Settings sidebar, select Hiring Stages.
To add a stage to the template
- At the bottom of the hiring stages table, find the Hiring Stage field.
- Type the stage name. Names can be up to 50 characters. The field placeholder reads Add a global hiring stage here.
- Select Add (plus icon and label) to the right of the field, or press Enter.
The new stage is saved to your organization’s template and appears in the list. New jobs created after this point can include this stage. Existing published jobs do not automatically pick up new template stages.
To reorder stages in the template
- On the Hiring Stages page, move your pointer over the vertical three-dot handle to the left of a stage name.
- Click and drag the row up or down.
- Release the row in the desired position.
The order updates as soon as you drop the row. This order is the default order stages appear when they are copied onto a new job; you can still change order later for an individual job during job creation.
To delete a stage from the template
- On the Hiring Stages page, open the Actions menu for the stage you want to remove.
- Select Delete stage.
The stage is removed from the template immediately.
Important: Deleting a template stage does not remove that stage from jobs that already have it. Those jobs keep the stage names they were given when the job was created or last updated during job creation. To stop using a stage on future jobs, remove it from the template and do not select it when creating new jobs.
Renaming stages
You cannot edit an existing stage name in place on the Hiring Stages page. Stage names are display-only.
To change a name:
- Delete the old stage from the template (see above).
- Add a new stage with the correct name.
This only updates the template. Jobs that already used the old name still show the old name unless those jobs are still in creation and you update their hiring stages before publish.
To choose hiring stages for a specific job
When you create a job, BerniePortal copies your current template stages onto that job. You then choose which stages apply to that job, and in what order, during job creation. See How to Create a New Job.
How hiring stages relate to candidates