Field engineering vacancies come round every few weeks at Selvig. Each one used to start from an empty pipeline. A year of good applicants sat unread in the last campaign the whole time. Nobody had a reason to reopen an old list once a role was filled.

Starting from zero, repeatedly

Selvig advertised each vacancy as it arose. It screened whoever the advert attracted, and filled the role. Then it closed the campaign, and the applicants closed with it. The job posting came down, and so did any record of who had applied.

The next vacancy, a month or two later, went back to the open market. Many of those new applicants had already applied once before and been narrowly declined the first time. Nobody on the team remembered that, because nobody had a way to check.

Nobody had decided that past applicants should be discarded. It was simply what happened when each campaign was built and torn down as its own project, with nowhere for a good but unsuccessful candidate to sit in the meantime. The cost showed up as time, not as a policy anyone would have chosen.

The pipeline outlives the vacancy

Past applicants now stay in Yardstick Pipeline, with the evidence from their first application attached. When a shift vacancy opens, the people who already applied are considered alongside new applicants, not after them.

Candidates are asked once whether they want to stay in the pipeline, and for how long. They can leave it at any time. A pipeline nobody consented to join is a mailing list wearing a different name, and Selvig treats that distinction as the whole point.

Evidence ages

Certifications expire and availability changes. A returning candidate is re-checked on the things that move, rather than re-screened from scratch. The record is a starting point, not a verdict carried over unread from last year. A licence that lapsed six months ago is flagged the same day a shift is offered. Flagging is as far as it goes automatically: a coordinator still decides who moves forward, and nothing is dropped from the pipeline without a reason recorded against it.

Results since the pipeline opened

61% of vacancies filled since launch have drawn at least one candidate straight from the existing pipeline. The rest still come from a fresh sourcing round built from nothing, usually for a genuinely new kind of role.

Selvig is also seeing 40% less time to first shortlist. A coordinator opening a new vacancy already has a starting list, rather than a blank page and a fresh advert to write. The advert still goes out, but it is no longer the only source of candidates.

The pipeline has not changed who consents to being in it. 0 candidates have been added without their own agreement, and the opt-out stays one click for anyone who wants it. Roughly one in twenty candidates has used it so far.

What they are doing next

Selvig is extending the same pipeline model to its customer-facing technician roles, which currently still run as separate one-off campaigns each time a vacancy opens.