Recruitment is now in ZekoHR, on every plan

ZekoHR now has a Recruitment module. It covers hiring from the moment a manager asks for a new person to the morning that person joins, and it is included in every plan: Starter, Growth and Pro, as well as the free year. This post covers what it does, the parts we cared most about while building it, and what it does not do yet.

Why hiring belongs in the HR portal

In most small Indian companies, hiring lives in three places at once: a spreadsheet of candidates, a recruiter's inbox, and a WhatsApp group where the hiring manager says "looks good, call him for round two". When the candidate finally joins, someone types their details into the HR system for the first time, from a resume that is two months old.

Every step of that loses something: the candidate who never hears back, feedback that is a thumbs-up emoji, an offer breakup that does not match payroll. We already had one employee record for everything after joining; hiring should end in that record, not in a copy of it.

A pipeline you shape, per job

Every job opening gets a Kanban board. Admins set the default stages once for the organisation, and each new job copies them. From there, each job can be customised: add an "Assignment" column for a developer role, a second technical round, or a director round for a senior hire. Stages can be renamed, reordered and recoloured. Candidates move by drag-and-drop, or in bulk when you are shortlisting twenty people at once.

A few stages are protected. Offer, offer accepted and joined can be renamed but not deleted, and you cannot drag a card into them: a candidate reaches "offer accepted" because an offer was actually accepted, not because someone dragged a card on a busy afternoon. Moving someone to Rejected or Withdrawn asks for a reason.

A proper email at every step

This was the part we spent the most time on. Candidates judge a company by how it treats them while they wait.

ZekoHR ships twenty candidate email templates: application received, shortlisted, assessment instructions, interview invitation, reschedule, cancellation and reminder, on hold, two kinds of rejection (after screening and after interview), selection, offer, offer reminder, offer withdrawn, welcome, document requests and reminders, joining reminder, a keep-in-touch note for the talent pool, and a blank one for anything else. They go out in your company's branding, with the job's recruiter as the reply-to, so a candidate's reply reaches a person.

We wrote the rejection emails to be kind and clear that the decision is final, without being cold. None of the templates promise anything your company has not decided.

For each pipeline stage you choose what happens when a candidate moves into it: send the email automatically, ask first (a prefilled, editable email opens with Send and Skip), or send nothing. Interview invitations carry a calendar file; a reschedule updates the same calendar entry and a cancellation removes it. Interview reminders and offer-expiry reminders go out on their own, and never twice. Every email sent, whether manual, prompted or automatic, is kept word for word on the candidate's history.

Scorecards nobody can copy

Each job defines its hiring process as rounds (HR screen, technical, managerial, director), each with its own panel, duration and feedback criteria. Every panelist fills in their own scorecard, and nobody can see anyone else's feedback until they have submitted their own. The first strong opinion in the room should not quietly become everyone's opinion.

The application shows a rounds-by-panelists view with ratings, recommendations and an overall hire signal. Panelists who have not given feedback a day after the interview get a reminder, and HR sees what is overdue.

The rest of the module

• Requisitions and openings. Hiring managers raise a requisition, HR approves it into an opening, and openings track vacancies filled and remaining, the recruiter and a target closing date.
• Talent pool. A searchable candidate database with duplicate detection by email and phone, tags such as Java, Fresher, Immediate Joiner or Rehire, and search by name, mobile, email, skill, experience or candidate ID.
• Screening. Skills match, a score and an HR recommendation, recorded the same way for everyone.
• Offers. An approval chain, a salary breakup built from your salary structures, an offer letter PDF, and acceptance tracking.
• Pre-joining. A checklist for documents, background verification and joining forms, then one click converts the candidate into an employee, with an employee code generated and onboarding started.
• Referrals. Employees see open jobs, refer people, follow progress, and referral rewards are tracked.
• Dashboard and MIS. Open positions, interviews scheduled, offers released, joined and rejected, plus source effectiveness, with MIS export to Excel or PDF.
• Access by role. HR and Recruiters run hiring, hiring managers see their own jobs, interviewers see only their interviews, Management sees reports, and employees see referrals.

What it does not do yet

There is no candidate-facing careers page or application form yet. Today, HR adds candidates and employees refer them, and HR records offer responses and uploads pre-joining documents on the candidate's behalf. A candidate-facing link is planned, and we will write about it when it ships rather than before.

If you are already on ZekoHR, your HR team will find Recruitment in the sidebar. If you are not, the Recruitment page has the details, and the free year includes it.