Troubleshooting failed job board postings

What each posting status means, how to read validation errors and warnings, and when to use Retry, Force Post, Unpublish and the bulk actions.

Every job you send to a job board gets a posting for each board, and each posting has a status. When a posting fails, or sits at a status for longer than you expect, the two places to look are the Job Boards page in the left-hand menu (all your jobs together, titled Job Board Postings) and the Job Boards tab on an individual job. Both show the same postings. This article covers how to read them and how to fix what you find. For choosing boards and publishing in the first place, see the article Publishing to job boards.

Who can see and act

• The Job Boards page in the menu is visible to System Admin and HR users only. Members, hiring managers and agency users do not see it.
• Retry, Force Post, Unpublish, Re-publish, Post to More Boards and every bulk action are limited to System Admin and HR, on both the page and the job tab.
• On a job, other internal users can open the Job Boards tab and read the statuses and errors but have no buttons. Users whose only role on the job is Hiring Manager do not see the tab.
• Errors that point to Settings > Integrations need a System Admin to fix, because only System Admins can change integration settings.

Reading the Job Boards page

Each row is one job on one board. The columns are Job (click the title to open the job on its Job Boards tab), Board, Status, Posted, Expires and an actions column. Newest postings come first. Click the Board, Status, Posted or Expires heading to sort. The page shows 20 rows at a time, with Previous and Next at the bottom.

Search by job title in the Search by job title... box, or narrow the list with the All statuses and All boards filters, which accept several choices at once. Clear filters resets them. An expiry date in orange with a warning icon means the posting expires within 7 days. When a posting has a link to the live advert, an icon appears in the actions column (Open external link).

The page refreshes itself. It checks every few seconds while any posting is Pending and every 30 seconds while any is Validated or Sent. If a posting turns Failed while you have the page open, a Validation Failed message appears at the corner of the screen.

What each status means

Awaiting board confirmation

This is a status note, not an error. It means Recruit delivered the advert and nothing has confirmed it is live. The tooltip says the advert may not be visible to candidates yet. After a check has run, the note adds Last check and the result:

• Not yet indexed: the board has not listed the advert yet. Wait and check again.
• Job not found on board: the board was searched and the advert was not there.
• Verification not supported: Recruit cannot check this board automatically. Look at the board yourself.
• Credentials missing or Credentials rejected by the board: the integration details are missing or wrong. A System Admin should review the board under Settings > Integrations.
• Rate limited by the board, or a result that names a timeout or an error: the board did not answer properly. Try again later.
• External ID missing: Recruit has no board reference for the posting, so it cannot look it up.

Automatic confirmation exists for Adzuna, Reed, IrishJobs.ie, CV-Library, Astronaut Jobs, S1jobs and JobsGoPublic. Postings on other boards stay in this state until you confirm them on the board.

Reading errors and warnings

On a Failed row on the Job Boards page, click the red errors badge or the amber warnings badge to open Error Details. It shows the job, the board and how many of the 5 retries have been used. On the job's tab the same list sits in the Error column. The list is headed Validation Issues. Each line gives the field name and a plain-language message, with a small badge for where the problem comes from:

• Content: the job itself, such as the title, description, location or closing date.
• Config: the integration settings for that board.
• Board: a rule set by that particular board.

Issues are grouped by where you fix them, and each group has a link: Fix on the job's Edit page, Fix on the job's Application form page, Fix in Publish to Job Boards (board options such as those for S1jobs and JobsGoPublic), Fix in Settings > Integrations, or View the job for details that Recruit fills in itself. Only the first three issues show at first. Use Show more for the rest.

There are two kinds of issue. A red error must be fixed before the posting can go out. An amber warning is something the board might handle badly but does not block delivery, and it can be bypassed with Force Post. Errors are listed above warnings. Some failures come back from the board after delivery and have no field list. Those show a single error badge and the board's own message as plain text.

Messages you are likely to see

Some messages are worded by Recruit to fit any board, for example This value is required, Must be a valid link, Must be a valid email address and Must be at least N characters. They name the field and the limit, so fix that field.

Retry a failed posting

1. Work out what failed using Error Details, then fix it: edit the job, or ask a System Admin to correct the board's settings.
2. On the Job Boards page, open the Actions menu (three dots) on the row and choose Retry. On the job's tab, click Retry on the row.
3. The posting goes back to Pending, its old errors are cleared, and the checks run again. On the Job Boards page a message reads Retry initiated successfully. If it fails again, the new errors replace the old ones.

