Building an application form

Add pages and questions to an application form, set each question up, and check the candidate view before you save.

An application form is built from pages, and each page holds questions and content blocks. The same builder is used for an application form template and for the form on a single job, so everything below applies to both unless a section says otherwise.

Who can build a form

System Admin and HR users can build forms. Templates are edited under Settings then Application Form Templates. A job's own form is edited from the job (see Applying, saving and refreshing an application form on a job). Members, agencies, hiring managers and interviewers cannot change either. If your organisation belongs to a group and a template is shared from the parent company, you can open it and preview it but not change it.

The two places differ slightly in what the add buttons offer:

• In a template, the buttons under each page are Add Field (a blank question) and Add pre-built, which includes the compliance packs. There is no Add Content button, so a content block is added by adding a field and changing its type to Content block.
• On a job, Add Field is a menu with Blank Field and From Library. There is also Add Content. Add pre-built offers References, Employment history, Education history, Cover letter (text) and Address, but not the compliance packs. To put a pack on a job, add it to a template and apply that template.

Pages

The pages of the form appear as tabs above the questions. A new form starts with one page. Candidates work through the pages in the order the tabs appear.

• Select Add page to add a tab. New pages are named Page 2, Page 3 and so on.
• To rename a page, double-click its tab or hover over it and select the pencil. Type the new name and press Enter, or Escape to cancel. Two pages cannot share a name: you see "Page name already used".
• To remove a page, hover over its tab and select the cross. The last remaining page cannot be removed.

Removing a page deletes the questions you added to it. Questions that cannot be deleted move to the neighbouring page instead: First name, Last name and Email, compliance pack questions, and whole repeatable sections that contain any of them. They go to the previous page, or to the next page if you are removing the first one.

If the page has any questions, Recruit asks first. When some questions will move, the box says how many fields will be deleted and which protected questions will move to which page, for example "Removing "[page name]" will delete 3 field(s) on it. 2 protected question(s) ([question names]) will move to "[page name]" instead." If the page holds only protected questions, it says no fields will be deleted. The box also lists any rules on other questions or pages that pointed at the deleted questions, because those rules are removed. When you remove the first page, the new first page cannot be shown conditionally, so the box also tells you its Show When condition will be cleared. Select Remove page and fields to go ahead, or Cancel. A page with nothing on it is removed straight away. To keep a question that is not protected, move it to another page before you remove the page (see Ordering and moving questions below).

A job's form can have up to 20 pages.

Hovering over a tab also shows a small settings icon. It opens Show this page when..., which hides the whole page unless an earlier answer matches. How those rules work is covered in How conditional logic works on application forms.

Adding questions

Each page has its add buttons below its last question. A new question is added to the bottom of that page.

• Blank Field (or Add Field in a template) adds an empty Text question with no label. Give it a label straight away, because a question without one blocks saving.
• From Library copies questions your organisation has defined once under Settings, Custom Fields. See The company field library.
• Add pre-built adds a ready-made group of questions. References, Employment history and Education history arrive as repeatable sections already connected to the candidate profile, and Address adds four questions: Address line 1, City, Postcode and Country. Cover letter (text) adds a Paragraph question for candidates who write rather than upload. Anything already on the form shows Added and cannot be chosen again. Repeatable sections are explained in Repeatable sections and compliance packs in Compliance packs.
• Add Content (jobs only) adds a Photo Block, Video Block or Text Block. See Content blocks below.

Setting up a question

Every question is a row showing its label, its type and a Required switch, with a drag handle on the left, a bin on the right and a chevron (Edit field details) that opens the rest of the settings. Rows start closed. A row with a problem opens itself.

• Label: the question the candidate sees. It cannot be empty or only spaces and can be up to 2,000 characters.
• Type: see the table below.
• Required: when on, the candidate cannot move on without answering. Required cannot be combined with a rule that makes the question required only sometimes. Turn Required off first if you want to use Require this field conditionally.

Open the details to find:

• Options, for Dropdown and Multi-select questions. Each option is its own row: select Add option, type the label, and use the bin to remove one. You need at least one option, no option can be blank, and no two options can have the same label. A question can have up to 300 options, each up to 255 characters.
• Placeholder: grey example text inside an empty answer box.
• Help text: guidance shown under the question, up to 1,000 characters.
• Answer length, for Text and Paragraph questions only: Minimum characters, Maximum characters, Minimum words and Maximum words. All four are optional. Use whole numbers of 1 or more, with each maximum no lower than its minimum, otherwise you see "Enter whole numbers of 1 or more, with each maximum no less than its minimum." The values are applied when you click out of the box.
• Show this field conditionally and Require this field conditionally. A rule can only look at questions above it, including questions on earlier pages. The first question on a form has nothing above it, so both are switched off for it. See How conditional logic works on application forms.
• Qualifying, shown on Text, Email, Phone, Dropdown, Checkbox and Multi-select questions. See Qualifying questions and automatic disqualification.
• Contains PII. Tick this for a question that collects personal details. Its answer is left out when a candidate's details are redacted for a viewer, and it is cleared if that candidate's data is erased.
• Repeatable, with its section, group label, purpose and entry limits. See Repeatable sections.
• Save answer to and Compliance classification, for connecting an answer to the candidate profile or tagging equality monitoring data. These are covered in Repeatable sections and Compliance packs.

