| Available for | Roles | Super Admin, Admin, Team Member, Limited Team Member |
| Permissions | • Manage profiles and view associated postings | |
| Packages | Lever Basic, LeverTRM, LeverTRM for Enterprise |
This article is the first in a series designed to help you understand the structure and operation of Lever's unified pipeline. As the main point of action for candidate management, the pipeline serves as the backbone of the Lever platform. The ability to navigate your pipeline with accuracy and agility is a fundamental skill when it comes to using Lever. This article will provide an orientation to the structure of your pipeline.
Why Lever is built around a unified pipeline
Lever's use of a unified pipeline is intended to support a holistic approach to talent relationship management. Our customers have found two distinct benefits to this approach - consistency in the recruitment journey and the generation of clean insightful data.
As you will see in later articles in this series, the design of the unified pipeline enables everyone across your talent acquisition team to speak the same language as you define the recruitment journey for candidates. Our customers leverage the unified pipeline to set consistent milestones, such as screenings and assessments, to scaffold their overarching hiring path. They then tailor each milestone to incorporate different interview kits and integrations that are specific to the role being hired for, be it an engineer or an account executive.
More importantly, the unified structure gives directors of talent acquisition a clear line of sight into the health of their organization's hiring funnel, by allowing them to report on metrics, such as conversion rates and time spent in stage, across departments, locations, and other domains that are traditionally siloed. This centralization of information is core to Lever's mission to amplify the reach, insight, and forecasting capabilities of talent leaders.
Accessing the pipeline
To access the pipeline, navigate to the Candidates page via the platform header.
Defining the components of the pipeline
The pipeline consists of following components:
Sections
Your unified pipeline consists of three sections for active opportunities:
- A Lead section for opportunities associated with potential candidates that you are sourcing.
- An Applicant section for opportunities associated with candidates that have applied to your job postings.
- An Interview section for opportunities that have progressed to an interview stage.
Each of these sections is segmented into stages that opportunities pass through as the candidate interacts with your recruitment team.
Your unified pipeline also has an Archive which is used to collect inactive opportunities. The archive is segmented by archive reasons, as record of why each opportunity in the archive was deactivated.
Each of these sections will be more closely examined in later articles in this series.
Stages
Stages reflect the milestones and interactions candidates reach over the course of their recruitment journey. Stages are listed horizontally above the opportunities list, to mirror the forward progression of opportunities through the pipeline.
Example of stages in the Interview section of a pipeline
Selecting a stage will filter the opportunities list for only those that are in that specific stage. Stage configuration and operation is discussed in later articles in this series.
Opportunity list
An opportunity represents a candidate's unique application for a job. The distinction between candidates and opportunities is important to understanding the overall function of the pipeline, and is more thoroughly examined in the next article in this series.
Segment of an opportunity list in the Interview section of a pipeline
Opportunities in the list are grouped by stage. Each entry in the list shows the relevant information for the opportunity, including:
- Candidate name
- Candidate work history
- Posting the candidate is being considered for
- Tags
- Status (or call-to-action button if opportunity is awaiting scheduling or interview feedback)
Action toolbar
This toolbar will only be revealed if at least one opportunity has its checkbox selected in the opportunity list.
The toolbar allows you to take quick action on opportunities without having to open the associated candidate profile. This toolbar is particularly useful for taking bulk action on opportunities.
Filter
The filter fields allow you to zero in on opportunities with precision when viewing a section of the pipeline. Effective use of the pipeline filter is the subject of the final article in this series.
Next steps...
Now that you are familiar with the layout of the pipeline, we can take a closer look at the relationship between candidates and opportunities - the fundamental units that make up the pipeline.
If you would like to skip ahead in this article series, select from the options below: