Hire someone

Before you start

• Someone who runs recruitment (creates jobs, moves candidates, sets offer terms).
• Someone else who approves money: a Finance approver for the job’s budget, and a second person to approve each offer. Whoever sets an offer’s salary and start date cannot approve it. Administrators are exempt from this rule.
• Interviewers with a Zonitix account.
• A persona for the role, so onboarding knows which apps and devices the new hire needs. See Create a persona.

Create and publish the job

1. 1

   Step 1: Create the requisition

   A requisition is the app’s word for a job you are asking to fill. Go to HR & TalentJob Postings and click “New requisition”. Work through the five steps: “The role”, “Requirements”, “Compensation”, “Application form” and “Review & publish”. On “Compensation”, pick the “User Persona (IT/Finance cost baseline)”. Click “CREATE JOB”.

   Zonitix also creates a starter offer letter and interview guide for the role.

2. 2

   Step 2: Finance approves the budget

   Every new job waits for budget approval first. It shows “Waiting on Finance”, and Finance is notified. A Finance approver who did not create the job opens it and clicks “Approve budget”, or “Refuse…” with a reason.

3. 3

   Step 3: Publish it

   Once the budget is approved, open the job and click “Publish” to list it on your public careers page, or “Open internally” to keep it inside the company for now. Use “Preview careers page” to see what applicants see.

   Taking a job down again, putting it on hold, closing, reopening and deleting it are in Pause, close, reopen or delete a job.

   The careers pages, and the pages a candidate later uses to pick an interview time and sign, are shown in English or Spanish to match the candidate’s browser, and in English for any other language.
4. 4

   Step 4: Set up the careers page

   On HR & TalentJob Postings, “Edit careers page” sets the page’s intro and two switches:

   • “Job alerts”: visitors confirm by email, then hear when you publish a role, and can unsubscribe.
   • “General applications”: visitors send a CV without picking a role; it lands in your talent pool.
5. 5

   Step 5: List your roles on job boards

   Click the arrow on the “Careers page & job-board feeds” card. It shows three addresses:

   • “Indeed feed (XML)”
   • “LinkedIn feed (XML)”
   • “Google Jobs (JSON-LD)”

   A feed is a web address that the job board reads by itself, on its own schedule, to pick up your open roles; XML and JSON-LD are only the names of the file formats and you do not need to open them.

   Copy an address and give it to that job board. The feeds update by themselves as you publish or close roles, and only published roles appear in them.

Work the candidates

1. 6

   Step 6: Review applicants

   Open HR & TalentCandidate Pipeline. Applicants appear in the stages “Sourced”, “Screen”, “Interview”, “Offer” and “Hired”. You can also add someone yourself with “Add candidate”.

2. 7

   Step 7: Write to a candidate

   Open the candidate and select the “Messages” tab. Enter a “Subject” and a “Message” and click “Send”. The email goes out from Zonitix and a copy stays on the candidate.

   This needs outbound email to be set up; see Set up email.

3. 8

   Step 8: Hand a candidate or a job to another recruiter

   Click the reassign button beside “HR Owner”, pick the person under “HR owner” and click “Reassign”. On a job you can also tick “Also move existing candidates in this pipeline”.

   This needs permission to manage recruitment, and it changes who can see those candidates.

4. 9

   Step 9: Use AI screening as a guide only

   Open a candidate and click “Run screening” to get an “AI MATCH” score against the job’s requirements. Before the résumé is scored, these are replaced with placeholders in its text:

   • the candidate’s name, and any line labelled as a name;
   • email addresses, phone numbers written in the common ten-digit form, and web links that start with http;
   • age, date of birth, graduation years and ranges of years such as employment dates;
   • lines labelled gender, marital status, nationality, citizenship, religion or ethnicity, and mentions of citizenship, residency or work-visa status;
   • lines labelled as an address or location.

   If the AI model cannot answer, Zonitix scores by matching the job’s keywords instead, and it uses the same cleaned text.

   The score never moves or rejects anyone. A person decides every stage change.

5. 10

   Step 10: Move them forward and assign interviewers

   Click “MOVE TO NEXT STAGE”, or tick several candidates and use “Move to…”.

   At the Interview stage:

   1. Open the candidate’s “Interviews” tab.
   2. Pick someone in “Select interviewer”.
   3. Choose a set of questions under “Interview Template (Optional)” if you like. To write that set of questions, see Prepare interview questions.
   4. Click “ASSIGN”.

