Startup Hiring Pipeline

Server structure

Overview

Hiring at a startup is usually run from a spreadsheet and four people's memories, and it shows: candidates wait a fortnight for a reply, two interviewers ask the same question, and the decision is made by whoever speaks last in the debrief. This layout is the fix. Open Roles is one channel per role being hired, each holding the actual bar rather than the job advert — what the person must be able to do in ninety days. Pipeline follows the stages: #screening, #interviews and #offers, with the hard rule stated in #how-we-hire that interviewers write their scorecard before reading anyone else's, because a debrief where the first speaker anchors everyone is not an assessment. #scorecards is where those go. #debriefs is where the decision is made and recorded with a reason, which is what lets you review your hiring a year later. #candidate-experience is the channel almost nobody has: how long each candidate waited, whether they were told no properly, and what they said about the process. It exists because a startup's rejected candidates are its future applicants and its public reputation. Sourcing holds #referrals with the bonus terms stated, #inbound and #outreach. A hidden Compensation category keeps bands and offer discussions away from the wider hiring team.

When to use it

Founder-led hiring loses good candidates to slowness and bad decisions to anchoring: nobody owns the reply, the debrief follows whoever speaks first, and there is no record of why a hire was made when you want to learn from it later. This layout gives each role its own bar in writing, requires independent scorecards before the debrief, records the decision and its reason, and tracks how candidates were actually treated.

What makes it different

• Each role channel states what the person must do in ninety days, not the job advert.
• Scorecards are written before anyone reads another's, so the debrief is not anchored.
• Decisions are recorded with a reason, which is what makes hiring reviewable later.
• A candidate-experience channel, because rejected candidates are future applicants.

Recommended Vetox setup

• Applications

  Run Applications on #inbound so a candidate arrives as a reviewable entry rather than a message somebody has to notice.

• Tickets

  Point Tickets at #referrals so a referral becomes a tracked thread with an owner instead of a lost mention.

• Reminders

  Set Reminders in #candidate-experience so nobody sits waiting a fortnight because the owner was busy.

• Logs

  Enable Logs into the compensation area so access changes to salary discussions are auditable.