What the Recruiting area is for
The Recruiting area is where you track everyone you are considering hiring, from a brand-new lead all the way to the moment they join your workforce. Each person is a candidate that moves through your hiring stages until you hire them, at which point they become an employee who can be scheduled for shifts.
Three things make recruiting work, and they are all set up in Settings: Roles, Lifecycles (your hiring stages and statuses), and Profile Tags. It is worth setting these up before you start adding candidates.
Set up your recruiting foundations in Settings
In the left sidebar, click Settings, then open the tile you need.
Roles — Click the Roles tile to define the roles in your workspace and the permissions each one carries. A role controls what a person can see and do in Careswitch. Note: a candidate created without an explicit role is given the built-in Minimal role by default. Minimal cannot be kept once someone reaches a workforce stage, so it is automatically upgraded to a real role when you hire them (you can also assign a real role yourself before hiring).
Lifecycles — Click the Lifecycles tile, then click Professionals. This is where you manage the custom statuses for each hiring stage (see the next section).
Profile Tags — Click the Profile Tags tile to create tags you can attach to candidates and employees (for example, to mark skills, certifications, or where someone came from). Tags can be used to filter the recruiting table.
Understand stages and statuses
Every person in Careswitch moves through a set of fixed stages. The stages cannot be renamed, but within each stage you can create your own statuses to match how your agency actually works.
The recruiting stages are:
Prospect
Application
Evaluation
Offer
Once someone is hired, they move into the workforce stages: Onboarding, Active, Paused, and Departure (plus a separate Inactive stage). People in recruiting stages are granted workspace access based on their assigned role, but they are not yet eligible for shift assignments.
Which stages can be scheduled: People in Onboarding, Active, or Departure can be assigned shifts. People in Paused or Inactive cannot. Departure is intentionally still schedulable so that caregivers who are offboarding can finish their last shifts.
Create, edit, or delete a status
In the left sidebar, click Settings, click the Lifecycles tile, then click Professionals.
Find the stage you want, then click Add Status on that stage.
Enter a Status Name, an optional Description, and choose a Color, then click Save.
To change a status later, use the Edit or Delete option next to it. If you delete a status that people are currently using, you will be asked to pick a Replacement Status for them.
Read and filter the recruiting table
In the left sidebar, click Recruiting. This opens a table of everyone currently in a recruiting stage. Each row is a candidate, and the columns can show their name, role, job title, recruiting stage, status, tags, contact details, recruitment method and source, Matching Criteria, Connections, and more. Several demographic columns are hidden by default.
Click a column header to sort the table by that column.
Use the Displayed Columns menu to choose which columns appear.
Use the stage tabs above the table to quickly narrow the list to a single stage.
Click Filter above the table to narrow your list further. The submenus are Status, Tags, Role, Matching Criteria (Complete or Incomplete), and Connected To (filter by which recipients, employees, or contacts a candidate is connected to).
To remove all active filters, click Clear Filters next to the Filter menu. Each individual filter submenu also has its own Clear option.
Filters combine with AND logic across categories. For example, choosing the Prospect stage tab and then a tag shows only the candidates that match both — Prospects that also carry that tag.
Add a new candidate
You can add a candidate at any point in your hiring process, even if they are already past the first stage.
In the left sidebar, click Recruiting.
In the top-right corner, click Create Candidate.
Under Set Profile Status, the label Recruiting Status → is followed by a dropdown button showing the current stage and status. Click that dropdown button to choose a stage and pick a status. To add someone who is already partway through hiring (for example, already at Evaluation), pick that stage here instead of leaving them at Prospect.
Under Personal Information, fill in Legal First Name and Legal Last Name. Enter a Mobile Number and an Email — these are used to sign in to Careswitch. You can also add a Job Title.
Optionally choose a Recruitment Method. Once you pick a method, a Recruitment Source dropdown appears with the sources specific to that method — picking a different method changes the available sources.
To invite the candidate to the app now, check Send an Email and SMS Invite. You can then add an Invite Message that will be included in the email and text. (If you skip this, you can still invite them later — see the next section.)
Optionally, under Share Update, write a message in Compose and use Notify to choose team members who should be told about this new candidate. The message is posted to the candidate's Activity feed and sent to the people you select.
Click Create Candidate (or Create and Invite Candidate if you chose to send an invite).
Tip: On the Workforce tab these same buttons read Create Employee and Invite Employees instead — it is the same screen, just labeled for hired staff.
Invite or re-invite a candidate
A login invite (email plus SMS) is sent only when you check Send an Email and SMS Invite at the moment you create the candidate. Hiring a candidate later does not automatically send an invite. If a candidate was created without an invite, or lost the original link, you have two self-serve ways to invite them:
Invite one candidate from their profile
In the left sidebar, click Recruiting, then click the candidate's name to open their profile.
In the profile header, click Send Invite. If they were invited before, the button instead reads Send Invite Again and its tooltip shows when they were last invited.
Confirm in the dialog to send the email and SMS invitation.
This button appears only when you have permission to manage employees, the person has a Careswitch account, and they are active — so it may be hidden on candidates who have not yet been set up with an account.
Invite several candidates at once
In the left sidebar, click Recruiting.
Click Invite Candidates to enter selection mode.
Tick the candidates you want to invite, then click Send Invitations and confirm. This sends (or re-sends) the email and SMS invite and updates each person's invited status.
