How to Track Candidates in LinkedIn Recruiter

Create one project for each open role

Use a separate LinkedIn Recruiter project for every active position. Name it with the role plus a distinguishing detail such as team, location or hiring round.

Avoid broad projects such as “designers” or “fintech.” They become dumping grounds because they have no finish line. A project tied to an open role gives every saved candidate a reason to be there.

Before saving someone, ask which role they could realistically enter. If that is unclear, use a deliberate future-prospects project rather than mixing them into an active search.

If a candidate could fit two jobs, select a primary project based on the current conversation. Add them to a second project only when someone is genuinely considering them there. Duplicate placement without context makes later reporting confusing.

Use pipeline stages consistently

A stage should describe what happened—not how excited you feel. Use the stages in your Recruiter workflow the same way across the team.

Distinguish between someone you identified, someone you contacted and someone who replied. Sending a message does not make a person an active candidate, and a positive reply is not a completed screen.

Agree on the event that moves someone forward. If screen means the recruiter call was completed, do not use it when the call is merely scheduled.

Consistent stages reveal who needs an initial message, who owes a reply and who is ready for hiring-manager review without reopening every profile.

Write notes that survive the hiring sprint

Candidates quickly blur together. Capture the substance immediately after a conversation and use a compact structure:

• Current situation
• Relevant evidence
• Motivation or constraints
• Concern to test
• Next action

Write explainable facts. “Led migration for a payments product” is useful; “great energy” is not. If communication matters, record observed behavior instead of assigning a personality label.

Separate profile facts from interview evidence

The LinkedIn profile already contains job titles, employers and dates. Repeating all of that adds text without preserving what the interview contributed.

Use notes for what is not obvious from the profile: personal ownership, decision evidence, desired role and unanswered questions.

A useful note could read:

Owned onboarding after the initial launch. Wants a smaller product team. Needs to clarify experience with regulated markets. Send role brief Friday.

That gives the next interviewer something to test and explains why the candidate advanced.

If interview material lives outside Recruiter, make the candidate’s name and open role visible in every entry. Resumes, shorthand and quick voice memos may be kept in an approved notes system or a saved-item tool such as dEssence if company policy permits. The ATS or Recruiter project remains the source of truth for status.

Keep follow-ups out of memory

A note explains the conversation; it should not be the only place holding a deadline. Put every time-sensitive action in one trusted system such as ATS tasks, a calendar or the team task manager.

Review follow-ups at the same time daily so an enthusiastic candidate does not disappear beneath newer messages. When someone replies, update both the pipeline and the task. Updating only one creates a mismatch between status and responsibility.

Use search for sourcing and projects for decisions

Recruiter searches discover people. Projects preserve decisions.

Do not treat a saved search as a pipeline because results change with profiles and filters. Save someone to the relevant project when they deserve an action, and do not fill active projects with every remotely plausible profile.

Use consistent terms for important requirements. If payments experience is required, use that phrase when the evidence supports it. This makes candidates findable by requirement without relying on name recognition.

Prepare the project before a debrief

Review candidates in the relevant stage and read the latest note for each. Compare them with role requirements, not with whichever interview happened most recently.

For every candidate, be ready to state:

1. Why they entered the process.
2. What evidence supports moving forward.
3. What concern remains unresolved.
4. Who owns the next action.

After the meeting, update stages and follow-ups while decisions are fresh. A working project gives every candidate a role, current state, evidence and owner.