Creating and setting up a job

Every step from Create Job to a live vacancy: job details, approval, setup and publishing, whether or not your organisation requires approvals.

A job goes through creation, an optional approval and a setup stage before candidates can apply. Which route yours takes depends on whether your organisation requires approvals for new jobs. This article walks through both, from Create Job to a job that is live.

Which route your organisation uses

Most organisations require approvals, which is the default. You fill in Job Details, choose an approval workflow and submit the job. Once every level has approved, the job moves to Pending Setup, where a System Admin or HR user sets up the application form, team, pipeline and publishing.

If your organisation has switched approvals off, there is no Approvals step. You work through Job Details and the four setup steps in a single wizard. A System Admin controls this with the switch Require approvals for new jobs under Settings > Approval Workflows. Setting up approvals is covered in the article "Setting up approvals for your organisation".

• Approvals on: Draft, Pending Approval, Pending Setup, then Published or Scheduled.
• Approvals off: Pending Setup as soon as you continue from Job Details (or Draft if you save before continuing), then Published or Scheduled.

Who can do what

Approving and rejecting a submitted job is covered in "The approval workflow".

Start a new job

1. Go to Jobs and select Create Job. If the button is missing, your role cannot raise jobs in your organisation's current setup (see the table above).
2. If your organisation belongs to a group of companies and you have access to more than one, the first screen asks Which company is this job for? Choose your own company or a subsidiary and select Continue. The chosen company decides which approval settings, templates, job boards and users apply. It cannot be changed once the job exists.
3. Choose a starting point: Start from Scratch or Use a Template.

The template list shows up to 50 templates. Each card gives the template name, how many times it has been used (for example "Used 12 times"), its job title, department and location, and its description if it has one. Selecting a card fills in Job Details for you and takes you to the next page. If you start a job for a subsidiary, that company's templates are listed first, followed by your own. If there are none, the list reads "No templates available yet. Start from scratch to create your first job."

A template fills in the job title, department, location, remote policy, salary range, currency and period, job type, city, postcode, region, country, company location, industry sector, description, requirements, benefits and any attachments it holds. You can change all of it. A field your organisation has locked keeps the organisation's value, and if your organisation requires saved locations the template's location is left blank so you pick one. Templates themselves are covered in "Using job templates".

On the approvals route, the Job Details page has a Back to Start button. Choosing a template after you have started typing replaces what you entered, so go back only if that is what you want.

Fill in Job Details

Job Details is one page split into sections. A red asterisk marks a required field. Which fields exist and which are required is set by your organisation under Settings > Job Details Form, so an administrator may have renamed fields, added custom fields or changed the required settings. The list below is the standard form.

Select Next with a required field empty and the page does not move on. A message headed Missing required fields lists what to fill in.

• Job Details section. Job Title (required). Job Type (required) offers Permanent, Contract, Temporary, Casual, Bank, Fixed Term, Contractor, Self-Employed, Apprenticeship, Voluntary, Placement, Internship and Graduate. Job Time (optional) offers Full Time, Part Time, Term Time, Variable Hours, Sessional, Fractional Hours and Zero Hours. Can be Remote is a tick box. Industry Sector and Job Category are lists you choose from. Industry Sector is needed later if you post to external job boards.
• Description is required and must contain at least 10 characters of visible text, otherwise you see "Job description must be at least 10 characters." Requirements and Benefits are optional. Your organisation may have set default wording in any of the three, which appears when you start the job.
• Location Information section. Region, Company Location, Location, City, Postcode and Country, all required. Select Use saved location to pick one of your organisation's saved locations and have the fields filled in. If you type over a location field afterwards, the job is no longer linked to the saved location. Saved locations are managed under Settings > Locations (see "Managing locations").
• Salary Information section. Salary Currency (GBP, USD or EUR, starting on GBP). Salary Entry is Single value or Range, starting on Single value. Salary is the figure, or the lower end of a range. Salary To only appears for a range. Salary Period is Annual, Monthly or Hourly, starting on Annual. Salary Type (optional) offers Competitive, Negotiable, Voluntary, Unpaid and National Minimum Wage. Choosing a Salary Type means you no longer have to enter salary figures to publish to your careers page, although boards that need a figure, such as Adzuna and CV-Library, still do.
• Attachments. Select Add file or drop a file onto the field. PDF, Word, Excel, PNG and JPG files are accepted, up to 25 MB each and 10 per job. Candidates see these documents on the public job page.

