The Candidate Who Became an Employee
Between the offer being accepted and the first payroll, somebody retypes a person into the system — and that is where start dates, pay and probation terms quietly drift apart. Why the hire should create the employee record rather than a person copying it, what crosses over today, and what still has to be keyed twice.
The offer went out on a Thursday and came back signed on the Friday. The hiring manager forwarded the good news to HR, HR filed the signed letter in a shared folder, and on Monday someone opened the HR system, clicked New Employee and typed the new starter in from memory and the email thread. The letter said a start date of the third. The system now says the first. The letter said six months’ probation. The system applied the default. The salary went to payroll in a separate email, and the first payslip was calculated from that.
None of this is anyone being careless. Three people each did the reasonable thing with the document in front of them. The trouble is that there were three documents, and nothing tied them together except a person’s attention on a Monday morning.
This post is about the stretch between “offer accepted” and “first payroll”, and what changes when the hire itself creates the record instead of a person copying it in — including the one field in that stretch the hire does not carry yet.
Why the front door is where records go wrong
Most organizations treat recruitment and the employee record as two systems with a handover between them. Recruitment lives in a spreadsheet, a job board, an inbox or a dedicated hiring tool. The employee record lives in HR and payroll. The handover is a human being reading one and typing into the other.
Every retyped field is a chance for the copy to disagree with the source, and the disagreements are not random. They cluster around exactly the facts that were negotiated late: the start date that moved because of a notice period, the salary that went up after a counter-offer, the probation that was shortened to win a strong candidate. The earlier, settled facts — a name, an email address — rarely drift. The ones that cost money do.
Facts settled early
- Name, email address and phone number, given on the application.
- The department and the role, fixed when the vacancy was opened.
- Who the hiring manager is, and therefore who the line manager will be.
- The kind of employment the vacancy was advertised as.
Facts settled late
- The start date, after the candidate’s notice period is known.
- The salary, after a counter-offer or a grade discussion.
- The probation length, sometimes shortened for a senior hire.
- The work country, when a role is offered remotely or relocated.
A good handover protects the late facts, because those are the ones that were last written down somewhere informal — an email, a call note, a revised letter. A copied handover protects the early facts, because those are the ones the person typing can see on the application. That is the wrong way round.
The facts that drift between the offer and the first payslip are never the name. They are the start date, the pay and the probation — the three things negotiated last and written down least formally.
One record, one pipeline, one door
In AWRA OpsHub, recruitment is part of HR rather than a separate tool. A vacancy is opened with a title, a department, a position, the number of openings, the employment type, a hiring manager and an optional closing date, and it gets its own reference. Applicants are added to it — by HR, from a referral or an agency, or directly by the candidate from your organization’s public jobs page — and they move through a fixed pipeline: Applied, Screening, Interview, Offer, and then one of three ends: Hired, Not taken forward, or Withdrawn.
The design decision that matters is about the last stage. Hired cannot be chosen from the stage list. Try to move an applicant to Hired and the system refuses, with a message telling you to use Hire instead, because Hire is the only action that creates the employee. So the pipeline cannot say someone was hired while HR has no record of them, and HR cannot hold a record of a new starter that the pipeline knows nothing about. The two states change together or not at all.
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The seat is checked first
Before anything is written, the hire is held to your plan’s HR employee allowance exactly as adding someone by hand would be. At the limit, the hire is refused with a clear reason rather than half-done.
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The application and the vacancy are locked
Both are re-read under a lock and re-checked. Two people clicking Hire at the same moment used to be able to create two employees; now the second finds the application already closed. A vacancy that is Filled or Closed, or whose openings are all taken, refuses further hires until someone reopens it or raises the openings.
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The employee is created
A numbered employee record is created on probation, with the name, email and phone from the application, the department and position from the vacancy, the start date and work country you enter, and the employment type defaulted from the vacancy for you to confirm. The hiring manager becomes the line manager when they have an employee record of their own.
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The pipeline closes behind it
The application moves to Hired and points at the new employee. Any interviews still open for that candidate are called off and their interviewers told. When hires reach the vacancy’s openings, the vacancy marks itself Filled.
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Onboarding starts
Every onboarding checklist your organization has set to start on hire is copied onto the new employee, with each step’s owner resolved to a person and each due date counted from the start date. The hiring manager is told who is starting, and when.
What crosses the door, field by field
It is worth being precise about what the Hire button carries, because “creates the employee record” can mean anything from a name to a payroll-ready profile. Here is the honest version.
Where each field on the new employee comes from
| Field | From the application | From the vacancy | Entered at hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name, email, phone | Yes | No | No |
| Department and position | No | Yes | No |
| Line manager | No | Partly — configurable by you | No |
| Employment type | No | Partly — configurable by you | Yes |
| Start date | No | No | Yes |
| Work country | No | No | Yes |
| Salary and currency | No | No | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
Line manager is partial because it is the hiring manager only when that person has an employee record. Employment type is defaulted from the vacancy and confirmed at hire. Salary is entered afterwards, on the employment contract.
