What are onboarding documents?

Onboarding documents are the paperwork asked of a new employee after the hiring decision. They gather under identity, education, health, finance and contract headings, and they form the first contents of the file the company keeps for that person. They are not asked for during evaluation. Identity data collected before a decision forces you to store the data of the candidates you turned down as well.

Giving one definitive list is not possible, because the list changes with the sector, the role and the working model. The list here comes from the default template set GoTeam creates for a new company: it shows common practice, it does not provide a legal basis. Treat it as a starting point while you build your own list, not as the last word.

The hard part is not the list, it is the tracking. Five items, ten people and a single inbox; within days nobody remembers who sent what and which file came out unreadable. In GoTeam the tracking sits on the request record: every item has a status and every request has a due date.

• The list is defined once as a template and is not rewritten at every hire.
• A document request can only be opened for someone whose application is Accepted or Hired. Documents cannot be asked of the talent pool.
• No AI reads, approves or rejects a document. Accepting and rejecting stays with HR.

When a new company is created, 20 document templates and four named sets on top of them arrive ready. A set is a named group of items that are asked for together: instead of ticking items one by one while opening a request, you press the name of the set and its items join the selection.

The table below shows the eight items of the default Hiring Documents set. Not every template that ships with the setup sits in this set. The military service status document, the family status declaration, the full civil registry copy and the pre employment health report stand ready as templates but are not placed in a set; whoever needs one adds it to their own set.

The Internship Documents set carries five items: student certificate, transcript, internship agreement, internship logbook and passport photo. The only item it shares with the hiring set is the passport photo, the rest is about school. The template itself carries a type as well: a document can be opened to hiring only, to internships only, or to both.

The other two sets are never used on their own, they are added on top of a main set. Remote Work Additional Documents is tied to remote and hybrid employees and carries two items: the remote work agreement and the equipment handover form. Contractor / Freelance Documents is tied to the consultant model and asks for the tax certificate and the IBAN details.

• Set types run along hiring, internship, freelance and general. Only one set per company and type can be the default.
• The same item can appear in two sets. Choosing two sets together does not ask for that item twice, the selection is a union.
• Categories are not a closed list: identity, education, health, finance, contract and other ship with the setup, and new ones are added from the panel.

The chain starts after the hiring decision. A request can only be opened for someone whose application is Accepted or Hired. When a document is asked of a candidate still in evaluation, the server turns the request down. This is not a preference setting, it is the rule of the endpoints.

The candidate opens no account. A unique and unguessable link is generated for every request; the candidate follows the address in the email and sees only the items asked of them. What the link does depends on the state the request is in at that moment.

There is no separate submit step: the request moves to Submitted the moment the last mandatory item is dropped in. The one exception is an optional item still waiting. If such an item exists there is no automatic transition, and the candidate has to declare the delivery complete. That is usually what sits behind the "the mandatory items are in but the request is still pending" picture in the panel.

A candidate can leave an item for later: they pick their own date and can add a short note, up to 500 characters. The date can be pushed at most 30 days ahead, and the total life of a request cannot pass 90 days. When the deferral date arrives the item goes back to pending, and one reminder goes out per request.

• On the candidate side PDF, JPG, PNG and GIF are accepted, at most 10 MB per file. DOC and DOCX are only the format of the sample template HR uploads, so expecting a Word file from a candidate leads nowhere.
• Expiry, automatic completion and the deferral reminder do not come from a timer inside the application, they come from a scheduled job triggered from outside.
• A bulk request goes to at most 50 applications at a time. Past the limit the whole request is refused; the first 50 are not sent with the rest dropped.

A collected file does not sit at a public address. Every file is written under a path separated by company, request and item, and it only opens through a signed link with a lifetime. When that link expires, a new one is generated for the same file.

The second link in the chain is the information form. The new joiner fills in their national ID number, IBAN, blood type, address, emergency contact and photo themselves. When the form is submitted, the employee record and the employment period are created; the ID number and the IBAN are stored encrypted.

The third link is the document return. Once both sides have signed, the signed copy goes back to the other party through a private link. The time it was viewed and the time it was downloaded are kept separately, so "I sent it" and "they received it" never get mixed up.

• If someone who worked here before is hired again, no second employee record is opened: a new employment period is added to the existing record and the previous one is closed.
• A deleted document file does not vanish at once. It moves to the trash with a note of who deleted it and why, and it is permanently deleted after 30 days.
• Who created the request, who updated it and who deleted it stays on the record.
• The document chain is open on the Professional and Corporate plans. On top of that, the document requests switch in company settings has to be on as well: the two gates are separate, and the chain does not run unless both are open. What each plan covers is written on the pricing page.