Managing agencies

Add recruitment agencies, invite their users, assign them to jobs and control what they can see.

Agencies let outside recruiters submit candidates to your jobs without seeing the rest of your recruitment activity. You set up the agency record, invite its users, then assign the agency to each job it can work on. This article covers the admin setup and what an agency user experiences once they sign in.

Who can manage agencies

Admins can add, edit, deactivate, reactivate and permanently delete agencies, invite and manage agency users, and change the pipeline status setting. HR users can open Settings > Agencies and see the list, and can assign or remove an agency on a job, but they cannot save changes to agencies or invite agency users. Members, hiring managers and interviewers cannot open the agency settings.

Add an agency

Go to Settings > Agencies.
Select Add Agency. If no agencies exist yet, the button reads Create Agency.
Enter the Agency Name. This is the only required field.
Fill in any of Phone, Website, Sector, Fee % (0 to 100), Fixed Rate and Notes.
Under Primary Contact, enter a first name, last name, email and phone number for the person at the agency who should be notified about new job assignments.
Select Save.

The primary contact can only be entered when you create the agency. The edit form (the pencil icon on the agency row) changes the agency details but has no contact fields, so add the contact now.

The list has Active, Inactive and All filters with a count on each. It opens on Active.

Invite agency users

Agency users are created from the user list, not from the agency page. Only Admins can invite them.

Go to Settings > User Management and select Invite User.
Enter the person's email, first name and last name.
Set Role to Agency.
Choose the Agency they belong to. The list contains active agencies only. If there are none, the form says No active agencies. Create an agency in Settings → Agencies first.
Select Invite User.

The person receives an email to set a password. Until they do, the row shows Invite pending, and Resend is available from the user list. If the invitation fails, the row shows Invite failed and Retry invite is available. Inviting an address that already has a pending or failed invitation is blocked, and the message links you to that row.

Agency users have no department. You cannot change an existing user to the Agency role, and you cannot change an agency user to another role, so invite a new user if someone moves between an agency and your own team. Agency users are left out of the pickers used to choose people in your organisation, and they cannot be added as team members on a job. Assign the agency to the job instead.

To remove an agency user's access, open their row and choose Deactivate user. Only Admins can do this for agency users.

Assign an agency to a job

An agency user sees only the jobs their agency is assigned to. Admins and HR users can assign agencies in two places: the Agencies section under the team list on the job's Team tab, and the same section on the Recruitment Team step of the job setup wizard.

In the Agencies section, select Assign agency.
Choose an Agency. Only active agencies are listed.
Optionally choose a Contact (optional). The list shows the contacts saved on that agency.
Select Assign.

If you chose a contact with an email address, that contact receives an Agency Assigned email with a link to the job. With no contact, or a contact without an email address, nothing is sent, but the assignment still works. The same agency cannot be assigned to a job twice.

To take an agency off a job, use Remove agency on its row. The job then no longer appears for that agency's users.

Deactivate or delete an agency

Deactivate stops new invitations and new job assignments for the agency and keeps its data. Deactivated agencies appear under the Inactive filter, where Activate brings them back.

Delete removes the agency permanently. The confirmation lists how many contact records, job assignments and candidate submissions will be deleted with it, and you must type the agency name to confirm. The deletion is recorded in the audit log. This cannot be undone. If you want to keep the records, deactivate instead.

What agency users can see and do

Agency users get a cut-down version of Recruit. The left menu shows Jobs and Candidates only. They have no Settings, Reports, Dashboard or Referrals.

The Jobs list contains only jobs assigned to their agency.
Opening a job shows My Submissions, a read-only table of the candidates their agency submitted for that job, with candidate, email, who submitted them and the date. There are no pipeline, team or publishing tabs, and agency users cannot edit, publish or close jobs.
The Candidates page lists only candidates their agency submitted.
They cannot move candidates, send offers or approve anything.

Submit a candidate as an agency user

Open a job from the Jobs list and select Submit Candidate.
Enter first name, last name and email. These are required. Phone is optional and must include the country code with no spaces, for example +447700900000.
Tick Hide candidate PII from client if the organisation should not see who the candidate is.
Select Submit.

A Candidate submitted message appears and the candidate is added to the job's first pipeline stage with the source set to Agency. If the email address already belongs to a candidate in the organisation, the submission attaches to that existing record rather than creating a second one. The form has no CV upload.

Errors the agency may see: Your agency is not assigned to this job if the assignment has been removed, Job has no pipeline stages configured if the job's pipeline is empty, and Phone must be in E.164 format for a badly formatted number.

Candidates submitted by an agency are not sent the automatic candidate emails or texts, such as the application acknowledgement, stage emails, interview scheduling invitations, video interview invitations or form reminders. Your team contacts them directly.

Pipeline status visibility

By default agency users cannot see which pipeline stage their candidates are in. To allow it, an Admin goes to Settings > Roles & Permissions, finds Agency Pipeline Status Visibility under Agency permissions and turns on Let agency users see their candidates' pipeline status. The setting saves as soon as you switch it. The Settings > Agencies page points to this location with a Go to Roles & Permissions button.

With it on, the stage appears next to each candidate on the agency user's Candidates page, and a stage filter becomes available once a job is chosen. The My Submissions table on a job never shows the stage.

How submitted candidates appear to your team

Without the hide box ticked, the candidate appears in your pipeline and candidate list like any other, with the source shown as Agency.

With Hide candidate PII from client ticked, your team sees the candidate as Agency Candidate followed by a reference number, with name and contact details hidden. This applies to every role in your organisation, Admins and HR included. Only users from the submitting agency see the real details. If the candidate already existed in your organisation and their details had already been revealed, ticking the box does not hide them again.