Troubleshooting sign-in and access problems

What to do when you cannot sign in, a code or link fails, or a page or menu item is missing, and who can fix each problem.

Most sign-in problems are fixed by one of two people: you, or an administrator in your organisation. This article lists the problems people actually hit, the message Recruit shows and the fix. The screens themselves are described in Logging in to Recruit, Signing in with single sign-on, Accepting your invitation and setting your password, Setting up two-factor authentication and Security settings.

Who fixes what

Problem	Who fixes it
Forgotten password	You, with Forgot your password?. An administrator can also send you a reset email.
Expired password	You, on the Your password has expired screen.
Locked account	A System Admin, or an HR user if you have the Member role.
Invitation link expired	A System Admin, or an HR user if you have the Member role.
Lost device and no recovery codes	A System Admin, or an HR user if you have the Member role.
Single sign-on problem	Your administrator, or your IT team if the error is on your provider's own pages.
Missing menu item, tab or permission	A System Admin, by changing your role or the organisation's permission settings.
Anything an administrator cannot resolve	HireRoad support.

Invalid email or password

Recruit shows this same message for a wrong password, an email address it does not recognise and a locked account, so it cannot tell you which one applies. Work through these in order.

Check the spelling of your email address, turn off caps lock and type the password again.
Select Forgot your password?, which appears under the Password box, and follow the link in the email.
If a new password is refused as well, ask your administrator to look at your row in Settings, Team & Access, User Management. The account may be locked or deactivated, or your organisation may require single sign-on.

If the Password box never appears after you select Continue, your organisation has linked your email domain to single sign-on. See the single sign-on section below.

Forgotten or expired password

After you send a reset request the screen says "If an account exists with that email, we've sent a password reset link." It says this for every address, so it does not confirm that your address is registered. If nothing arrives, check your junk folder, then ask your administrator to check the address on your user record.

An administrator can send the email for you. In Settings, Team & Access, User Management, find the person's row and select Send password reset email. A System Admin can do this for anyone, and an HR user for people with the Member role.

If your organisation sets a maximum password age, Recruit takes you to a screen titled Your password has expired that says "For security, please set a new password to continue." Enter your Current password, then a New password and Confirm new password, and select Change password. You are signed out and must sign in again with the new password. If the new password is refused with "Password does not meet security requirements.", choose a longer or more varied one. The rules are in Logging in to Recruit.

A reset or invitation link no longer works

A reset link that has expired or has already been used opens a page titled Reset link no longer valid. Select Request a new reset link, and use the link in the newest email.

Invitation links last 48 hours and work once. The same is true of the link sent when an account is reactivated. When one has expired, a System Admin, or an HR user for a Member, opens Settings, Team & Access, User Management and finds the person's row.

If the status is Invited, select Resend. The person gets a fresh email with a new link.
If the status is Invite pending or Invite failed, the email never went out. Use Retry invite, or Cancel invite and invite the person again.

A locked account

Repeated failed sign-in attempts lock an account. The person sees only "Invalid email or password", the same as for a wrong password, so an administrator has to check. Nobody can unlock their own account.

Go to Settings, Team & Access, User Management. Deactivated people are hidden by default, so use the status filter if you cannot find the row.
Select the Unlock account icon on the person's row. If there is no such icon, the account is not locked, so look at the other causes above.
Confirm. The message reads "Unlock [name]'s account? They will be able to sign in again immediately." Afterwards you see "Account unlocked".

A System Admin can unlock anyone. An HR user can unlock only people with the Member role. Deactivated users cannot be unlocked, and they need reactivating first. If a System Admin is locked out, another System Admin has to do it.

Two-factor code problems

Invalid code. Please try again. The code was wrong or has timed out. The boxes clear. Enter the code your app is showing now, or ask for a new emailed code with Send a new code.

The emailed code has not arrived. Select Send a new code and check your junk folder. "We could not send your code. Please try again." means Recruit could not send the email at that moment. Retry, or use a recovery code.

Your session has expired. Please log in again. The code step took too long. Recruit returns you to the login page after a couple of seconds. Sign in again from the start.

You have lost your phone. On the code screen select Use a recovery code, type one of the codes you saved during setup (they look like XXXXX-XXXXX) and select Verify. Each code works once. Once you are in, open your profile, add a new method, remove the old one and regenerate your recovery codes.