Read the last row twice. The hire does not carry pay. The salary and its currency live on the employment contract, which HR adds to the employee after the hire, alongside the contract’s own start and end dates and its terms. That is a second entry of a late-settled fact, and it is the one most likely to be wrong in the scene at the top of this post.
Probation is set, and then watched
Every hire lands on probation. HR’s Expiring soon list then shows when each probation ends — the end date of an active probation contract when there is one, otherwise the start date plus the organization’s maximum probation days, 180 unless you change it — with a link to confirm or extend. If an offer shortened the probation, add a probation contract with the agreed end date and the list follows it. We wrote about that list in The Contract That Ended and Kept Paying.
Counting the copies
It helps to count how many times the same late facts get written down in a typical hire done by hand, and then how many of those the hire removes.
One new starter, two ways
Done through Hire, the stage, the HR record and the onboarding list come from one action and one start date. The pay remains a typed entry, which is why it belongs on your checklist for the day you click Hire.
Three of four is a real improvement, and it is worth being clear about why it holds. The onboarding checklist cannot disagree with the employee record about the start date, because it is dated from the employee record. The pipeline cannot disagree with HR about whether someone was hired, because it moves only when the record is created.
The candidates who did not become employees
Most applicants are not hired, and what happens to their data is a harder question than what happens to the one who is. A recruitment system collects CVs, contact details, interview notes and reasons for rejection about people who have no ongoing relationship with your organization. Keeping all of it forever is a liability; deleting it in a way that breaks your hiring numbers is a different kind of problem.
In AWRA, every CV and supporting document is stored in the Document Vault, attached to the application and classified confidential. The people who can open it are those with permission to view recruitment, and the interviewer of an interview with that candidate that has not been cancelled — they go into the room with the CV, and nobody else does. Every download is written to the vault’s access log.
When an application is closed — not taken forward, withdrawn, or hired — it can be erased. Erasing removes the name, the contact details, the notes, the reason, the interviewers’ written feedback and every document file, and keeps the application as an “Erased applicant” with its stage and dates, so your pipeline counts still add up. The vault keeps an archived stub of each document so the record of who opened it survives the file.
Someone asks you to delete their application
Erase it by hand
Close the application first if it is still open, then erase it from the applicant page. It takes effect at once and the pipeline counts are unchanged.
You keep unsuccessful applications for a fixed period
Set a retention period in HR settings
Every night, applications that were not taken forward or were withdrawn longer ago than that many months are erased automatically. Hired applicants are left alone, because their record is now the employee’s.
You have not decided on a policy yet
Leave retention unset
Nothing is erased automatically, which is the default. Decide deliberately, because an unset period means you hold every unsuccessful CV until someone acts.
Who may move a candidate
Two permissions split the work. Viewing recruitment lets someone see vacancies, the pipeline and applicant pages. Managing recruitment is required for everything that changes something: opening or editing a vacancy, adding applicants, moving stages, scheduling or cancelling interviews, uploading documents, erasing, and hiring.
Interviewers sit outside both. A line manager who interviews a candidate sees their own interviews, opens the candidate’s CV for those interviews, and records feedback with a recommendation — take forward, undecided, or do not take forward — without holding any HR permission at all. They cannot browse the pipeline or other people’s CVs. That keeps the people closest to the decision in the process without handing them the whole candidate file.
The public jobs page
A vacancy marked to publish online appears on your organization’s public jobs page, at its own address, with the structured data search engines use for job listings. Candidates apply without a login: name, email, phone, an optional cover note, a required CV and up to four further documents, and an explicit consent tick. The application lands in Applied with its source recorded as online, HR and the hiring manager are told, and the candidate receives an acknowledgement by email.
The same rules apply as when HR adds someone by hand. A second application from the same email to the same vacancy is refused with a reason. A vacancy past its closing date stops taking applications, leaves the public list and, overnight, closes itself, while its own page stays reachable so a shared link says the role has closed.
Where this sits next to the headcount plan
Vacancies already count toward the headcount plan, which we covered in Twelve Seats Planned, Nine People in Them. Unfilled openings on draft, open or on-hold vacancies show as in recruitment for their position, and the plan offers a link that opens a new vacancy prefilled with the position, department and the number still to requisition. The match is by position and department rather than a stored link to a plan row, so keep the position on the vacancy accurate.
The hire closes that loop without anyone touching the plan: an employee on probation counts as a filled seat, and the opening they took stops counting as in recruitment. The plan moves from “in recruitment” to “filled” on the same click that created the person.
On the day you click Hire
- Enter the start date from the signed offer letter, not from the email thread.
- Confirm the employment type, which is defaulted from the vacancy and may have changed in negotiation.
- Add the employment contract with the agreed salary, currency and dates straight after the hire.
- If the offer shortened or lengthened probation, record a probation contract with that end date.
- Check the hiring manager has an employee record, so they become the line manager and their onboarding steps reach them.
- Open the onboarding checklist that started and check each step has a person, not just the HR team.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Hire creates the employee record, on probation, with identity from the application, department and position from the vacancy, and the start date and work country entered once.
- Hired is reachable only through Hire, so the pipeline and the employee record change together, under a lock that stops a double hire and refuses a filled or closed vacancy.
