Who's Involved

• Cornerstone (us): the RPO running this account end to end: JD review, market research and comp benchmarking, sourcing, screening, submissions, weekly reporting, and keeping the pipeline current in Spott.
• Irth Solutions: the client. A SaaS platform for critical infrastructure (pipeline integrity, damage prevention, land management).
• Sara Howren, VP of Recruitment (Cornerstone): keeps the overall commercial relationship with Irth healthy and moving day-to-day. Approved the original SLA targets together with Irth's stakeholders.
• Nicolás Patarroyo: named Lead Talent Partner for the account by Irth's People & Culture/TA team — the primary point of contact on Cornerstone's side for the whole TA relationship, and personally runs requisitions himself like any other recruiter, not just an oversight role. Owns the account's business logic day-to-day: SLA compliance and candidate delivery.
• Immy Nader, Talent Acquisition Coordinator, People & Culture (Irth HR): the day-to-day point of contact for the entire TA process. For anything beyond her scope, Kesha and Nicole are the escalation points.
• Kesha Brown, People and Culture Coordinator (Irth HR): sets the account's business-logic direction — SLA compliance, candidate delivery — and weighs in on which requisitions are viable to hand to Cornerstone.
• Nicole Bell, VP, People & Culture (Irth HR): at the executive level, sets the account's business-logic direction and weighs in on which requisitions are viable to hand to Cornerstone.
• The Hiring Manager: owns alignment and decisions: intake, reviewing every submitted candidate, approving or rejecting them, giving feedback within SLA, and flagging any change in scope or requirements.
• The Candidate: completes the Workable application, confirms location and work authorization, attends scheduled interviews, and responds to Cornerstone's outreach.
• KeyStone: the AI sourcing tool, also used to publish the role to LinkedIn.
• Spott: the ATS where the entire pipeline is actually managed, regardless of where a candidate came from.
• Workable: Irth's careers page, and the system the hiring manager actually uses to review and approve submitted candidates.

The Process, Start To Finish

1. Assignment. A requisition technically exists the moment it's created in Workable, but it isn't formally assigned until Immy sends the assignment email, copying both the recruiter and the hiring manager. In practice, this is often preceded by a heads-up call where Immy confirms the requisitions are ready and already live on Irth's careers page, that live posting is exactly what a requisition's "Irth Careers Page" link points to. This assignment email is what the tracker calls Kickoff, and its date is the Kickoff Date.
2. Kickoff reply. Nicolás, as Lead Talent Partner, always replies on that same email thread himself, introducing Cornerstone as the RPO to the hiring manager, naming the assigned recruiter if it isn't him, and explaining exactly how sourcing, submissions, feedback, and SLAs will work. This reply always follows the same fixed template, nothing here is improvised per role. If the requisition is handed to another recruiter to run day-to-day, that same email names Nicolás as the backup/escalation contact for it, with the assigned recruiter as its primary contact, so account leadership stays continuous without him becoming an operational bottleneck on every individual req.
3. Intake meeting requested, then held. The recruiter asks for a 30-45 minute intake meeting (or, if the hiring manager can't make time, a short written substitute). Non-negotiable rule: sourcing never starts before this happens, not even if the role looks obvious or familiar. The JD alone is a starting point, almost always optimistic; the intake is what gives the real context to source against.
4. JD & sourcing prep. With real context from the intake in hand, the recruiter builds three separate things: an internal JD (Cornerstone's own working document, never published anywhere), a public JD for KeyStone/LinkedIn with the client's identity anonymized, and the sourcing criteria fed into KeyStone's AI Sourcing engine. The AI's own auto-generated filters are a starting point, not the final word, the recruiter's own criteria from what was actually agreed in the intake take priority.
5. Sourcing. Starts only after the intake, never before, see Sourcing Channels below for the three ways a candidate can enter the pipeline.
6. Screening, batching, submission. Screened candidates get invited to complete their official Workable application, that's what creates the "Submitted" profile the hiring manager actually reviews, in curated batches of 3-5 (see Batch Cadence below).
7. Interviews. Candidates who advance go through a Technical Interview first, then a Hiring Manager Interview, the final call usually sits with this second round. Each round runs its own feedback and decision cycle, see Feedback SLA vs. Decision SLA below.
8. Offer Stage. Once the hiring manager confirms in firm, it moves to Irth's internal team to process, see Offer Stage Mechanics below for the exact cadence.
9. Placement. Closes only when the candidate's actual start date arrives, not when they sign the offer, a signed offer can still fall through before day one.

