Reviews and Feedback

Why It Matters

Structured reviews reduce bias, improve consistency, and give your team a shared framework for evaluating candidates. Instead of informal opinions, Kit provides blind voting and weighted scoring to surface the best candidates.

How Reviews Work

Reviews happen on stages that require reviewer input — typically Team Review stages, but also Code Assignment and Portfolio Upload stages when reviewers are assigned.

The flow:

1. A candidate reaches a review stage
2. Assigned reviewers receive a notification (email and in-app)
3. Each reviewer evaluates the candidate independently
4. Reviewers submit their recommendation, scores, and comments
5. When enough reviews are in, the candidate advances (or is rejected) — and if the votes are split or inconclusive, the candidate is flagged for a human decision instead of stalling

Blind Voting

Kit uses blind voting by default. When you open a review, you can’t see what other reviewers have submitted until you submit your own. This prevents anchoring bias — where early reviews influence later ones.

Once you submit your review, all other completed reviews become visible. This encourages honest, independent evaluation while still allowing the team to discuss and compare notes afterward.

Submitting a Review

When it’s your turn to review a candidate, you’ll see the application in your My Reviews section. Click into it to open the review form.

Recommendation

Choose one recommendation that best reflects your assessment:

Recommendation	Value	Meaning
Strong No	0	Serious concerns — should not advance
No	1	Does not meet the bar for this role
Neutral	2	No strong opinion either way
Yes	3	Meets expectations — should advance
Strong Yes	4	Exceptional candidate — definitely advance

Scoring Criteria

If the stage has scoring criteria configured, you’ll also rate the candidate on each criterion. Each criterion has:

• Name — What you’re evaluating (e.g. “Code Quality”, “Communication”)
• Scale — Maximum score (default: 5)
• Weight — How much this criterion matters relative to others (1-100)

Rate each criterion on its scale. Kit calculates a weighted total based on the weights you’ve configured.

Comments

Add free-form comments to explain your recommendation. Comments are visible to other reviewers after you submit and provide context that raw scores can’t capture.

Scoring Criteria

Scoring criteria turn subjective evaluations into comparable data. Define them on the stage configuration.

How Scoring Works

Each criterion has a name, a weight, and a maximum scale value. When a reviewer scores a candidate:

1. The raw score (e.g. 4 out of 5) is normalized relative to the scale
2. The normalized score is multiplied by the criterion’s weight
3. All weighted scores are summed to produce a weighted total

Example: A stage has two criteria — “Code Quality” (weight: 3, scale: 5) and “Communication” (weight: 1, scale: 5). A reviewer gives scores of 4 and 3 respectively. The weighted total is (4/5 * 3) + (3/5 * 1) = 2.4 + 0.6 = 3.0 out of 4.0 maximum.

This means higher-weighted criteria have more influence on the overall score, reflecting your team’s priorities.

Voting Configuration

Voting settings control how reviews translate into pipeline decisions. Configure these on the stage:

Setting	Default	Description
Threshold	2	Minimum number of positive votes (Yes or Strong Yes) needed to advance
Require All Reviewers	No	Require every review to be positive to advance — Kit always waits for all assigned reviewers regardless of this setting
Veto Auto-Rejects	No	A Strong No from a lead reviewer automatically rejects the candidate

How the Threshold Works

The threshold counts the number of positive reviews — each Yes or Strong Yes recommendation counts as one. When the count of positive reviews meets or exceeds the threshold, the candidate advances.

For example, with a threshold of 2: two positive reviews (two “Yes” votes, or one “Yes” and one “Strong Yes”) meet the threshold and advance the candidate. A single “Yes” vote counts as just one positive review, which does not meet a threshold of 2.

Require All Reviewers

Kit always waits for every assigned reviewer to submit before evaluating a round. This setting changes the acceptance criterion instead: when it’s enabled, every review must be positive for the candidate to advance. When it’s disabled, only the threshold number of positive reviews is required, even if some reviewers voted otherwise.

Veto Auto-Rejects

When enabled, a Strong No from a lead reviewer automatically rejects the candidate — regardless of other votes. Use this when your stage leads should have the power to block a candidate (e.g. for culture or values concerns). A Strong No from a non-lead reviewer doesn’t auto-reject; instead it flags the candidate for a human decision (see When Reviews Don’t Reach a Decision), so a serious concern is never lost but also never silently ends someone’s candidacy.

