## Why It Matters

Most hiring delays aren't decisions — they're silence. A reviewer means to write their scorecard "later," a hiring manager sits on a verdict, or a strong candidate waits a week for a reply. Each quiet day costs you good people. Anti-stall reminders watch your pipeline and gently nudge whoever owes the next action, on Slack, before a candidate stalls.

The guiding principle: **keep the candidate moving** — every nudge is framed around the person who's waiting, never as "you're late."

## What Gets Watched

Kit checks your live pipelines once a day and looks for three kinds of stall:

| Stall | Who gets nudged | When |
|-------|-----------------|------|
| **Review waiting** | Each reviewer who hasn't submitted a scorecard for a team-review stage | The candidate has been in the stage past the first nudge day |
| **Stuck in a stage** | The hiring leads for the role | A candidate has sat in any non-review stage too long |
| **Candidate waiting on us** | The hiring leads for the role | The team hasn't replied to the candidate in too long |

> [!NOTE]
> The "candidate waiting on us" check looks at whether your team has actually **sent** the candidate an email — not just edited the application. A draft reply you never released does not count as a reply.

Overdue team-review **decisions** are handled by their own, separate reminder and aren't affected by these settings.

## The Nudge Cadence

A stall escalates calmly, never all at once. The growing wait does the talking:

1. **Day 3** — a friendly direct message: "this is waiting on you."
2. **Day 5** — a second reminder, with the Snooze and View buttons front and center.
3. **Day 6** — a heads-up: "I'll flag this to the team channel tomorrow unless you snooze or hand it off."
4. **Day 7** — if your account has channel escalation turned on, Kit posts a candidate-focused note to your hiring channel so the team can help.

Nobody is ever surprised by a public post — the day-6 message warns first.

## Defusing a Nudge

Every reminder DM carries two buttons:

- **View** — jumps straight to the review or application in Kit.
- **Snooze 2 days** — pauses the reminders for that item for two days. Acting in Kit (submitting the review, replying to the candidate, advancing the stage) resolves the stall on its own — there's no "mark done" to click.

## Muting Reminders

Anti-stall DMs are a personal, pausable Slack category. Open **Settings → Slack Notifications** and turn off **Hiring stall reminders** to stop receiving them, independent of your other hiring DMs. Reminders also respect [Holiday Mode](/docs/holiday-mode) — if you're away, Kit won't ping you, and a stall whose only owner is on holiday is routed to the hiring leads instead of posted publicly.

## Admin Settings

Account admins control anti-stall behavior under **Hiring → Settings → Anti-stall reminders**:

- **Send stall reminders** — the master switch for the whole feature.
- **Escalate to a channel** — when on, an unanswered stall is posted to your hiring channel after the private nudges run out. **This is off by default** — public posts always frame the candidate, never name a person in the headline, and fire at most once per stall.

> [!TIP]
> Start with private reminders only. Turn on channel escalation once your team is comfortable — it's most useful for shared bottlenecks (a candidate waiting on the whole panel) rather than one person's task.

## Where Stalls Show in Kit

Beyond Slack, overdue reviews surface in your **Reviews inbox** under an "Overdue Reviews" section, so you can clear several in one sitting — handy if you don't use Slack.

## Quick Checklist

- [ ] Confirm **Send stall reminders** is on (Hiring → Settings)
- [ ] Decide whether to enable **Escalate to a channel** (off by default)
- [ ] Pick your hiring channel under [Slack notification channels](/docs/slack-permission-levels) if escalating
- [ ] Make sure team-review stages have reviewers assigned — an unstaffed stage is the easiest stall to miss
- [ ] Tell your team they can mute **Hiring stall reminders** individually if needed