Retry is only allowed when something has changed since the failure: the job has been edited, or the board's integration settings have been saved. Otherwise the button is greyed out and the tooltip reads Update the job details or the board configuration to fix the issue before retrying. Each posting can be retried 5 times. On the Job Boards page the count appears under the status (for example 2/5), and Error Details shows it as well. After the fifth, the button reads Max retries reached and Retry stops working for that posting. Contact support if you reach that point and the cause is fixed.

If Retry itself is refused you see Failed to retry posting. on the Job Boards page, or Retry failed on the job's tab, with the reason underneath.

Force Post

Force Post sends a Failed posting to the board without stopping for its warnings. It is available only when every listed issue is a warning. If even one error is present, Force Post is greyed out with the tooltip Fix hard validation errors before force-posting.

1. On the job's Job Boards tab, click Force Post on the row. The Force Post Despite Warnings box lists the warnings that will be bypassed and says the posting may not appear optimally on the job board.
2. Click Force Post Anyway, or Cancel to stop.

On the Job Boards page, Force Post is in the row's Actions menu and submits straight away, with no list of warnings first. If you want to read them before overriding, use the job's tab. Once the posting has been delivered, an Overridden badge stays on the row on the job's tab. Its tooltip gives the number of warnings and who overrode them and when.

For Adzuna and LinkedIn Limited, all organisations share one board file that Recruit rebuilds regularly. While a rebuild is running, and for 30 minutes after it finishes, Force Post is greyed out on the job's tab. The tooltip reads Feed rebuild in progress during the rebuild, and afterwards names the time Force Post becomes available.

Unpublish and re-publish

You can unpublish a posting that is Posted, Published or Sent. On the Job Boards page, choose Unpublish from the row's Actions menu. On the job's tab, open the three-dot menu on a Posted or Published row, choose Unpublish and confirm in the Unpublish from Board box. The posting turns Unpublished at once, and Recruit then asks the board to remove the advert. The job stays live on its other boards.

The Company Careers Page and the Internal Careers Page can only be unpublished while the other of the two is live. On the job's tab, an Unpublished row has a Re-publish button, which sends the job to that board again while the job is Published.

If you unpublish, retry or force a posting on the job's tab and the status has not changed after a minute, the row shows This is taking longer than expected. The board may be processing your request. That is not a failure. Leave the page open or come back to it.

Bulk actions

On the Job Boards page, buttons appear at the bottom right of the screen. With nothing selected, a button appears for each status present on the current page and acts on those rows: Validate All Pending, Send All Validated, Retry All Failed and Check Status, each with a count. To choose your own rows, tick their boxes (the box in the header selects the whole page). The bar then shows how many are selected, offers only the actions that fit the selected statuses, and has Clear Selection. Changing a filter, sort or page clears your selection.

• Validate All Pending starts the checks for Pending postings.
• Send All Validated delivers Validated postings without waiting. Use these two if a posting has sat in Pending or Validated for longer than a few minutes.
• Retry All Failed retries Failed postings. It follows the same rules as Retry, so postings with no change since they failed, or on their fifth retry, are skipped.
• Check Status asks the boards whether Sent and Published postings are live. It has no waiting period.

The confirmation reads N postings triggered, or N triggered, M skipped when some were left out. Each action handles up to 500 postings at a time. Bulk action failed. Please try again. means nothing was sent. When Check Status finishes, a summary lists how many postings were confirmed live, not yet indexed on the board, had no verification available, had credentials missing or had verification errors. On the job's tab the same four actions cover only that job, and read Validate Selected (N), Send Selected (N), Retry Selected (N) and Check Status (N) when rows are ticked.

How long boards take

• Checks run within seconds of publishing, and delivery starts as soon as they pass.
• Adzuna and LinkedIn Limited are delivered through a shared board file that Recruit rebuilds at least every 4 hours. A new posting goes into the next rebuild, and then the board collects the file in its own time.
• Recruit checks postings that are still waiting for confirmation on its own every 12 hours, and only those delivered more than 48 hours earlier. Check Status runs the check at once.
• Each board decides when a delivered advert appears on its site. Until then the posting shows Awaiting board confirmation or Not yet indexed.

When a job disappears from a board

1. Open the job's Job Boards tab and read the status. Unpublished or Expired explains it.
2. Check what happened to the job. Closing a job withdraws all its board postings. Pausing a job withdraws them too, except the careers page when you chose to keep taking applications. Un-pausing puts the careers page back but not the other boards, and reopening a closed job does the same unless you choose boards in the reopen box. A job also closes when its closing date passes. Send the job to the other boards again with Post to More Boards or Re-publish.
3. If the status is Posted, Published or Sent, use Check Status on that row. Job not found on board means the board itself no longer lists it.
4. If it is Failed, use the earlier sections to fix it and retry.

If a check keeps returning credential errors, or a posting has used all 5 retries with the cause fixed, contact support.