Interview rounds as tasks and subtasks

How the Recruiting pack organises each candidate's interview rounds and their preparation as tasks and subtasks, and keeps follow-up visible.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Recruitment businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

A single senior placement can involve a phone screen, a technical interview, a panel, a meeting with the managing director and a reference check, each with its own date, preparation and follow-up. Multiply that by four shortlisted candidates and two vacancies, and a consultant is juggling dozens of small commitments: confirm the venue, send the candidate the panel names, chase the client for feedback, book the second round.

Most of those slip through the cracks not because anyone is careless, but because they live in a diary, an inbox and a consultant's memory at the same time. The Recruiting pack in Achekam's Industry CRM add-on puts them in one structure, against the candidate they belong to.

Candidates with their interviews

The Recruiting pack keeps three kinds of record: Vacancies, Candidates with their interviews, and Placements followed through the guarantee period. Interviews belong to the candidate. That is the right place for them: a candidate may interview for more than one vacancy, and the history of how they performed in each round is part of their record, not the client's.

Each candidate is a customer of their own in the pack, never filed under a client, so requests and messages reach the candidate directly; see candidates as their own customers.

Tasks with subtasks three levels deep

In the Industry CRM, tasks can have subtasks up to three levels deep, and a workflow creates its tasks stage by stage. For interviews, three levels are enough to hold a whole round without clutter:

The value is in the shape. A consultant opening the task sees the round as a whole and what is left to do. A colleague covering for a sick consultant can pick up the round without a handover call. And because each piece is a task with a status, nothing depends on someone remembering it.

Keep one task per round, per candidate. Bundling all of a vacancy's interviews into one task hides which candidate is stuck.

Screening steps that come first

Interviews should not be arranged for a candidate who has not been screened. The pack's candidate screening has a person read the CV against the job description, requests the identity document, qualifications and consent, and records the checks the role needs.

That order protects everyone. The client does not spend an afternoon interviewing someone who lacks the qualification the role requires. The candidate has given consent to be put forward. And the agency is not caught out later by a check it should have made first. Screening is covered step by step in candidate screening.

A practical rule: no interview task is created for a candidate until their screening tasks are complete. A workflow creates its tasks stage by stage, so let the screening stage finish rather than jumping ahead when a client is in a hurry.

Overdue and due-today counts

The Industry CRM's home page shows counts that come from records, tasks or the ledger, and none is typed in by hand. Among them are overdue tasks and tasks due today, alongside open records, records in a stage, pipeline value, key dates in the next 7 days, won this month and revenue this month.

For interview management, the two task counts are the ones to watch each morning:

• Tasks due today: interviews happening, candidates to prepare, feedback calls to make.
• Overdue tasks: feedback not collected, rounds not confirmed, candidates left waiting.

An overdue feedback task is the most damaging. A candidate who hears nothing for a week after an interview often accepts another offer. Make clearing overdue interview tasks the first job of the day, before new searches.

Because the counts are built from the tasks themselves, they are only as accurate as the consultants' habit of closing tasks when they are done. A task left open after the interview has happened makes the count lie.

Keeping notes factual

Interview notes are some of the most sensitive records an agency keeps. They are about a person, they may be seen by that person if they ask for their information, and they can be read by a tribunal if a hiring decision is challenged.

Write them as facts about what was said and assessed, not opinions about the person:

• Factual: "Described leading a team of warehouse staff through a system change; could not give an example of managing a budget."
• Not: "Seemed a bit weak, not sure about her."

Rules worth adopting:

1. Record what the candidate said and did, in relation to the job's requirements.
2. Record the client's feedback in the client's words, attributed to them.
3. Leave out comments on age, appearance, family, religion or any other personal characteristic.
4. Keep notes only as long as you need them for the placement and your legal obligations.

Candidate information is personal information under the data protection laws of all three countries. In Kenya, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is the regulator where data controllers and processors register, breaches are reported and complaints are filed; South Africa's Information Regulator and Nigeria's Data Protection Commission do the same work in their countries.

When the pack is switched on, agree a standard interview-round task and its subtasks, write it down for your consultants, and set it up the same way for every shortlisted candidate on the next vacancy.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.