Managing agencies

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

Agencies let outside recruiters put candidates forward for 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

1. Go to Settings > Agencies.
2. Select Add Agency. If no agencies exist yet, the button reads Create Agency.
3. Enter the Agency Name. This is the only required field.
4. Fill in any of Phone, Website, Sector, Fee % (0 to 100), Fixed Rate and Notes.
5. 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.
6. 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.

1. Go to Settings > User Management and select Invite User.
2. Enter the person's email, first name and last name.
3. Set Role to Agency.
4. 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.
5. 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.

1. In the Agencies section, select Assign agency.
2. Choose an Agency. Only active agencies are listed.
3. Under Agency users, tick the people at the agency who should be told about the job. You can tick several. If the agency has no active users, the dialog says No active user accounts for this agency.
4. If you ticked nobody, you can instead choose a Contact (optional) from the contacts saved on that agency. The contact picker is hidden once any user is ticked.
5. Select Assign.

Each ticked user receives an Agency Assigned email with a link to the job. If you chose a contact with an email address instead, that contact receives the email. With neither, or with a contact who has no email address, nothing is sent, but the assignment still works. Ticking users controls who is notified. Every user at the agency can still see the job.

To change who is notified later, select the pencil icon (Edit agency users) beside the agency in the Agencies section. The names of the selected users are listed under the agency. 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 an Applications tab, described as the candidates your agency is applying on behalf of for this job. The table lists the candidate, email, who submitted them, a Submitted / last saved date and a Status of In progress or Submitted. In-progress rows have Continue and Discard buttons. Submitted rows have View, which opens a read-only copy of the application. 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.

Add a candidate and complete their application

Agencies complete the job's own application form on the candidate's behalf. It is the same form candidates see on the careers page.

1. Open a job from the Jobs list, go to Applications and select Add candidate.
2. Complete the application form. A banner reads "You are completing this application on behalf of the candidate as [your agency]. Enter the candidate's own contact details, not yours." Upload any documents the form asks for.
3. Declarations on the form are marked as made by the agency on the candidate's behalf. Only tick or sign if the candidate has confirmed this to you.
4. Tick Hide candidate PII from client if the organisation should not see who the candidate is.
5. Tick the consent box: "I confirm the candidate has consented to their data being processed for the purposes of this job application, in accordance with the privacy policy." The application cannot be submitted without it.
6. Submit the application. Application submitted appears and the candidate is added to the job's first pipeline stage with the source set to Agency.

Progress saves automatically. The page shows Unsaved changes, Saving and Saved as you work, so you can leave and return with Continue from the Applications tab. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, a Leave without saving? box asks you to confirm. If the page says the application was updated by someone else, select Reload to continue.

To drop a draft, select Discard on its row and confirm. Its answers and uploaded files are deleted, and this cannot be undone. Drafts that nobody saves for 90 days are deleted automatically.

If the email address already belongs to a candidate in the organisation, the application attaches to that existing record rather than creating a second one, and the existing contact details are left as they are.

Duplicates and closed jobs

If an application already exists for the same candidate and job, submitting fails. The message reads "An application already exists for this candidate and job. Contact the hiring team for assistance." If your own agency already submitted it, the message reads "Your agency has already submitted an application for this candidate and job." and offers View existing application.

Agencies cannot start new applications on a job that is closed, archived, paused or past its closing date. Add candidate is disabled and a notice explains why. Applications already in progress stay saved, and the agency can still edit or discard them, but they cannot be submitted unless the job reopens. If the agency's assignment to a job is removed while they are working, the page says the application is no longer available to the agency.

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.

Abandoned drafts and erasure

An Admin can erase unsubmitted agency drafts for a particular email address under Settings > GDPR & Privacy. This is useful when a person asks for their data to be deleted and has no candidate record yet.

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 Applications 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.