Audience

Recruiters, Recruiting Coordinators, HR Operations, Customer Admins

Overview

Eightfold’s Preboarding bridges the gap between offer acceptance and an employee's first day, replacing manual paperwork and disconnected systems with a seamless digital experience. New hires complete forms, upload documents, and provide required information directly within the platform, while your hiring team tracks progress and completes their own tasks from a centralized dashboard.

Key benefits

For recruiters and HR teams

• Track all new hire progress from a single Preboarding Center
• Assign preboarding packages to new hires directly from the pipeline or dashboard
• Maintain compliance with required and confidential question settings

For candidates

• Complete all preboarding tasks in one place through the candidate portal (PCS)
• Access tasks lists with due dates and progress tracking

For your organization

• Reduce administrative burden by collecting required information before Day 1
• Ensure compliance by standardizing document collection across all new hires
• Maintain audit trails for all form submissions and status changes
• Gain visibility into preboarding progress through the Preboarding Center
• Enable internal teams to complete their onboarding responsibilities (background checks, equipment setup) alongside the new hire's tasks
• Leverage Data Hub to analyze preboarding metrics to track completion rates, identify bottlenecks, and optimize your onboarding process over time

Core concepts

Questions

The basic building blocks of preboarding forms. Questions live in a centralized Question Bank and can be reused across multiple tasks. Supported types include text fields, dropdowns, date pickers, file uploads, and specialized formats like SSN and SIN.

Each question can be marked as Required (must be answered before submission) or Confidential (visible only to users with confidential permissions).

Tasks (Forms)

Collections of questions organized into a form that new hires or hiring team members complete. Each task is assigned to either the new hire (candidate) or a hiring team role such as recruiter, hiring manager, or a custom role. Tasks can have relative due dates based on offer acceptance or the new hire's start date.

Packages

Bundles of tasks that are assigned to new hires. Each new hire receives one active package per position, containing tasks for both the new hire and the hiring team. Packages are assigned by the hiring team from the candidate pipeline or the Preboarding Center after a candidate accepts an offer.

Preboarding begins when a hiring team member assigns a package to a new hire, typically from the candidate pipeline only after offer acceptance. The new hire then receives an email notification with a link to access their tasks in the candidate portal (PCS).

How it works

Preboarding involves three distinct workflows depending on your role:

Administrator

Administrators configure the preboarding packages in the Admin Console by creating questions, building tasks from those questions, and assembling tasks into packages. They also configure and manage permissions that control who can view and edit preboarding packages/ tasks submissions.

Hiring team

Recruiters, hiring managers, and HR operations assign packages to new hires from the candidate pipeline or the Preboarding Center. They use the Preboarding Center to monitor progress, review submitted forms, complete their own assigned tasks, and take actions like pausing or completing preboarding. Visibility is controlled by permissions, team members typically see new hires for positions where they're the recruiter, hiring manager, or follower.

Candidate

After a package is assigned, new hires receive an email notification and access their preboarding tasks through the logged-in candidate portal (PCS). They see a personalized task list and track their own progress.

When to use Preboarding

Best practices

Build your question bank before creating tasks: A well-organized question library prevents duplicates and ensures consistency across forms. Questions marked as required or confidential apply those settings everywhere the question is used.

Question settings are global: Marking a question as 'Confidential' or 'Required' in the library applies to every task using that question. These settings cannot be overridden on individual forms.

Provide clear package selection guidance: Since packages are assigned manually by the hiring team, create naming conventions that make it obvious which package to use for each scenario. For example, use names like 'US - Exempt Employee Package' or 'Canada - Contractor Package' so the assignee can quickly identify the correct option.

Leverage the Preboarding Center for visibility: The dashboard provides real-time status tracking. Use the status tabs (Not started, In progress, Completed, Paused, Cancelled) to prioritize follow-ups and identify new hires who need attention.

Review preboarding analytics regularly: Use Data Hub to monitor completion rates and time-to-complete metrics. If you notice a task with consistently low completion or long delays, consider simplifying the questions or adjusting the due date.

Assign packages promptly after offer acceptance: Use the Assign preboarding package button in the pipeline immediately after a candidate accepts their offer. This ensures new hires can begin their tasks right away and have maximum time to complete forms before their start date.

Assign tasks that require hiring team review to specific roles (like HR Operations) rather than individuals. This distributes work across the team and prevents bottlenecks when someone's unavailable.

Frequently Asked Questions