A few controls sit around the Description field. Insert from template pulls in text from your job description templates, and Save as template stores the current text as a new one (it stays greyed out until the description reaches 10 characters). See "Job description templates". A counter shows the length. If one of your connected job boards limits description length, it reads for example "850 / 2000 characters", and going over the limit shows "Description exceeds the 2000-character limit imposed by" the board's name, with the number of characters to remove. You cannot continue until it is under the limit.

A field marked "This value is set by your organisation and cannot be edited." is locked to a fixed value. If your organisation requires saved locations, the location fields are locked and Use saved location is the only way to fill them. When no saved locations exist, you see a message asking an admin to add some under Settings > Locations.

Saving and leaving Job Details

On the approvals route there is no Save as Draft button on this page. Recruit saves a draft automatically once the title has three characters, and an indicator at the top right reads Saving draft... then Draft saved. If it reads Auto-save failed, your latest changes are not stored and Recruit retries on your next edit. A job started from a template is saved when you select Next.

If you try to leave the page with unsaved changes, a dialog asks Leave without saving? Choose Stay on this page to keep working or Leave and lose changes to discard them.

Whatever your form requires, a job cannot be submitted or set up without a title, description, job type, location, postcode, country, region, city and salary (or a Salary Type). If any are missing you see "Job is not ready to publish" with the fields listed. Go back to Job Details, complete them and try again.

Submit the job for approval

This applies when your organisation requires approvals. Select Next on Job Details to reach the Approvals step.

1. Under Workflow Type, choose a workflow. It is required. Any description the workflow has appears underneath. If none exist, the step says "No approval workflows configured. Contact your administrator."
2. Under Approval Levels, each level is shown as "Level 1: name" with a badge, either Can edit + approve or Approve only. A level with a padlock has its group fixed by the workflow. For any other level, choose a group from Select approval group... A group with no members shows "This group has no members. Add members before submitting for approval." and the job cannot be submitted until an admin adds someone.
3. Answer the questions under Approval Justification. Your organisation sets these, and any marked required must be filled in. Files can only be uploaded once the job has been saved.
4. If admin bypass is on and you are a System Admin, a switch reads "Admin bypass: skip pending approvals and mark as Approved". Turning it on changes the button to Submit with Admin Bypass.
5. Select Submit for Approval.

If something is missing, a message lists it: the approval workflow, the group assignments, or the required justification answers. Once the job is submitted you see Job Submitted for Approval and land on the Jobs list, which shows all statuses. The job is now Pending Approval. The approvers are emailed, and you are emailed when the last level approves or any level rejects. "The approval workflow" explains what happens from here, including how to withdraw a request and what a rejection looks like.

With admin bypass, nobody is asked to approve. The job goes straight to Pending Setup, you see Ready for Setup and you are taken to the setup screen.

To stop part way, select Save as Draft on the Approvals step. It stores your workflow, group choices and justification answers and returns you to the Jobs list.

The Jobs list opens on the Published filter, so a draft will not be visible at first. Change the Status filter to Draft (or All statuses), open the job and select Continue Draft Job. It reopens on Job Details with everything you entered.

Continue to setup when approvals are off

With approvals off, the wizard is titled Create New Job and its progress bar shows five steps: Job Details, Application Form, Recruitment Team, Pipeline and Publishing. Select Next on Job Details. Recruit creates the job, moves it straight to Pending Setup and opens the Application Form step. Nobody has to approve it.

Before the job has been created, the footer offers Save as Draft, which saves the job as a Draft and returns you to the Jobs list. A System Admin or HR user can pick a draft up later by opening it and selecting Go to Setup. After the job exists the button reads Save and Exit. It leaves the job in Pending Setup and returns you to the Jobs list.

Set up the job

A job in Pending Setup needs an application form, a team, a pipeline and a publishing choice before it can go live. Only System Admin and HR users can do this.

