Free hiring checklists

How to use these hiring checklists

Hiring goes wrong in the gaps — a missed reference check, an unstructured interview, a job post that scares off good applicants. These checklists exist to close those gaps by turning each stage of hiring into a repeatable, shared routine your whole team follows. The five lists below cover the full journey: defining and posting a role, screening applicants, preparing and running interviews, and onboarding the new hire. Use them together for an end-to-end process, or pull the single list you need for the stage you're on right now.

Get the most from them by making them a habit rather than a one-off. Adapt each list to your context — add role-specific criteria, remove steps that don't apply, and agree as a team on what "done" means for each item. Attach the same checklist to every role so candidates get a consistent, fair experience and your decisions stay defensible. The biggest wins come from the steps teams most often skip: writing a real scorecard before interviews, asking every candidate the same core questions, and sending timely updates so strong applicants don't drop off. When you're ready to stop tracking all this by hand, an applicant tracking system turns these steps into an automated workflow.