The Candidate Experience

Knowing exactly what your applicants see helps you design pipelines that feel polished and fair. This guide walks the journey from the candidate's side: the job page and application form, their personal portal, assessments and interviews, and the emails Hivemind sends along the way.

The application form

Candidates usually find a role in one of two places:

• Your company page. Each active role has its own job page with the description (About this role), the steps they'll go through (What to expect), and an Apply now button. Candidates who aren't ready yet can choose Remind me later. See Your Company Page.
• The application link you shared directly, which goes straight to the form.

Either way, the application page is form-first: your logo and company name, the job title, a short line of job facts (location, workplace, employment type, and when it was posted), and then the form itself, so applying starts on the first screen. A View job details link goes back to the full job page, and See all open roles at the bottom lists your other openings.

The form contains the fields you configured: name, email, and any fields you added, such as phone, LinkedIn, location, or screening questions. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.

Resume upload is drag-and-drop or click-to-browse, and accepts PDF files only, max 10MB. Candidates finish with Submit application and see a confirmation: "We've received your application and will review it shortly."

The candidate portal

After applying, candidates land on their personal portal (you can also copy it anytime via Share portal link on their profile). It has two tabs:

• Overview: a "Welcome" banner with the role and company, a progress bar, a step-by-step checklist of their journey, and an action button for whatever's next: Continue, Schedule Interview, or Set Availability. Between steps they see friendly status screens like "Your resume is being reviewed" or "Your interview is being reviewed." When there's nothing left for them to do, the portal says so plainly: "No more steps for you", with a note that your team will be in touch by email. A candidate still waiting on a final review keeps seeing that review's message rather than being told they're done.
• Messages: a two-way chat with your team, the same thread you see in Hivemind.

Whether the portal shows pipeline steps and assessment scores is controlled by your company preferences.

Taking assessments

An assessment opens with an overview: question count, estimated minutes, a Question Breakdown by type, and a Before You Start checklist noting that progress auto-saves and they can navigate freely. They click Start Assessment to begin.

While answering, a progress panel shows how many questions are Answered, Pending, or Marked for review, and candidates can click any question in it to jump straight there. The panel locks while a video answer is recording, so no one loses a take by clicking away. Questions appear in the order you set in the assessment builder, and timed coding questions show a Time left countdown, with a prompt to submit when time runs out. Video questions keep the prompt hidden until the candidate presses Record: one spontaneous take, no retries. When done, they confirm via Submit Assessment; unanswered questions can't be submitted later.

Interviews and calls

Depending on how you configured the stage, candidates either:

• Book their own slot: a Book Your Interview calendar where they pick a date, time, and timezone, then Confirm Booking. They get a confirmation plus the meeting details by email.
• Set availability: a Set Your Availability grid; your team then picks the time.
• Start an AI phone interview: a Phone Call Interview screen where they enter their number, click Start Phone Interview, and receive a call from the AI interviewer shortly after. See AI Voice Interviews.

Emails along the way

With your mailbox connected (see Email Integration & Inbox), candidates receive automated emails at each step: assessment invitations with up to three reminders ("Final Reminder: Please Complete Your Assessment"), interview invitations with the date, a Join Meeting link, and a calendar invite, reschedule notices, offer signing links, and (if you enable it) a courteous not-moving-forward note. Emails you author in an email step support placeholders like the candidate's first name and your company name.

What's next

• Design the journey in Creating a Pipeline
• See what you receive on your side in Candidate Profiles
• Understand each step type in the Pipeline Nodes Reference
• Send the happy ending with Offers