Pipeline Stages

Settings → Stages defines the pipelines your workspace runs on. Everything here is workspace-wide, so a change applies to every job, company, and opportunity that uses it. The page holds several sets:

• Job Stages, the pipeline candidates move through on a job
• Job Statuses, how a job itself progresses
• Opportunity Statuses, the same for opportunities
• Company Stages, for the client relationship
• Speculative Presentation Stages, for candidates you present without a vacancy

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Job Stages

The Job Stages list is the pipeline candidates follow in a job, for example Application, Long List, Short List, Outreach, Interview, Presentation, and Offer.

• Drag stages by the handle to reorder them.
• Click Add Stage to create a new stage.
• Use the row menu, the three dots at the end of a row, for Edit, Edit Labels, and Delete.

Two markers tell Spott how to measure your pipeline:

• CV Sent: the stage at which a CV is considered sent to the client. This drives the “CV Sent” reporting metric.
• First Interview: the stage at which a first interview is considered completed.

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How the markers turn into numbers

Neither metric is ever recorded by hand. Spott logs one the moment a card enters the marked stage, which has consequences worth knowing before you read a report:

• The date is the stage change, not the event. A CV counts as sent when the card reaches the CV Sent stage, even if you emailed it a week earlier, and an interview counts on the day you move the card rather than the day of the interview itself.
• Skipping stages still logs them. Dragging a card from Application straight to Interview logs the stages in between, so the funnel stays continuous.
• Moving a card back erases the KPI. Pull a candidate back to an earlier stage and the metric it earned goes with it.
• Bulk moves count too. Deleting a stage and moving its candidates elsewhere logs every one of those moves as a pipeline movement, which inflates the counts for that day. On a large pipeline this is the usual explanation for a sudden spike.

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The default stage for inbound applications

One of the job stages is the default stage for inbound applications: where someone lands when they apply through your job board, LinkedIn, or a multiposter. You set it once here, in Settings → Stages, and every job created afterwards uses it. Before, this was a per-job setting, which meant remembering it on every new job and quietly getting a different pipeline entry point on the ones where you forgot. Set it workspace-wide and inbound applicants arrive in the same place on every job.

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Labels: substages within a stage

A stage can carry labels, which work as substages inside it, added with Edit Labels on the row menu. An Interview stage, for example, can hold First interview, Second interview and Third interview without becoming three stages. Labels show on the candidate’s card and application, so you get the detail while your funnel reporting still counts one Interview stage.

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Job Statuses

Where job stages track candidates, Job Statuses track the job: Lead, Open, Interviewing, Offers sent, Won, Lost. Each status carries two settings:

• A closing rate percentage, your likelihood of filling a job in that status. It is what makes a weighted pipeline forecast possible, for example 10% at Open and 75% at Offers sent.
• Show jobs in this status for search, which marks the status as one where the job is actively being worked.

That second setting reaches further than its name suggests. As well as deciding whether jobs in the status turn up in search results, it governs:

• Which jobs appear on the Dashboard at all.
• What the Dashboard’s Pipeline Summary counts.
• What a candidate profile lists under Active applications.

In each case only applications on jobs in a status with this setting on are counted, and rejected and placed candidates are left out. If a dashboard or a pipeline summary looks empty while the jobs plainly exist, this is almost always why: check that your Open status has the setting enabled. Opportunity Statuses work the same way, for opportunities rather than jobs.

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Speculative Presentation Stages

Not every candidate you present is attached to a vacancy. When you approach a client with a strong profile and no open role, that presentation runs through its own pipeline, typically Shortlist → Pitched → Client Interested → Check with Candidate → Interview. It is kept separate so speculative work does not distort the reporting on your live jobs, and it has its own CV Sent (Speculative) and First Interview markers. See presenting candidates.

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Company Stages

Companies run their own pipeline for the client relationship: New, Prospect, Lead, Customer, Lost. Pipeline Strategy at the bottom of the section controls how company pipelines are organized.