Step 1: Configuring Phases and Categories

You can configure recruitment phases and categorize job openings to map your company’s specific recruitment processes in Personio.

Configure recruiting phases

First consider the different recruitment phases that applicants pass through in your company, and whether this process is identical for all applicants. Navigate to Settings > Recruiting > Phases to create individual phases. Name the phase in the field Add new recruiting phase... (e.g. New application, Screening, Telephone interview) and and specify the maximum number of days an applicant should spend in a phase. If an applicant exceeds this number of days, the system highlights this in color in the applications list. You can also filter for applicants in the applications list who have been in a phase for too long. Add the individual phases by clicking on the plus symbol.

Please note that only the predefined phases are linked to certain automated processes. For this reason, you should not assign identical names to your custom phases.

These predefined phases trigger actions in the system processing applicant data.

Once created, you can change the sequence of phases by simply dragging and dropping them into place. You can also drag & drop to add more phases at the appropriate places in the sequence later on. Finally click on Edit and assign different colors to the various phases to provide a clearer overview of the entire application process.

Configure recruiting categories

Use recruitment categories to map different recruitment processes. Create categories by navigating to Settings > Recruiting > Categories. Add all recruitment categories that are relevant for your company. You may wish to create categories by type of employment (e.g. full-time, part-time etc.), position (e.g. junior, senior etc.) or department (e.g. Marketing, IT etc.), for example. By using categories, you can not only organize and display your job openings clearly, but also allocate individual recruitment processes to phases and send automatic acknowledgements of receipt.

Decide which phases the different categories should be assigned to. To save specific application processes under the various recruitment categories, click on the relevant Category and then on Edit. You can add any number of predefined recruitment phases that are relevant for the particular category.

Please note: If you do not assign any phases to a category, all phases are applied by default.

You can also send autoresponders to applicants in the various categories. To do so, select the relevant category, navigate to Edit and activate the checkbox next to Autoresponder. Select any Autoresponder template you have previously created and choose a Autoresponder's account. Click on Submit to complete this process.

Display of recruiting categories

Creating recruitment categories additionally allows you to access a clear overview of vacant positions in your company. To do so, go to the main menu and click on Recruiting > Job openings to generate a list of job openings grouped by categories. The view shows at a glance how many applicants are at which phases of your recruitment process for each of the advertised positions.

Determine whether applicants should be able to filter your job openings on the Personio career page individually by categories. To do so, click on Settings > Recruiting > Career page > Grouping categories. This allows potential applicants to perform targeted searches for suitable positions. If you have created categories for your various departments, a grouping of job openings could look like this, for example: