HR teams deal with a constant flow of PDF documents — CVs, application forms, offer letters, contract amendments, appraisals, leave requests. Most of these documents change state: an application gets reviewed; a contract gets approved; a policy gets signed off.
Without a clear way to mark that state change in the document itself, HR folders fill up with identically-named PDFs and no obvious way to know which stage each one is at.
Stamping is one of the oldest and most effective solutions to this problem.
Common HR Document Stamps
APPROVED
The most widely used HR stamp. Applied to:
- Offer letters once they've been authorised by a hiring manager or finance.
- Leave requests once approved by a line manager.
- Policy documents once they've been formally adopted.
- Training certifications once verified.
An APPROVED stamp (typically green) confirms that the document has been through the right decision-making process and can be acted on.
REJECTED
Applied to applications, requests, or submissions that have been declined. Stamping a rejected CV or application before archiving it prevents it from being reconsidered by mistake — and provides a clear record if a candidate or employee later requests sight of their file.
RECEIVED
A lighter-touch stamp used to acknowledge that a document has been received and logged, without yet making an approval decision. Useful for:
- Inbound applications during an open hiring window.
- Medical certificates or right-to-work documents.
- Signed policy acknowledgements being returned to HR.
CONFIDENTIAL
Not a status stamp, but a classification stamp. Applied to documents that should be restricted — compensation data, disciplinary records, references. A CONFIDENTIAL stamp ensures anyone handling the document knows it shouldn't be widely shared.
With Stamp My PDFs, you can type any custom text as the stamp — CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, FOR REVIEW, or anything else your organisation uses.
A Practical Application Review Workflow
Here's how a small HR team might use stamps during a hiring cycle:
During the application window:
- Download incoming application PDFs from email.
- Open in Stamp My PDFs, apply RECEIVED stamp (blue, low opacity so the content is still readable).
- Save to
Applications/2026/Role-Name/received/.
After first-round review:
- Shortlisted candidates: stamp APPROVED (green) and move to
shortlisted/. - Unsuccessful candidates: stamp REJECTED (red) and move to
archive/.
After final decision:
- Selected candidate: remove APPROVED stamp by re-issuing a clean version for the offer process.
- Final unsuccessful candidates: stamp REJECTED and retain per your data retention policy.
This workflow takes seconds per document. The folder structure and the stamps together make the state of every file obvious to anyone who opens the folder.
Leave Requests and Approvals
A similar approach works for leave management in teams that still handle requests by email or paper form:
- Employee submits leave request as a PDF or scanned form.
- Line manager reviews and responds via email — HR stamps the document accordingly.
- APPROVED requests are filed; employee gets a copy.
- REJECTED requests are returned with explanation — the stamped copy is retained.
Again, the stamp removes ambiguity. If someone pulls up a leave request six months later, the status is right there on the document.
Appraisal Sign-Off
Annual appraisal documents often need a formal sign-off stage. Once both the employee and manager have reviewed and agreed the content, the document can be stamped APPROVED with the sign-off date. This creates a simple, visible record that the process was completed — without needing a digital signature system.
Keeping Stamped Files Organised
A consistent folder structure matters as much as the stamps themselves. One approach:
HR/
Recruitment/
2026-Software-Engineer/
received/
shortlisted/
archive/
Leave Requests/
2026/
approved/
rejected/
Policies/
current/ ← approved, in force
archived/ ← superseded versions, stamped SUPERSEDED
With this structure, the stamp on each document matches the folder it lives in — two sources of truth that reinforce each other.
Privacy and Confidentiality
HR documents contain some of the most sensitive personal data in any organisation. Stamp My PDFs processes everything locally in your browser — the PDFs are never uploaded to a server. There's no cloud processing, no third-party access to the document content.
For HR teams handling employee data under GDPR or similar frameworks, this means stamping doesn't introduce an additional data processor into the chain.
Stamping is a low-friction habit that makes a meaningful difference to how legible your HR document archive is. If you're currently managing application PDFs in email threads or unmarked folders, a simple stamp workflow is worth the five-minute setup.