How the Kanban board works

Last updated: June 19, 2026

Where: a job → Candidates → Kanban.

The Kanban is the heart of running a job — a board where every candidate sits in the column for their current stage, and moving them rightward is moving them through your process. At a glance you see where everyone stands and where the bottleneck is.

Each column is a stage from this job's interview stages, in order. A candidate sits in the column for their current stage, and each column header shows the stage name and a count, so a column that's piling up tells you where attention is needed.

Moving a candidate

Drag their card to another stage's column. When you do:

The candidate moves to that stage.
If that stage is set to Notify candidate (in the stage's Communications Settings), a message to the candidate is drafted for you — you never have to write the "you've advanced" note from scratch, and a human always confirms it before it sends.
The move and any drafted message are held as a draft change — shown as a "draft changes" count on the column and gathered under Review draft changes at the top of the page, where you confirm them and send any messages. (The Bulk mode toggle is this "review and confirm later" way of working — move several candidates, then confirm the changes and messages together.)

Nothing sends until you confirm. A drag is a proposal, not an action — the candidate isn't notified the instant you let go of the card. That's deliberate: it lets you reorganize the board freely, then review every move and message in one pass. See Review draft changes.

The earliest stages — before a candidate has connected with your company (Pre-screen and the vouch stage) — can't be dragged. These represent people who haven't yet entered your active process, so you act on them elsewhere rather than dragging them across the board.

Working a column

Click a card to open the candidate's full profile.
Collapse a column with the chevron to get noisy or finished stages out of the way.
Select candidates (hover a card, or use the column's select-all checkbox) to act on several at once — a toolbar appears at the bottom. See Move or act on several candidates at once.
⋯ → Edit stage settings jumps to that stage's settings when you want to change its name, order, or notification behavior.

If you haven't set up stages yet, the board prompts you to Set up stages; with no candidates, it prompts you to share the listing or source candidates.