On the approvals route, open the job and select Go to Setup. This opens Complete Job Setup, with four steps: Application Form, Recruitment Team, Pipeline and Publishing. On the approvals-off route these same steps are part of the wizard you are already in. Either way, resuming a job reopens the wizard on the Application Form step. Each step saves when you move to the next one. If you leave with unsaved changes on a step, the Leave without saving? dialog appears. On the first step the back button reads Back to Job.

1. Application Form. The job starts with a copy of your organisation's default application form. Keep it, edit it, or choose Apply Template to replace it with another template (this replaces every field and page). You can add questions with Add Field, add text, photo or video blocks with Add Content, check the result with Preview and store the form for other jobs with Save as Template. See "Application form templates" and "Building an application form".
2. Recruitment Team. Pick a person under Employee, choose their Role in this job (Hiring Manager, Recruiter or Interviewer, with Recruiter the default) and select Add Member. Change a role from the dropdown on their row or remove them with the bin icon. Active System Admin and HR users are already on the team as Recruiters with an Auto-added label, described in "Automatic team assignment and who can see a job". The Agencies section below the list assigns recruitment agencies to the job. At least one team member is needed. See "Managing your job team".
3. Pipeline. The job starts with a copy of your organisation's default pipeline template. Change it with Apply Template, add stages with Add Stage, reorder with Move up and Move down, and remove a stage with the bin icon. The Applied stage, where new applications arrive, cannot be removed ("Default stages cannot be removed"). At least two stages are needed. See "Configuring pipeline stages".
4. Publishing. Under Publishing Channels, tick where the job should appear. The Company Careers Page is always included unless your organisation also uses an Internal Careers Page, in which case a job must keep at least one careers page. Set a Posting date to schedule the job, or leave it empty to go live as soon as setup completes. The Expiry date starts 28 days after the posting date and cannot be earlier than it. Save and Exit remembers the boards, posting date and expiry date you chose, including an expiry date you cleared, so they are there when you reopen setup. If the expiry date is earlier than the posting date, Save and Exit does not save and shows "Expiry date must be on or after the posting date." You stay in setup until it is fixed. Publishing Summary lists your choices, and Preview as Candidate opens the advert in a new tab. External boards, charges and board-specific options are covered in "Publishing a job to job boards".

Complete setup and go live

On the last step, select Complete Setup. The button stays greyed out until the team has one member and the pipeline has two stages, and a red message says so: "Please ensure the recruitment team has at least one member and the pipeline has at least 2 stages."

Recruit then checks the job is ready to publish, including the requirements of any external board you ticked. The job becomes Published straight away, or Scheduled if the posting date is more than about five minutes ahead. A scheduled job goes live by itself on that date. You see Setup Completed & Published or Setup Completed and land on the job page. From then on candidates can apply through the careers page.

If the check fails you see Setup Incomplete with the reason, for example a missing postcode or an external board that needs an Industry Sector. The job stays in Pending Setup. Fix the detail and select Complete Setup again. Changing details after setup, and what is locked once a job is live, is covered in "Editing a job after you have created it".

Duplicate an existing job

To reuse a job instead of a template, System Admin and HR users can select Duplicate from a job's actions menu, on the Jobs list or on the job page. Recruit creates a Draft called "Copy of" followed by the original title and opens it. You become its hiring lead. The copy keeps the details, description, pipeline stages, application form, team members and job settings. It has no closing date, its approval history starts clean, and it has no job board postings.

A toast reads "A draft copy has been created. It has not been sent for approval." Continue as you would with any draft: Continue Draft Job when approvals are on, or Go to Setup when they are off.

Messages you may see

• Approval-only access. Approvals are off and you are a Member. Ask a System Admin or HR user to raise the job.
• Missing required fields. A required field on Job Details is empty. The message names each one.
• Job is not ready to publish. A field the job needs to go live is empty. Complete it on Job Details.
• Submission Failed. The job could not be submitted. The reason follows, most often a level whose group has no members.
• Go to Setup is not shown. Only System Admin and HR users see it. A hiring lead who is a Member must ask one of them to complete setup.
• The job is not in the list. The Jobs list opens on the Published filter. Change the Status filter to find drafts and jobs awaiting setup.