Requisition Completion

• Accept & Request Intake (Recruiter Owned): within 1 business day of Kickoff, the recruiter accepts the requisition and requests the intake meeting with the hiring manager. This is the only piece of Requisition Completion counted as a real recruiter miss.
• Intake Meeting Held (Follow-Up Only): once requested, the target is 3 business days for the intake meeting to actually happen. This step depends on the hiring manager's availability, not the recruiter, so it never counts against them directly, it only surfaces as a reminder to follow up or, past target, to escalate to Immy Nader.
• Added together, these two targets put the intake meeting at 4 business days after Kickoff, inside the 5-business-day ceiling Immy Nader holds Irth to for getting it scheduled. She has direct visibility into hiring managers' calendars and proactively pushes if one goes unresponsive, so a requisition rarely needs the full 5 days in practice.
• Handoff Context Confirmed (Recruiter Owned): when a requisition is reassigned from one recruiter to another instead of arriving fresh from Irth, "Accept & Request Intake" is replaced by this instead, same 1 business day target, counted from the handoff date. The receiving recruiter isn't re-doing the intake, but they do have to confirm they actually have real context (looped into the original kickoff thread, plus either the post-intake notes or a hiring manager already calibrated by email) before the requisition is fully theirs.

Sourcing Channels

• Passive: sourced manually in KeyStone and added to a shortlist. They're automatically invited to either an AI interview or a Screening Interview with the recruiter.
• Active: candidates who apply directly through the role's LinkedIn posting. They only count as an applicant once they click "Finish your application" on the careers page, anyone who starts a profile but doesn't finish it is never added to the pipeline.
• Direct & referred: candidates who apply straight through Irth's own Workable careers page, or come in as an employee referral. Unlike the other two, these don't flow into Spott automatically, the recruiter has to add them manually. Once added, they go through the exact same evaluation as anyone else, this only changes how they enter, not how they're processed.
• Regardless of channel, the actual call that gets booked with a recruiter is always a Screening Interview, there's no separate "intro call" format, whether or not the candidate completed the AI interview first.

Tags & Status Colors

SLA status colors (SLA and Requisition Completion cards)

• Within SLA (green): on track, inside target.
• At Risk (yellow): approaching the target, not past it yet.
• Out Of SLA (red): past target.
• Not Started (gray): this metric's clock hasn't started yet, its starting date isn't filled in.

SLA / Requisition Completion tags

• Official SLA: a real, contractual KPI agreed with Irth (TTS only).
• Internal Goal: an internal health metric Cornerstone tracks, not a contractual KPI with the client (TTF, TTH).
• Recruiter Owned: counted as a real recruiter miss if it goes out of target.
• Follow-Up Only: never counted against the recruiter, it only surfaces as a reminder to follow up or escalate.

Activity badges

• Milestone: generated automatically the moment a Timeline date (Kickoff, Intake Requested, Intake Meeting, Submission, Fill, Hire) is filled in.
• Status Change: generated automatically whenever the requisition's status changes.
• Next Step: automatic guidance suggesting what to do next for the current status.
• Action: a specific action the recruiter actually took (e.g., accepting an assignment), logged automatically the moment they took it.
• Remark: a free-text note someone wrote manually.

SLAs & Targets

Time To Fill and Time To Hire are internal health metrics, not contractual KPIs with the client, they exist to flag when a requisition needs attention.

• Time To Fill (TTF): same start point as TTS, ends when Irth confirms by email that the hiring manager sent the Offer Request. This is the edge of Cornerstone's scope in the process. Target: 30-40 calendar days.
• Time To Hire (TTH): same start point, ends on the candidate's actual first day, not when they sign the offer (a candidate can still fall through between those two dates). Target: 40-50 calendar days.

Health buckets (reference only, not a hard pass/fail rule):

• 30-35 days: excellent
• 36-40 days: healthy, on track
• 41-45 days: at risk, needs attention
• 46+ days, with no Pivot SLA in play: outside the expected range

The Pivot SLA

If a hiring manager rejects 100% of a batch, that may indicate a screening miss on the recruiter's side, or an intake that wasn't tight enough — if it's the latter, it isn't fair to hold the recruiter to the original clock.

• Allowance: +11 to 13 calendar days on TTF/TTH, equivalent to a full new sourcing cycle. Applies once per requisition.
• Attribution is decided against the Intake Summary, the one document that acts as the objective record of what was actually agreed: if the rejected batch matched what was agreed there and the hiring manager rejected it anyway (new criteria, change of mind), the allowance applies. If the batch didn't match what was agreed, the recruiter is attributed and the clock keeps running with no allowance.
• If the real issue is a genuinely limited talent pool or uncompetitive approved compensation, Talent Mapping and/or Compensation Market Analysis are used as evidence, both to justify the allowance and to reset expectations with the hiring manager.
• Approval, two layers, deliberately: Nicolás, as Lead Talent Partner, makes the first call, evaluated against the Intake Summary. If another recruiter is working the requisition, they present the case to Nicolás first. But it isn't confirmed until Immy Nader signs off too, on Irth's side, neither side can grant or deny this allowance on their own.
• This only ever applies once per requisition. If the same batch-rejection pattern repeats after the allowance was already used, that's no longer an alignment problem, it's a deeper issue that needs to be escalated, not another allowance.

