How to Hand Over a Candidate: A Recruitment Handover Template

At the end of a night shift on a children's ward, one doctor hands her patients to the doctor starting the day. She knows which child needs watching, which test result is still due and what she told a worried parent. In a few minutes, all of that has to move into someone else's head.

On a Friday afternoon at a staffing agency, a recruiter passes five new starters to the colleague who sends out contracts. One note reads "OK to start Monday". On the call, the recruiter had promised the candidate a start on the 14th, after her notice period ends. The contract and start message go out for Monday. On Monday the client's shift is one person short, and the candidate wonders whether the agency listened at all.

Nobody lost that promise on purpose. It just never made it into the note.

Both scenes describe the same moment: work changes hands, and the details have to survive the move. Radius Hire's 2026 research paper on frontline hiring handoffs looks at where frontline candidates and recruiter hours are lost between hiring steps. This article takes one part of it: a handover note, and the habits around it, that let the next person act without calling back.

What is a candidate handover?

It is the moment one person passes a candidate to the next. The paper defines the wider idea, a hiring handoff, like this: "A handoff is any moment a candidate, or information about a candidate, is passed from one person, team, system or company to another."

This article is about the person-to-person version. A recruiter (at a Dutch staffing agency, the intercedent) passes a candidate to a planner or to the client's interviewer. A planner passes the file to an administrator. An agency passes a starter to the client site.

The paper sums up the typical failure in one line: a long phone call becomes a short note.

Why do details get lost when a candidate changes hands?

Because the note is written for the sender, not the receiver.

The sender heard the whole conversation. To them, "OK to start Monday" is a complete thought, because they remember the context around it. The receiver reads four words. They act on what is written, not on what the sender meant.

The paper describes the problem in two parts. Details get lost when a handoff relies on free text written for the sender, not defined content written for the receiver. And they get lost when nobody checks that the receiver understood.

The paper's example hire shows what this looks like in practice. It is an invented journey, built to show the problem, not customer data. In it:

None of these is a big mistake. Each is a detail that the sender knew and the receiver needed. The paper suggests a simple test for finding them: compare what the sender knew with what the receiver acted on.

What can hiring learn from hospital handovers?

That a fixed handover format works best with training and follow-up.

At nine teaching hospitals in the United States and Canada, junior children's doctors (paediatric residents) adopted a handover programme called I-PASS. Across 10,740 admissions, medical errors fell by 23 percent and spoken handovers took no longer (Starmer and colleagues, 2014).

In numbers, medical errors went from 24.5 to 18.8 per 100 admissions. Preventable adverse events, meaning harm to patients that could have been avoided, fell by 30 percent, from 4.7 to 3.3 per 100 admissions. The study compared results before and after the programme started; it was not a randomised trial, and it was not a recruitment study.

The programme had several parts: a standard structure for spoken and written handovers, training in handovers and communication, senior doctors observing real handovers, and a campaign to keep the practice going.

Two lessons carry over to hiring. The stakes and error rates of a hospital do not.

First, define the content in advance. The hospitals agreed what every handover must contain. The receiver could then rely on finding the same things in the same place every time.

Second, the form was never the whole programme. Training, observation and follow-up were part of it. A template on its own is not what was tested.

Our view: as the paper puts it, "The habit matters more than the template." Introduce the note with training and a few real checks, or expect it to fade.

What are the six rules for a better handover?

One owner, a fixed note, a confirmation, deadlines, updates and asking once.

The paper sets out six rules. The note and the receiver's confirmation get their own sections below.

What should a recruitment handover template include?

Eight fixed fields, always in the same order and written for the receiver, make a simple handover checklist.

The paper lists the core content: what was checked, what the candidate can and cannot do, what was promised, and the start details. The template below adds the fields the six rules call for: the owner and deadline, the candidate's doubts, what the candidate has been told, and the receiver's confirmation.

They are a starting point; adjust them to your process.

Copy-ready version. Paste the eight fields into your ATS note field or a shared document, and fill them in for every candidate you pass on:

1. Owner and next step: [who has the candidate now] / [next step] / [by when]
2. What was checked: [confirmed on the call] / [confirmed from a document] / [not checked yet]
3. What the candidate can and cannot do: [shifts] / [start date they can make] / [languages] / [experience, in their words]
4. What was promised: [shift, start date or contact the candidate was told they would get]
5. Doubts and open points: [in the candidate's words]
6. Start details (once known): [start date] / [site address] / [start time] / [first shift] / [safety-shoe size]
7. What the candidate has been told: [who has their file now] / [when they will hear next]
8. Receiver confirms: [date received] / [anything missing]

Four habits make the template work in practice.