You have no device and no recovery codes. Someone else has to reset your two-factor authentication. A System Admin can reset anyone. An HR user can reset people with the Member role only. They open Settings, Team & Access, User Management, select the Reset two-factor authentication icon (a shield with a line through it) on your row and confirm. It works on active users only, and the icon is not shown on your own row. At your next sign-in you set up a new method and receive new recovery codes if your role or organisation requires it, otherwise you can turn it on again from your profile. Anyone asked to reset a login should first check that the request really comes from that person.

Single sign-on problems

You must sign in with single sign-on. Your organisation requires it. Select Use a different email, enter your address again and use the Continue with button.
No account found for this email address. Please contact your administrator. Your provider accepted you, but Recruit has no user with that address. An administrator has to invite you or correct the address on your Recruit account. Nothing is created automatically.
Your organisation requires single sign-on, but no provider is configured. Contact your administrator. Only an administrator can fix this. Password sign-in stays blocked meanwhile.
If you land back on the login page, or see Something went wrong. Please try again., start again from the email step. Finish the provider's sign-in within 10 minutes and keep cookies switched on.
Errors on your provider's own sign-in pages belong to your organisation's systems. Your IT team has to resolve them.

Session expired

A red Session Expired message saying "Your session has expired due to inactivity. Please log in again." means you were signed out. Sign in as normal and Recruit returns you to the page you were on. Ticking Remember me for 30 days keeps you signed in for longer, but only tick it on a device nobody else uses.

Changing a password signs that person out on every device. An administrator can also do this on purpose with Revoke sessions on the user's row. If you are signed out with no warning, one of these is the likely reason.

"This candidate is no longer available"

The page adds "It may have been removed. Check your candidate list, or ask an administrator if you think this is wrong." Jobs have the same page, headed "This vacancy is no longer available". Recruit shows it both when the record has been removed and when you are not allowed to see it, so the page does not say which. The usual reasons for the second case:

You have the Member role and are not on the team of any job the candidate applied to.
You are an agency user and your agency did not submit the candidate.
You are an HR user limited to certain locations, and the candidate's jobs are elsewhere.

Go back to the list and search for the person. If they are not listed either, ask an administrator to check your role, the job's team and, for HR users, the location limits under Roles & Permissions.

"You do not have permission"

An Access Denied page reads "You don't have permission to view this page. Contact your administrator if you believe this is an error." Select Back to Dashboard to leave it. Settings pages show a more specific line, for example "Only admins can manage security settings." or "Only admins and HR can manage users."

The message "You don't have permission to perform this action." appears when you try something your role does not allow, such as an HR user editing anyone but a Member. Only a System Admin can change a role, from the pencil icon on the person's row in User Management.

Missing menu items or tabs

What you see depends on your role, your jobs and your organisation's settings. Understanding roles and permissions has the full table. The common causes:

Members see only the personal cards in Settings: Profile, Notifications and Cookies.
Job Boards in the menu is for System Admin and HR users.
Reports appears for a Member only if they are the Recruiter or Hiring Manager on at least one job. Someone who is only ever an Interviewer has no Reports item.
Onboarding appears only when your organisation has onboarding turned on.
On a job, the Settings tab needs the System Admin or HR role, or the Recruiter role on that job. A hiring manager who has no other qualifying role does not see the Settings, Job Boards or Onboarding tabs.
Agency users have only Jobs, My approvals and Candidates, and see a read-only view of each job.

Some controls are switched by an administrator on the Roles & Permissions page. Hiring managers and interviewers cannot move candidates between stages until Allow hiring managers and interviewers to move candidates is on. Members cannot open CVs while Hide candidate CVs from Members is on. After a setting changes, refresh the page to see it.

Who to contact

Contact your organisation's administrator for anything about your own account or access: locks, invitations, resets, roles, single sign-on and permissions. Give them the exact message you saw, the email address you used and roughly when it happened.

Contact HireRoad support when no administrator can resolve it, for example when the only System Admin is locked out, or when an invitation fails with "This address is held by another organisation." or "Our sign-in provider refused this." Once you are signed in, Support in the menu under your avatar opens the support centre in a new tab. The record-not-available and page-not-found screens have a Support button as well.