Hiring & Requisitions
Workforce Development System › Module 02
Hiring & Requisitions
Forty candidates in motion. One board that tells you what happens next.
WDS runs your hiring pipeline, and it is not just an ATS. It defines the role before you post it, scores candidates against that definition, tracks every pre-employment step to an owner, and turns the hire into an employee with onboarding and training already scheduled. Nobody retypes anything.
The problem it removes
When you hire in waves, the hard part is not finding people. It is knowing, on any given morning, which of the forty is waiting on you.
An applicant tracking system stores candidates. It holds a resume, records a stage, and does that well. But an ATS starts when a job opens and stops the moment someone is hired, and it rarely tells you what has to happen next, who owns it, or how long it has been sitting there. So someone rebuilds that picture by hand, in a spreadsheet, every Monday — and it is wrong by Wednesday.
They also know nothing about your organization. Every hire begins with rewriting a job description from a template that is two years old. And every hire ends the moment someone is marked hired — at which point onboarding starts again from nothing, in a different tool, with the same information typed a third time.
Not just an ATS
WDS covers everything you would expect from an applicant tracking system. Then it covers what happens before the job opens and after the offer is signed, because that is where most hiring actually goes wrong.
What an ATS does, WDS does
- Requisitions with numbers, hiring managers, and recruiters
- A hiring pipeline with stages you define
- Screening questions and resumes on every candidate
- A public job posting
- Outside recruiters and agencies submitting against a requisition
- Candidate notifications and stage history
What WDS adds around it
- A skills framework for every position, before you post it
- Requisitions created from a seat on your org chart
- Candidates scored against the role, skill by skill, with evidence
- A ranked shortlist with the reason behind every move
- Pre-employment steps, each with an owner
- A hire who becomes an employee, with onboarding and training already set
What WDS does that an ATS does not
Each of these works because hiring lives in the same system as your org chart, onboarding, training, and career development.
Defines the position before you fill it
Every role gets a skills framework: the skills it needs, the level required for each, and what mastery looks like. It is versioned, so you can see how a role changed, and it drafts the job description for you.
Starts from the seat, not a blank form
A requisition is created from an approved seat on the org chart. It arrives with the department, reporting line, headcount budget, and whether the role is critical, and the chart shows how long the seat has been vacant.
Scores candidates against the role
Interviewers record evidence against each skill in the framework, with a level and a reason. Comparing two candidates means comparing them on the same skills, not on whoever made the stronger impression.
Keeps a ranked shortlist with reasons
Rank your finalists and record why each one moved. When the requisition closes, WDS keeps a snapshot of the final ranking and where the person you hired placed.
Runs pre-employment steps to completion
Background check, references, drug screen, credential verification, the personnel action form: each step has an owner and a status. A step that does not apply is marked so, with the reason, instead of silently skipped.
Turns the hire into an employee
Mark a candidate hired and their record becomes the employee record. The seat fills on the org chart, the onboarding plan starts from the orientation date, and the training assigned to that seat is waiting for them.
Measures the new hire against the same role
The skills framework stays with the seat after the hire. Career development measures progress against the same definition the person was hired against, so the gaps you saw in the interview are the ones you close.
Optional AI-assisted comparison
If you choose, WDS can compare candidates against the role’s skills framework and summarize the differences. It is off until an administrator turns it on, and your team makes every decision.
Hiring statistics you do not rebuild
Stage history, time in stage, open requisitions by department, and where hires ranked come from the work itself, not from a spreadsheet someone updates on Mondays.
Every step between first interview and orientation day
Not just the stage a candidate sits in — the next action, the person who owns it, and how long it has been waiting. This is the view a hiring manager opens at eight in the morning and closes two minutes later, knowing exactly what the day requires.
Phone Screen 6
Panel Interview 4
Background & Refs 3
Offer 2
Orientation Prep 5
The stages above are illustrative. Yours are configured to your process during setup — add a credential verification, a second panel, a plant tour, a drug screen, a clearance check. If it is a step your team genuinely takes, it belongs on the board, and it belongs there under your own name for it.
How hiring runs in WDS
Six things that follow from a board that knows your process and a requisition that knows your org chart.
Requisitions draft themselves
Approve a vacancy on the org chart and the posting is already scoped — title, department, reporting line, required skills and training. You edit rather than author.
The next step is on the card
Every candidate carries their own next action and the name of whoever owns it. Nobody opens a record, or a thread, to find out whether the ball is in their court.
Nothing ages quietly
Time in stage sits on the card, not buried in a report someone runs on Fridays. A candidate stalling in one place is visible long before they take another offer.
Move a cohort, not a candidate
Select the fifteen who cleared the screen and advance them together, with one message. Hiring in waves stops meaning fifteen identical clicks and fifteen chances to miss one.
Scorecards tied to the seat
Interviewers rate against the skills the seat actually requires, not against whatever each person remembered to ask. Comparing two candidates finally means something.
Outside recruiters on the same board
Assign an agency to a requisition. The candidates they submit land on the same board as everyone else’s, so you see one pipeline, not two.
The steps are yours. We build the board around them.
WDS is configured during implementation, not handed to you as a fixed pipeline you have to bend your process around. You tell us how you hire; the board is assembled to match.
Stages you define
Some teams run a single conversation. Others run a phone screen, a panel, a practical, and a plant tour before anyone talks about money. Your stages are set up with you, and changed whenever your process changes.
Steps that fit your industry
A lab network needs credential verification. A federal contractor needs clearance status on the card. Manufacturing needs safety orientation scheduled before day one. These are built in, not worked around.
Capabilities as options
Vendor portals, a public careers page, structured scorecards, multi-level offer approvals, candidate status notifications. Turn on what your team will actually use and leave the rest off.
Hiring statistics, without the Monday spreadsheet
When you are bringing on twenty people against one start date, a surprising share of the week goes to answering these three. On a board that shows the next step, nobody has to ask them.
“Where is this role at?”
Stage, days open, and candidates in play are visible without asking anyone. The vacancy age shows on the org chart too, so headcount conversations start from the same number.
“Whose turn is it?”
The next action and its owner sit on the candidate card. Feedback nobody has submitted is visible to the person who owes it — and to the manager waiting on it.
“Are we going to make the start date?”
Every candidate in the wave shows how many steps remain before orientation day. Slippage becomes visible weeks out, instead of the Friday before the class is supposed to begin.
Where it hands off
This is the handoff that breaks most often in other stacks — and the one WDS was built to close.
← Org Chart & Headcount
Requisitions exist because a seat was approved. Fill the seat and the chart updates itself — the vacancy closes without anyone maintaining a second diagram in a second tool.
→ Onboarding
Orientation day is the last column on the hiring board and the first day of the onboarding plan. Mark a candidate hired and the plan starts on schedule, dated from the offer. The candidate record becomes the employee record. Nothing is retyped, and nothing is lost in the gap.
Continue through the lifecycle
Bring us a hiring wave you are dreading.
Twenty roles, one start date, four people who have to sign off. We will map it onto a board in twenty minutes — real data, no slides. We answer your pricing questions on the same call.