   To let the candidate choose the time, switch on “LET THE CANDIDATE PICK A TIME”, add at least two options and click “SEND TIME OPTIONS”. Zonitix drops any option that clashes with that interviewer’s other Zonitix interviews, and the candidate picks one from an emailed link with no login.

   When you set a fixed time instead and Google Workspace is connected, you get a warning if the interviewer’s calendar looks busy; that check is not run on the options a candidate picks from.
6. 11

   Step 11: Turn a candidate down

   1. Open the candidate and click “REJECT”. A window titled “Reject Candidate?” opens.
   2. “Send Rejection Email Immediately” is ticked for you. Leave it ticked and the candidate is emailed as soon as you confirm, or untick it to tell them yourself first.
   3. “Reason (internal record — never sent to the candidate)” is optional and is kept on the candidate for your own records.
   4. Click “CONFIRM REJECT”.

   The candidate moves to the “Rejected” stage and stays in the pipeline there. If the candidate had an offer out for signature, rejecting them withdraws it.

   If you did not send the email, or email is not set up so it could not go out, open the candidate later and click “SEND REJECTION EMAIL”; once it has gone the button reads “EMAIL SENT”.

   Rejecting someone at the Offer or Hired stage needs permission to manage recruitment, and a candidate who has signed cannot be rejected: see step 19.
7. 12

   Step 12: Turn down several candidates at once

   1. Use the pipeline’s “List” view (the one it opens in), tick the candidates and click “Reject” on the bar that appears above the list.
   2. The window is titled with the number, for example “Reject 3 candidates?”, and names the people. Choose whether to tick “Email each candidate a rejection notice”, and add a reason if you want one.
   3. Click “REJECT”.

   One action takes up to 200 candidates. Anyone in the selection who was already rejected is left alone and is not emailed again.

8. 13

   Step 13: Interviewers submit scorecards

   Each interviewer finds their interviews in My WorkMy Interviews, rates the questions, picks a recommendation and clicks “SUBMIT SCORECARD”. A candidate needs at least one submitted scorecard before they can move to Offer.

   Interviewers are reminded automatically, by a notification in Zonitix and by email: once when the interview is less than 24 hours away, and once more if no scorecard has been submitted 24 hours after the interview time. Rescheduling an interview starts both reminders again. Nothing is sent for a candidate who is already Rejected or Hired.

   To compare what the interviewers said, open the candidate, select the “Interviews” tab and click “SEE FULL REVIEW”, which appears once one scorecard is in. The window headed “INTERVIEW REVIEWS” has a tab for each interviewer. Once two or more scorecards are in, it opens on a first tab called “Consensus”, which holds the “Debrief” table.

   The table lists the competencies down the side, with one column per interviewer showing their recommendation and their average rating for each competency. The “Spread” column reads “agree”, or “split” where two interviewers are two points or more apart: start the discussion there. The last row, “Weighted overall”, is each interviewer’s overall score, and “Panel weighted” above the table is the average of those. “Must-have flagged” shows if any interviewer rated the answer to a must-have question 2 or lower. The table only shows the scorecards; nothing is changed from it.

   A scorecard marked “hidden” is one you cannot read until you have submitted your own for that candidate. It is left out of the table.

   There is a second, stricter rule, on by default: while any scheduled interview still has no scorecard, you cannot set offer terms, send the offer or mark it signed. Trainee shadow interviews do not count. Administrators are held to it too. Cancel an interview that will not happen, or turn the rule off with “Require all interview scorecards before an offer” on the “Hiring policies” page: open HR & TalentTemplates and click the link “Hiring policies (retention, scorecard gate) →”.

Make the offer

1. 14

   Step 14: Check the offer letter template

   Open HR & TalentTemplates (the page is headed “Hiring templates”), then the “Offer letters” tab, and open the one for this role. Use only the placeholders shown under “Interactive Placeholders (Click to insert)”, such as {{CandidateName}} and {{StartDate}}. Any other placeholder is left blank in the letter. Check the preview, then click “Save template”.

   To write a new letter, copy one, have the AI draft one or attach documents to it, see Write an offer letter template.