- Onboarding starts on hire, with every auto-start checklist copied onto the new employee and each step dated from the start date and owned by a named person.
- A public jobs page with online applications, consent recorded, a required CV, duplicate applications refused, an acknowledgement sent and HR and the hiring manager notified.
- CVs held in the Document Vault as confidential, readable by recruitment staff and by a candidate’s own interviewers, with every download logged.
- Erasure of closed applications, by hand or after a retention period you set, keeping pipeline counts intact.
More we can add to your workspace
- Offer terms recorded at the Offer stage — salary, currency, start date and probation length captured against the application and carried into the employment contract on hire, so the agreed pay is typed once, at the point it is agreed.
- The application and its documents opening from the employee record, so the CV and the signed offer travel with the person into their HR file, linked back to the vacancy that produced them.
- A probation length set per vacancy or per offer, overriding the organization-wide setting for the roles that carry a different term.
- Candidate emails at each stage, from templates you approve: an interview invitation with the time and place, and a courteous close when an application is not taken forward.
- Recruitment in the mobile app and the developer API, so a hiring manager can review a candidate and record interview feedback from a phone.
- A vacancy linked to its headcount plan row, so a requisition opened from the plan stays tied to that row even if the position is later edited.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not rank or reject candidates automatically from a CV. A rating and a recommendation are recorded by the people who read and interview them, and the decision stays with those people.
- We do not write the terms of an employment contract or advise on probation lengths, notice periods or what may be asked on an application. Those depend on the employment law where the person works, and belong with your HR adviser or counsel.
The first item is the one that closes the stretch this post is about: offer terms held on the application and written into the contract on hire would make the salary a fact entered once, at the moment it is agreed. Any of the six is a build we would scope for your workspace.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsThe short version
The days between an accepted offer and the first payslip are where an employee record is most often retyped, and the retyped fields are the late-negotiated ones: start date, pay, probation. Making the hire create the record — rather than a person copying it — removes the copies of identity, placement and start date, keeps the pipeline and HR in step, and starts onboarding from the same date. In AWRA it does all of that today. Pay is still entered on the contract after the hire, so put it on the day’s checklist until the offer itself carries it.
Four questions for whoever is selling you hiring software
When I mark a candidate hired, what exactly is created, and where?
What you will probably hear
A description of an integration or an export to the HR system.
How to read it
An export is a copy, and a copy can disagree with its source. Ask which fields arrive and whether anything is retyped on the other side.
Can a candidate be marked hired without an employee record existing?
What you will probably hear
Usually yes, because the two are separate systems.
How to read it
Then the pipeline and HR can disagree about who works for you. The safest answer is that hired is a consequence of creating the record, not a status somebody sets.
Does the agreed salary on the offer reach payroll without being typed again?
What you will probably hear
Often a yes that turns out to mean a template field on the offer letter.
How to read it
A field on a letter is not a field payroll reads. Ask to see the number travel from offer to contract. Ours is entered on the contract after hire, and we say so.
What happens to the CVs of the people you reject?
What you will probably hear
They are kept, or deleted on request.
How to read it
Ask whether deletion is automatic after a period you set, and whether it removes the files and interview notes while keeping your hiring counts. A delete that breaks the counts gets avoided.
See HR in AWRA OpsHub
Vacancies, a candidate pipeline and a public jobs page, a Hire action that creates the employee and starts onboarding, and employment contracts, probation and payroll on the same record.
Explore HRFrequently asked questions
What happens when we click Hire on a candidate?
The system checks your plan’s HR employee allowance, locks the application and the vacancy, and creates a numbered employee record on probation with the candidate’s name, email and phone, the department and position from the vacancy, and the start date, employment type and work country you enter. The application moves to Hired, any open interviews are cancelled, the vacancy is marked Filled when its openings are taken, and onboarding checklists set to start on hire are copied onto the new employee.
Does the hire set up the new employee’s salary?
Not yet. Salary and currency live on the employment contract, which HR adds to the employee after the hire. Recording offer terms at the Offer stage and carrying them into the contract is a build we would scope for a workspace that wants it.
Can candidates apply to us directly?
Yes. A vacancy marked to publish online appears on your organization’s public jobs page. Candidates apply without a login, attach a CV, tick a consent box and receive an acknowledgement, and the application arrives in the pipeline as an online application with HR and the hiring manager notified.
Can a line manager see candidates’ CVs?
Only for candidates they are interviewing, and only while that interview has not been cancelled. They can record feedback and a recommendation without any HR permission, and they cannot browse the rest of the pipeline. Every document download is written to the Document Vault access log.
What happens to the data of candidates we do not hire?
A closed application can be erased by hand, or automatically after a retention period you set in HR settings. Erasing removes the name, contact details, notes, reason, interview feedback and document files, and keeps the application as an erased record so pipeline counts still add up. Retention is unset by default, so nothing is erased automatically until you choose a period.
How long is probation for someone hired this way?
Every hire starts on probation. Its end is the end date of an active probation contract if you add one, otherwise the start date plus your organization’s maximum probation days, which is 180 unless changed. The Expiring soon list shows each probation as it approaches its end, with a link to confirm or extend.
