Is "hiree" a word or are there alternative words with such meaning?

I need a word that means "someone that was hired."

For example a trainee is someone who is being trained. I google'd hiree and I got some results, but am not sure if this is a proper word.

Technically, the word is hireling, but that word is almost always used pejoratively, hinting either the work is menial or the worker is only fit for menial work.

The -ee ending usually refers to someone who is currently having something done to him (or occasionally, currently doing something fairly passive, like an attendee). A hiring is the act of bringing someone into a company, and can be considered a momentary act, or act of a few hours at most.

Have you considered just employee? Or new hire, if that is appropriate?

I came across this question after reading a CNN article:

Potential hires can wear a VR headset and "within a matter of seconds can experience a job in a very real-life atmosphere," according to Kerstin Wagner, Deutsche Bahn's head of talent acquisition. CNN article

Seeing the word "hires" used in this way was jarring, to me at least. My research on this shows that American dictionaries tend to list "hire" as a person who is hired. These are American Heritage Dictionary, Random House dictionaries (Unabridged and Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary), Merriam-Webster and Longman Business Dictionary.

All BrE dictionaries I checked that list "hire" as a noun to mean a person hired marked it as "American" or "North American". Furthermore many entries mark this as informal.

I thought the accepted word for this was "hiree", but it's not universally listed in dictionaries. We find it in American Heritage, Random House publications and Collins, both AmE and BrE dictionaries. However it is missing from Cambridge, Macmillan, Longman, Merriam-Webster, and Oxford Living Dictionaries. And for what it's worth this spell checker doesn't recognize it. Neither does Microsoft Word nor LibreOffice word processor. Wiktionary recognizes it.

As I said, I thought the word "hiree" was universally accepted, but I'd now be hesitant to use it.