Auto-Advancement

When a voting threshold is configured, Kit can advance candidates automatically. Here’s the sequence:

1. A reviewer submits their review
2. Kit waits until every assigned reviewer has submitted
3. Kit checks for a Strong No from a lead reviewer — a lead Strong No always pulls the candidate out of auto-advancement, regardless of the veto_auto_rejects setting
4. Kit counts the positive reviews and compares against the threshold (or, with require_all_reviewers enabled, requires every review to be positive)
5. If the criterion is met, the candidate automatically advances to the next stage
6. If the round concludes without a clear outcome — a split vote, votes below the threshold, or a Strong No from a non-lead reviewer — the candidate is flagged Needs a decision for a person to resolve (see below)

This eliminates the manual step of clicking Advance after every clear-cut review round. Your team submits their reviews and the pipeline keeps moving — and on the rare round where the votes don’t settle it, Kit hands the call to a person instead of leaving the candidate stuck.

When Reviews Don’t Reach a Decision

Not every review round ends cleanly. Sometimes the panel is split, the positive votes fall short of the threshold, or someone raises a serious concern that isn’t enough to reject the candidate on its own. In the past, a candidate like this could sit quietly in the pipeline with no one realizing they were stuck.

Now, when a review round finishes without a clear outcome, Kit marks the candidate Needs a decision and routes them to a person to resolve. Clear-cut cases still advance or reject automatically, exactly as before — only the ambiguous middle becomes a human decision.

When This Happens

Kit flags a candidate as Needs a decision when a review round closes but the result is unclear. The most common reasons:

• The votes are split — the panel didn’t reach consensus one way or the other.
• The threshold wasn’t reached — there were some positive votes, but not enough to advance.
• A serious concern was raised — someone gave a Strong No, but they aren’t the stage lead, so it doesn’t trigger an automatic rejection.

You’ll see a distinct Needs a decision badge on the candidate’s timeline and on the pipeline board. It’s visually separate from In progress, so a stuck candidate never blends in with the ones still moving.

Who Gets Notified

Kit notifies the right person to resolve it, by email and in-app:

• If the stage has a lead assigned, the decision goes to them.
• If there’s no stage lead, it goes to the job’s hiring managers and admins.

If the decision stays unresolved for a few days, Kit sends a daily reminder until someone acts on it.

The “Needs Your Decision” List

When something is waiting on you, it appears in a top-priority Needs your decision list at the top of your reviews area — above your normal review queue. This is the first thing you’ll see, so the candidates who are blocked get attention before anything else.

Resolving a Split Review

Open the candidate from your Needs your decision list to see everything you need to make the call.

What You’ll See

Kit shows you a clear, side-by-side breakdown of how the panel voted — each reviewer’s recommendation on its own, never blended into a single average. Alongside the votes, you’ll see why the round stopped (for example, the threshold wasn’t reached, or there was no consensus), so you understand the situation at a glance.

Blind voting still applies. If you’re an assigned reviewer who hasn’t submitted your own review for this stage yet, you won’t see your peers’ votes until you do.

Making the Decision

You choose one outcome and write a short reason for it. The reason is required — it explains your thinking to the rest of the team and becomes part of the permanent record.

Outcome	What it means
Advance	Move the candidate forward to the next stage.
Reject	Decline the candidate and close them out of the pipeline.
Request more reviews	Send it back for additional input before deciding.
Defer	Hold the decision for now without advancing or rejecting.

Once you submit, Kit records your decision, your reason, and who made it. This stays on the candidate’s timeline permanently, so anyone reviewing the history later can see exactly how the call was made and why.

Reviewer Notifications

Kit keeps reviewers informed at every step:

Event	Notification
Candidate reaches your review stage	Email + in-app notification
Candidate auto-advanced by voting	Slack notification (if connected)

In-app notifications appear in real-time via WebSocket, so you’ll see new review assignments immediately without refreshing the page.

Quick Checklist

• Assign reviewers to every stage that requires evaluation
• Define scoring criteria with appropriate weights for your priorities
• Set voting thresholds that match your team size and standards
• Enable veto auto-rejects for stages where any concern is a dealbreaker
• Use “Require All Reviewers” for important stages to ensure full panel input
• Submit reviews promptly — blind voting means others are waiting on you
• Add comments to explain your recommendation beyond the scores
• Check your “Needs your decision” list first — these candidates are blocked and waiting on you
• Always write a clear reason when you resolve a split review; it becomes a permanent part of the candidate’s history