   Check the starter letter Zonitix created for the role. If its greeting or start-date line doesn’t use a placeholder from that list, replace it by clicking {{CandidateName}} or {{StartDate}}, or the sent letter will have gaps there.
2. 15

   Step 15: Set the offer terms

   With the candidate in the Offer stage, click “Set offer terms”. Enter the “Base salary”, “Start date” and any bonus, then click “SAVE TERMS”. The start date is the deadline for every onboarding task. The offer now goes to the approval queue.

3. 16

   Step 16: A second person approves

   The approver opens HR & TalentOffer Approvals, clicks the row to review the terms, and approves it or clicks “Withhold”. Changing the terms after approval sends the offer back for approval again.

4. 17

   Step 17: Send it for signature

   Back on the candidate, click “SEND OFFER”. Pick the “Offer letter template”, read the preview, and click “SEND OFFER”. The candidate gets an email to sign in Zonitix Sign. The link lasts 7 days, and sending again gives them a fresh one.

What you should see

After sending

1. 18

   Step 18: Withdraw an offer that is not signed yet

   While the candidate shows “Awaiting signature”, click “Withdraw offer”. The signing link and the candidate’s offer portal stop working and the offer goes back to draft, so you can set new terms and send again. This needs permission to manage recruitment. Use it too when a candidate tells you they are turning the offer down: the signing page has no decline button.

2. 19

   Step 19: Reverse a signed offer

   A signed hire cannot be moved or rejected directly. Open the candidate and click “RESCIND OFFER” and give a reason (it is required). A different person then opens the same candidate and clicks “APPROVE RESCISSION”. On approval the candidate is marked Rejected, their portal closes and any onboarding run is cancelled.

3. 20

   Step 20: Get the signed copy

   On a signed candidate, “View signed offer” opens the sealed PDF and “Certificate” opens its Certificate of Completion. Because the PDF shows the salary, only people allowed to see offer compensation can open it. The candidate can download both from the signing page straight after signing, and gets a copy by email.

Settings and reports

1. 21

   Step 21: Set the hiring policies

   Two settings live on the “Hiring policies” page, which you open from HR & TalentTemplates with the link “Hiring policies (retention, scorecard gate) →”:

   • The scorecard rule in step 13.
   • “Candidate data retention”. Retention is off by default (candidates are kept indefinitely). When you set a number of months and save, the card confirms the period in effect, and candidates who were not hired and have had no activity for that period are deleted automatically.
2. 22

   Step 22: Read the hiring reports

   Funnel, time-to-hire and source figures are on the “Reports” tab of HR & TalentRecruitment Overview.

   The command palette (Ctrl+K or Cmd+K) also finds these pages as Hiring Templates, Hiring Policies and Hiring Reports.

If something goes wrong

The job can’t be opened or published

Its budget is not approved yet. A Finance approver who did not create the job must approve it. If you created it, you can’t approve it yourself.

The candidate won’t move to Offer

At least one interview scorecard must be submitted first. Ask the interviewer to submit theirs in My Interviews.

"Cannot send this offer yet: … interview scorecard(s) not submitted"

A scheduled interview still has no scorecard. The message names the interviewers. Ask them to submit, or cancel an interview that will not happen. This applies to administrators too. The rule can be turned off on the Hiring policies page, opened from HR & Talent > Templates.

"This candidate has an offer out for signature"

Click Withdraw offer first, then move the candidate. Rejecting them withdraws the offer for you.

"This candidate has a signed offer"

A signed hire can’t be moved or rejected. Use RESCIND OFFER, which needs a second person to approve.

Approving the offer is refused

You set this offer’s terms, so someone else must approve it.

"Offer must be approved before it can be sent."

The offer is still waiting in Offer Approvals. Ask the approver to review it.

"Email is not configured, so the message was not sent."

A message to a candidate needs outbound email. Set it up under Security Settings (see the guide Set up email), then send the message again. Nothing was stored.

"The offer letter cannot be generated because it contains text in a script the document font does not support"

The candidate name, job title, company name or template contains letters the offer letter cannot draw, such as Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic or Chinese. Write those fields in Latin letters, or have the offer signed on paper and use Mark as signed manually.

The signing link expired

The candidate shows "Link expired". Click RE-SEND OFFER to send a fresh link.

Still stuck? See When something goes wrong, or Contact Zonitix support.

Where next

• Onboard your first hire
• Pause, close, reopen or delete a job
• Write an offer letter template
• Create a persona