Field note
A starter in the seat does not close the vacancy
The day someone starts, the room exhales. HR still has a list. Agency copies. A second-choice candidate who was asked to wait. A walk-in from the week before who was never told the role had moved.
We treat a vacancy as open until every remaining application has an outcome with a date and a method — letter, email, or a logged call with a name. “We will keep your details” is not an outcome unless you meant it, recorded the consent, and named a period.
Unclosed files create two kinds of trouble. The first is human: people who applied in good faith and heard nothing. The second is practical: you cannot answer a simple question about how many people you declined, or why, without rebuilding the month from memory.
A close-out Friday — one hour, one list, one template — prevents more findings than any policy rewrite we have ever suggested.