An automated hiring pipeline is the series of "if this, then that" steps you currently do by hand — sending assessments, advancing candidates, scheduling, following up — set to run on their own. On 100Networks you build it visually with an n8n-style, drag-and-drop engine at /company-workflows, using roughly 30 node kinds across triggers, actions, and logic. No code, no Zapier, no engineer required.
Your pipeline is already a workflow — you're just running it manually
Think about what happens for every applicant today: someone reads the resume, sends a screening assessment, waits, checks the result, books an interview if they pass, sends a rejection if they don't, nudges the ones who go quiet. That's a workflow — a set of triggers and conditional actions. The only problem is a human is the runtime, doing it over and over, inconsistently, and dropping steps when it gets busy.
Automating it doesn't change the logic. It just makes the logic run reliably.
The three building blocks
The 100Networks workflow engine has ~30 node kinds, and they fall into three groups:
- Triggers — start a workflow on a hiring event (e.g. a new application, a stage change).
- Actions — do something: advance a candidate, send an email / SMS / WhatsApp, extend an offer, run background verification, archive, or call a webhook to another system.
- Logic — decide something: branch (if/else), filter, wait-for-event, random sample, or delay.
You drag these onto a canvas and connect them. That's the whole model — events flow in, logic routes them, actions fire.
Build one: a screening pipeline
Here's a first workflow worth automating, described as nodes:
- Trigger: a candidate applies to a role.
- Action: send the take-home screening assessment.
- Wait-for-event: the assessment is submitted (with a delay-based nudge if it isn't, after, say, 3 days).
- Branch (logic): did they pass the rubric threshold?
- Yes → Action: advance the candidate + send a WhatsApp/email inviting them to book an interview.
- No → Action: send a respectful rejection + archive.
That's a complete, hands-off screening loop. Every applicant gets the same prompt response, the same fair criteria, and nobody falls through the cracks because a recruiter was in back-to-back meetings.
It's durable, not fire-and-forget
A real recruiting workflow can run for days or weeks per candidate, so it can't live in memory. The engine is a persistent state machine, and a background ticker resumes stalled runs — so if a candidate takes a week to submit, or a step is waiting on an event, the workflow picks up exactly where it left off rather than silently dying.
Automation handles the plumbing — you keep the judgment
The goal isn't to remove humans from hiring. It's to remove humans from the repetitive plumbing: sending, waiting, nudging, advancing on clear criteria. The judgment calls stay with you, and for anything sensitive, Pilot proposes the action for a person to confirm or undo. You get consistency and speed without giving up control.
Once your first pipeline is running, you'll spot five more worth automating. Start with the one that wastes the most of your week. See how workflows fit with the rest of the platform in the product overview, or compare the approach to a traditional ATS.