Write it while the conversation is fresh. The person who passes the candidate on writes the note, during or straight after the conversation, for the person receiving it.

Write in the candidate's words where it matters. "Worked two years as an order picker with a hand scanner" is more useful than "has warehouse experience". "Wants to start on the 14th, after her notice period" is more useful than "OK to start". In the opening scene, field 4 alone would have saved the Monday.

Leave a field empty rather than guess. An empty field tells the receiver something is not known yet. A guess looks like a fact.

Start from a good record. A handover note is only as good as what the step before it recorded. If your screening step uses structured interviews that record each answer, not only the outcome, fields 2 and 3 almost fill themselves.

When the note records shifts or the physical side of the job, keep one rule in mind. Ask about the job's demands and the candidate's experience of similar work, never about health or medical conditions.

Want the research behind this template? The Radius Papers 02: The Hidden Cost of Frontline Hiring is Radius Hire's white paper for operations directors, HR managers, recruitment leaders and staffing agencies hiring frontline workers in the Netherlands. It shows where candidates and recruiter hours are lost between application and first shift. Enter your name and work email, choose English or Dutch, and Radius emails it to you: Get The Radius Papers 02.

How does one note work at different handovers?

The same note travels with the candidate; each receiver reads their part. In its example hire, the paper suggests one short note for three handovers.

Screening call to client interview. The interviewer needs what was checked, the languages the candidate works in, the experience they described and any limits on their availability. Without it, the candidate tells their story again.

Approval to contract. The contract and start message need the start date, the site address, the safety-shoe size and the first shift. Without them, the candidate calls to ask where to go.

Induction to team leader. The team leader needs the candidate's languages, experience and shift preferences. Without them, the team leader knows only a name, and the new starter is unsure what is expected in week one.

Two handovers have a job of their own. Between the screening call and the planner, capture availability shift by shift during the call itself, so the planner gets an answer rather than a task. On the first day, the client site does its own identity check, so the name list, start time and induction slot go over the day before.

Why should the receiver confirm the handover?

Because sending a note is not the same as it arriving. The paper's third rule is direct: no reply does not mean "received".

A confirmation does two jobs. It tells the sender the candidate has moved on. And it gives the receiver one moment to say what is missing, while the sender still remembers the call.

Keep it simple. The receiver replies "received", plus anything missing, within the deadline for that step.

Our suggestion, not a rule from the paper: agree that the sender stays responsible until the receiver confirms. That way, a candidate is never in nobody's hands.

Is a handover template enough on its own?

No: it needs training, real checks and someone to keep it going. The hospital programme included all three, and a template on its own was not what was tested. Three steps help a hiring team build the habit.

Train the senders. Show recruiters and planners the difference between a note written for themselves and one written for the receiver. Use real notes from your own process, with names removed.

Look at real handovers. The paper's audit suggests 15 minutes with each person involved: the recruiter, planner, administrator and site lead. Ask what they receive, what is usually missing and what they have to chase. Then compare a handful of notes with what the receiver actually did. For a quicker first look, an audit of one role's hiring process in one hour helps you spot information that was collected but never used.

Keep it going. Agree who checks that the note is still in use a month later. Habits can fade quietly; a short regular check helps you notice.

The paper offers no recruitment trial of a handover note, so measure your own: time a sample of real candidate journeys for one role at one site, before and after you introduce the note. How to Map Your Recruitment Process in Two Weeks sets out a method for this.

What should stay out of a handover note?

Health information, ID copies and labels without the words behind them.

Health or medical information. You should not ask about it, so it should never appear in a note.

Copies of identity documents. The note travels from person to person and system to system. An ID copy should not. Every extra copy is one more place where it must be protected and deleted on time. Dutch government guidance (Rijksoverheid) says a company that hires an agency worker must check the worker's original identity document itself before work starts, and may not keep a copy in its own records, except for workers from outside the EEA. For the wider checks, see which identity and right to work checks Dutch employers make, and when.

Labels without the words behind them. "Good candidate" or "seems keen" tells the receiver what the sender felt, not what the candidate said. Write what was said, and let the receiver judge.

How Radius helps

Radius Hire is an AI hiring platform for frontline roles, built in Amsterdam for staffing agencies and employers who hire for the work floor. It is built to source, interview and verify applicants, while a person makes every hiring decision.

For handovers, the Radius ATS is built to keep WhatsApp and email threads, notes, the interview, offers and contracts on one candidate record, so the next person reads what was said rather than a one-line note. The AI Interviewer is built to give every applicant a structured voice interview, with a recording, a transcript and a summary your recruiter reads, and Match reads each interview against the role's requirements. The handover habits stay with your team.