Manage a candidate
To work with someone already in your pipeline, click Recruiting in the left sidebar, then click the candidate's name in the table to open their profile. Depending on your permissions and workspace settings, the profile has these tabs:
Profile — personal info, and a Qualifications section. (Your Matching Criteria for this person also live on this tab; the table's Matching Criteria column and filter show whether they are Complete or Incomplete.)
Activity — a timeline of status changes and team messages.
Employment — employment history and details.
Schedule — assigned shifts.
Payroll — shown only when your pay-schedule policy is enabled.
Connections — linked recipients, employees, and contacts.
Documents — uploaded files.
From the profile header you can add or remove tags. A Message button starts a direct chat — it appears only when you have chat permission, the candidate is active, and you are not messaging yourself, so it may be hidden even on an active candidate if you lack chat permission.
Move a candidate to a different status
Open the candidate's profile.
Click the current stage and status shown in the profile header.
Choose the new stage and status from the dropdown. Recruiting stages are grouped under Recruiting and employee stages under Workforce.
On the Review Change screen, optionally add a message and select team members to notify under Share Update, then click Save.
Moving between two recruiting stages is quick and skips the required-fields step below. Moving into a workforce stage triggers the full hire review.
Hire a candidate
Hiring a candidate means moving them into a workforce stage. Once they reach Onboarding, Active, or Departure, they become an employee who can be scheduled.
In the left sidebar, click Recruiting, then click the candidate's name to open their profile.
Click the current stage and status in the profile header.
Under the Workforce group, choose the stage and status you want (for example an Onboarding or Active status).
On the Review Change screen, complete the required details across three sections. If a section is missing required information, a warning icon appears next to it and the Save button stays disabled — click Edit on that section to fill it in:
Personal Info — first and last name, mobile number, email, date of birth, address, and primary language.
Employee Details — a real (non-Minimal) role, job title, and employment type.
Pay Rates — a pay method (and an annual salary if the person is salaried).
Optionally add a message and choose team members to notify under Share Update.
Click Save.
What happens when you hire: the person's membership becomes active, chat is activated, and they become eligible for shifts. If they still had the Minimal role, it is upgraded to a real role automatically. Their Start Date is auto-set to today the first time they move into a workforce stage — but only if a start date was not already set, so it may differ from the intended hire date if there was a delay. You can adjust it under Personal Info. The candidate now disappears from the Recruiting tab and appears under Workforce, and their profile URL switches from /people/recruiting/… to /people/workforce/…. Hiring does not send a login invite — if they still need one, use Send Invite on their profile, or Invite Candidates/Invite Employees from the list.
Common scenarios
Save is greyed out when hiring
One of the Personal Info, Employee Details, or Pay Rates sections is missing a required field. Look for the section with the warning icon, click Edit, fill in the missing field (commonly date of birth or a pay method), and the Save button enables once all three sections validate.
A candidate never received their invite
If the invite checkbox was left unchecked at creation, or the link was lost, you can invite them at any time. Open the candidate's profile and click Send Invite (or Send Invite Again), or from the Recruiting list click Invite Candidates, tick the candidate, and click Send Invitations.
You moved someone to Paused and now they can't be scheduled
Paused and Inactive both block scheduling. To make the person schedulable again, transition them back to Active or Onboarding (the required workforce fields must still validate). Note that shifts removed while they were paused are not automatically restored — re-schedule those manually.
You moved someone to Departure and they can still be assigned shifts
This is intentional. Departure is still a schedulable stage so an offboarding caregiver can finish their remaining shifts. When you want them off the schedule entirely, move them to Inactive.
Filtering down to a precise list
Click a stage tab to limit to one stage, then open Filter and add a Tags value and a Matching Criteria value. Results require all filters to match (AND logic). Use Clear Filters to reset.
Frequently asked questions
Which stages can be scheduled for shifts?
Onboarding, Active, and Departure can be scheduled. Paused and Inactive cannot.
I created a candidate without sending an invite — how do I invite them now?
Open the candidate's profile and click Send Invite, or from the Recruiting list click Invite Candidates, tick the candidate, and click Send Invitations. Either way re-sends the email and SMS invite.
Does hiring a candidate send them a login invite automatically?
No. Invites are sent at creation (via the Send an Email and SMS Invite checkbox), from the candidate's profile with Send Invite, or in bulk via Invite Candidates/Invite Employees. The hire Review Change screen itself does not send one.
How does a caregiver actually log in?
With their email or mobile number plus a 6-digit code — there is no username or password.
What's the difference between a stage and a status?
Stages are fixed: Prospect, Application, Evaluation, and Offer for recruiting, and Onboarding, Active, Paused, and Departure for workforce (plus Inactive). Statuses are the custom labels you create within each stage under Settings → Lifecycles → Professionals.
Why is the Save button greyed out when I try to hire someone?
One of the Personal Info, Employee Details, or Pay Rates sections is missing required information. Open the section with the warning icon and complete it.
What information is required to hire a candidate?
Name, mobile number, email, date of birth, address, and primary language; a non-Minimal role, job title, and employment type; and a pay method (with an annual salary if salaried).
Why did my candidate's start date get set to today when I hired them?
Start Date auto-fills to today the first time someone moves into a workforce stage, but only if it wasn't already set. Edit it under Personal Info if you need a different date.