A repeatable section can also be hidden as a whole. Select the cog beside the section's Group: heading and set Only show this section if. This writes one rule onto every question in the section. It is the way to hide a section whose questions are required in every entry, such as Employer, because the question-level condition on those questions is switched off and reads "[Question] is required in every entry. To hide it, set a condition on the whole section." Repeatable sections explains this in full.

Question types

Some questions have their type fixed, either because they are standard questions or because they came from a pre-built group or compliance pack. The type box is greyed out and a tooltip explains why.

Standard questions

Every application form starts with six standard questions: First name, Last name, Email, Phone Number, CV and Cover letter.

• First name, Last name and Email are always required. Their type is fixed, they cannot be deleted, and they cannot be shown conditionally. You can reword their labels.
• Phone Number, CV and Cover letter have a fixed type but can be made required or optional, and can be deleted with the bin. Once deleted, they cannot be added back from the builder. Cover letter (text) from Add pre-built is a separate Paragraph question and does not replace the upload.

Questions that came from a pre-built group can also be partly locked. In Employment history, for example, Job title and Employer are required and cannot be deleted one at a time, while Start date and End date can be. To remove the whole group, use the bin beside the Group: heading above it and confirm with Remove section. Compliance pack questions cannot be reworded or retyped.

Content blocks

A content block shows something to the candidate and asks for nothing back. Choose the Content type:

• Image: paste an image address into Media URL. Images are linked, not uploaded.
• Video: paste a YouTube or Vimeo link into Media URL. If the link cannot be played you see "This video can't be played here."
• Text: write formatted text in the editor. Links are allowed, images and tables are not.

Image and Video blocks also take an optional Caption of up to 500 characters. Add Content names the block Photo Block, Video Block or Text Block. Rename it to something meaningful.

Ordering and moving questions

Drag a question by its handle to reorder it, or drop it on another page's tab to move it to that page. Keyboard users can pick up the handle and move it with the arrow keys.

Order matters for conditions: a question can only depend on questions above it. If you move a question above one it depends on, the row shows "This field's condition refers to a field that doesn't come before it" and the form cannot be saved until you move it back or change the rule.

Deleting a question

Select the bin on the row. If other questions have rules that depend on it, or a page's Show this page when rule uses it, Recruit asks "Remove this field?" and lists them. Pages appear in the list as "[page name] (page condition)". Selecting Remove field deletes the question and the rules that depended on it, including those page rules. Otherwise it is deleted at once. Nothing is final until you save.

Previewing the candidate view

In a template, select Preview as candidate in the footer. It opens the form in a new browser tab, page by page, as candidates will see it, using what is currently on screen including unsaved changes. If your browser blocks it, you see "Could not open preview" and a message saying local storage is unavailable.

On a job, select Preview to open Application Form Preview in a window. A page with no questions says "No fields on this page".

Saving

Nothing you change is kept until you select Save. In a template the message "Saved successfully" confirms it. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, Recruit warns you first.

Save is greyed out while any question has a blocking problem. A red banner above the form names the questions at fault: "This form cannot be saved until [question] is fixed." A question that is closed at the time shows a red link saying how many problems it has, and selecting it opens the row. The blocking problems are a missing label, a Dropdown or Multi-select with no options, a blank or repeated option, and a condition pointing at a question that is not above it.

A repeated label is only an amber warning, "This label is also used by another field on the form", and does not stop you saving. Two questions with the same label are hard to tell apart in reports and exports, so change one.

The Heal / Auto-map button suggests connections between your questions and the candidate profile, and is described in Repeatable sections. Set as default and Duplicate in a template's footer are covered in Application form templates.

Limits

• A job's form can hold 200 questions that collect an answer. Headings, images, videos and text blocks do not count. A counter under the form reads "[number] / 200 input fields", and Save is switched off with a message once you go over.
• Up to 20 pages on a job's form.
• Up to 300 options on a Dropdown or Multi-select question.
• Uploaded files up to 10 MB.