# Automatic pipeline hygiene nudges

Intervieux automatically flags two kinds of pipeline neglect: candidates with no activity in 7 or more days, and candidates who have sat in the same stage for 14 or more days, deduped so the same nudge does not repeat within the same week.

A pipeline that fills up fast tends to quietly rot from the middle. New applicants get looked at, top candidates get pushed to an offer, and the ones in between sit untouched for weeks because nothing is actively wrong with them, they just never came back up in anyone's queue. Pipeline hygiene nudges exist to catch exactly that gap before a candidate who was worth a second look has been silently ignored long enough to take another offer.

## What it does

Two conditions trigger a nudge. A stale candidate is one with no recorded activity for 7 or more days, no note added, no stage change, nothing on their timeline. A stage-aging candidate is one who has sat in their current pipeline stage for 14 or more days, regardless of whether other activity happened around them. Both checks run automatically against every active job, and nudges are deduplicated per week so the same stalled candidate does not generate a repeated alert every single day.

## How it works

1. **Every candidate's activity is tracked already** — Because the ATS records a full event timeline for each candidate, stage changes, notes, tags, every action, the system already knows exactly when something last happened on any given application.
2. **Two thresholds run against that timeline** — Seven days of no activity flags a candidate as stale. Fourteen days in the same stage flags a candidate as stage-aging. A candidate can trip either or both at once.
3. **A nudge surfaces the flagged candidates** — Rather than requiring a recruiter to sort the pipeline by last-updated and scan it manually, the nudge brings the stale and stage-aging candidates forward directly.
4. **Repeats are deduped within the week** — Once a candidate has been flagged, they are not flagged again for the same condition within the same week, so the nudge stays a useful signal rather than daily noise that gets tuned out.

## Stale and stage-aging are different problems

A candidate can be stale, no one has touched their application in a week, without being stage-aging if they only just moved into their current stage. A candidate can be stage-aging without being stale if notes and tags keep getting added while the stage itself never changes. Tracking both catches neglect that a single measure would miss.

## It backstops the weekly digest, not replaces it

The weekly hiring digest already reports new applicants, completed interviews, and stage movements for a job. Hygiene nudges cover the opposite case, the candidates the digest would not naturally highlight because nothing happened to them, which is precisely the problem.

## Deduping keeps the signal usable

A nudge that fires every day for the same stuck candidate becomes something a recruiter learns to ignore within a week. Deduping per candidate per week means each nudge that does appear is worth reading.

## The timeline is what makes the nudge reliable

Because the underlying check reads from the same event timeline recorded on every candidate card, a nudge is only ever as good as the data behind it, and every note, tag, or stage change already being logged means the staleness and stage-aging checks are working from a complete record rather than an estimate.

## Who this is for

This matters most for teams juggling several open roles at once, where a candidate in the middle of the pack for one job is easy to lose track of while attention goes to a different role's finalists. A single recruiter working one active pipeline may already check it daily and see less value from the nudge itself.

## Frequently asked questions

### What counts as a stale candidate?

A candidate with no recorded activity, no note, stage change, or tag, for 7 or more days. The check runs against the same event timeline already recorded on every candidate's card.

### What counts as stage-aging?

A candidate who has remained in the same pipeline stage for 14 or more days, whether or not other activity has happened around them in that time.

### Will I get repeated alerts for the same stuck candidate?

No. Nudges are deduplicated per candidate within the same week, so a candidate flagged once stays flagged rather than generating a fresh alert every day until someone acts.

### How is this different from the weekly hiring digest?

The digest reports on activity that happened, new applicants, completed interviews, stage movements. Hygiene nudges cover the opposite, candidates nothing happened to, which the digest would not naturally surface on its own.

### Where does the data behind a nudge come from?

The same event timeline already recorded on every candidate card, stage changes, notes, tags, and other actions. The staleness and stage-aging checks read directly from that record rather than a separate tracking process.

## Related pages

- [Customizable pipeline stages](/features/custom-pipeline-stages)
- [Weekly hiring digest emails](/features/hiring-digests)
- [Built-in applicant tracking (ATS)](/features/applicant-tracking)
- [Frequently asked questions](/faq)

## Stop candidates from going quiet in your pipeline

Hygiene nudges surface stale and stage-aging candidates automatically, so nobody worth a second look gets forgotten in the middle of the funnel.

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