Batch Cadence

• First batch: 3-5 pre-screened candidates, 7-9 business days from the intake meeting.
• Follow-up batches (only if the previous batch was rejected in full): 3-5 more candidates every 5 business days, pulled from the pipeline already in progress, sourcing never restarts from zero.
• Why 3-5 and not more: a small batch is a promise that every profile is worth the hiring manager's time. A batch of 10+ signals the screening wasn't rigorous enough.
• The hiring manager doesn't shortlist, they receive an already-curated batch and only approve or reject each one. Rejection reasons get logged and used to sharpen the next batch.

Feedback SLA vs. Decision SLA

• Feedback SLA — 1-3 business days: after any submission or interview stage, positive or negative, logged directly in Workable's Review tab as a formal evaluation (a SOC 2 compliance requirement, not just a courtesy). This clock runs regardless of whether the real decision to advance is still pending.
• If it's missed: the recruiter pauses that specific candidate (nothing moves without documented feedback), escalates immediately to Immy Nader, and the whole requisition automatically goes On Hold. This isn't a judgment call made case by case, it's automatic, precisely so process discipline never depends on someone deciding in the moment whether an exception is worth making. If that escalation itself stalls, the next level up is Kesha Brown, then Nicole Bell, VP, People & Culture.
• Decision SLA — 3 business days after feedback lands: once feedback is in and the hiring manager wants to move someone forward, the next step needs to be decided within 3 business days. Evaluated per candidate, never waiting for the rest of the batch to finish interviewing, so a strong candidate's progress isn't delayed by the rest of the batch.
• Exception — internal candidates: sometimes the hiring manager reveals, partway through, that the role is also open to an internal Irth candidate, and wants that process to resolve first before deciding on external candidates already interviewed. This is a legitimate business reason, never treated as an SLA violation, but it has to be explicitly stated by the hiring manager, not just inferred from silence, that's what the tracker's On Hold — Internal Candidates status is for. No fixed deadline applies, but a weekly check-in still happens, and only the decision on already-interviewed external candidates pauses, sourcing and screening elsewhere on the requisition keeps moving.

Offer Stage Mechanics

• Feedback first, always: Irth won't process any Offer Request until the hiring manager's feedback is already logged in Workable, the same feedback discipline from earlier in the process, applied one more time before an offer goes out.
• Weekly cadence: Irth processes Offer Requests on Wednesdays. Send it before Wednesday, and the candidate hears from Irth that same Wednesday or the next day.
• Verbal first, formal letter after: Irth calls the candidate with a verbal offer before anything goes out in writing, the formal letter (to HR, IT, and Payroll, to coordinate onboarding) follows once the candidate has verbally accepted.
• Payroll timing: Irth pays biweekly and prefers start dates between the 1st and the 15th of the month, so a new hire's first paycheck doesn't land prorated to almost nothing.
• This whole stage sits outside Cornerstone's control, which is why the hand-off email to Immy always asks for two dates, not to relay to the candidate, just to keep TTF/TTH honest: the exact date the Offer Request went out, and the confirmed start date once it's set.

Capacity & Workload Weighting

A recruiter with 10 requisitions all in active sourcing is carrying a very different load than one with 10 requisitions mostly sitting in Offer Stage waiting on Irth. Raw headcount hides that difference, so the tracker weights each requisition by how much real effort its current stage actually takes, and adds those weights up instead of just counting reqs.

• Kickoff sent, before intake: 0.25 — prep work (market research, comp analysis), real but light.
• Intake done, no batch out yet: 0.5 — building the first batch, effort ramping up.
• Sourcing / batch in progress: 1.0 — peak active effort, the reference point every other weight is calibrated against.
• Candidates in interviews: 0.5 — less sourcing, but real follow-up and coordination.
• Offer Stage: 0.25 — outside Cornerstone's operational scope, mostly waiting on Irth.
• Placement confirmed, start date pending: 0.1 — effectively closed.
• On Hold: 0.1 — paused, no active effort, but still an open requisition that will eventually need attention.

10 requisitions (raw count) is the healthy sweet spot, 12 is the accepted ceiling, an exception to lean on temporarily, never the norm. A new requisition can still be assigned as long as the recruiter's weighted load, not the raw count, has room left.

Changing A JD After It's Published

The JD that Irth publishes on Workable when the requisition is created is the official source of truth, it can't just be overwritten. If a hiring manager asks for a change to it (this usually comes up after they see the Intake Summary), that request goes to Immy Nader, the one who actually edits what's published. Cornerstone's own Internal JD is a working copy for the team's use, faithful to that original, never a replacement for it.