Hire Approvals Process

Account Administrators can elect to enable the use of a custom hiring approval workflow requiring the hiring team to formally request to hire an individual and track the approval flow as it goes through the organization. By default, Hiring Approvals is disabled. When enabled, your team can define an internal, approval-based workflow process that would requiring users to seek authorization prior to hiring candidates. 

• Activate Hiring Approvals
• Creating Hire Approval Forms
• Assigning Hire Approval Forms to a Job
  • Assign a Hiring Approval Form to a Job Template
  • Assign a Hiring Approval Form at the Time of Posting a Job
• Initiating the Hire Approval process
• Deciding on a Hiring Action
  • Approve Hire
  • Deny Hire
• Hire Approval Notifications

Activate Hiring Approvals

To configure Job Requisitions, the Account Administrator can go to Admin > System Settings > Job Requisitions. To activate or deactivate Job Requisitions, use the toggle to turn the feature to Yes (on) or No (off). By default, this feature will be set to No.

Creating Hire Approval Forms

Any Account Administrator can create new hire approval forms as needed. A Hire Approval Form is a template that can be completed by a user to initiate the hiring of a candidate.

• Select Admin > System Settings > Hire Approvals.
• Select +Create Hire Approval Form and follow the system prompts to enter the required (*) and optional information: Form Title*, Section Intro.
• A list of "Default Questions" will be included with each form. Clicking "Show More" will display the list of questions. 
  • Compensation / Salary & Desired Employment Start Date can be configured to be required to be answered when making a hire request. This can be done by enabling the "Required" toggle.
• To include additional hire approval questions using the form builder, click ADD QUESTION, and enter the question.
  • Assign a question type from the dropdown. Question types include: File upload, Multiple Choice, Short Text (75 characters), Text, and Yes/No. Follow the system prompts for each particular question type.
  • By default, all questions are required.
• Include additional questions by clicking ADD QUESTION and repeating the process.
• To reorder questions, click the row and then drag and drop to a new location.
• Remove unwanted questions by clicking the "trash can" icon.
• Designate the hiring approval workflow by adding approval "Levels". The Account Administrator must create at least one level with an assigned primary approver and a primary approver for each  additional level.
  • Click "edit pencil" icon to create the first Hiring Approval level.
    • Enter a Level Name.
    • Add one or more users to the level. 
      •  Find a system user by entering at least 3 consecutive letters in the first name, last name, or  user email in the Search Users text box. Results will be returned automatically
      • Click their name to include them as an Assigned User.
      • Repeat to include additional users.
      • Select Remove to delete that user from the level. 
    • You must designate a primary user for this hiring approval level by clicking the "star" icon next to their name.
    • Click OK to add the Level to the workflow.
  • Include additional levels by clicking +ADD STEP and repeating the process to add a level.
• Complete the Hire Approval Form by clicking SAVE.
• The Hire Approval Form will now appear on the list and is ready to be assigned to one or more jobs.

Note: Company-specific Hire Approval Forms can be built in advance, while the feature is turned off. Once you activate the feature, the forms will be available for use.

Assigning Hire Approval Forms to a Job

Hire Approval forms can be added to a Job Template or during the process of posting a job.

Assign a Hiring Approval Form to a Job Template

• Select the Job Templates tab from the main menu and open a template by clicking the Job Title.
• On Step #1 review Information Elements and click CONTINUE to proceed.
• On Step #2 review Applicant Elements and click CONTINUE to proceed.
• On Step #3 review Processing Elements
• From the Select Hire Approval Workflow dropdown, view and designate a workflow.
• Click SAVE to finish editing the Job Template.

Assign a Hiring Approval Form at the Time of Posting a Job

• Select the Job Templates tab from the main menu and open a template by clicking the Job Title.
• On Step #1 review Information Elements and click CONTINUE to proceed.
• On Step #2 review Applicant Elements and click CONTINUE to proceed.
• On Step #3 review Processing Elements
• From the Select Hire Approval Workflow dropdown, view and designate a workflow.
• Click SAVE to finish editing the Job Template.
• Select all final required posting details during Step #4 Post Job.
• When finished, click POST JOB or SCHEDULE JOB POSTING.

Initiating the Hire Approval Process

• Open an applicant file that is in a job with a hire approval workflow set
• In the "Stages" pane click the INITIATE HIRE REQUEST button
• Complete the system-generated "Default Questions" and additional questions as required by the Account Administrators.
• Click Submit to initiate the approval workflow.
• The the primary user(s) assigned to the first level the approval workflow will receive a notification, that their approval is requested.

Deciding on a Hiring Action

When a member of the hiring team initiates a hire in an applicant file they are formally requesting to hire the individual and the designated approval workflow will be triggered. The primary approving official of the first level will receive an email notification to review and approve or deny the hire. If each level is approved, the process will advance to the next primary approving office of the subsequent level until a final decision is made. 

Approving officials have the following options:

Approve Hire

Once a requisition is approved, the initiator can post the requested Job. The job will not be automatically posted once approved, as the position variables still need to be set up as part of the posting process (compensation, assignments, auto refresh, Internal/External etc.).

• To approve the hire, go to Jobs > Job Requisitions> My Approvals or navigate to the approval request by clicking the link from the emailed notification.
•  Click on the Job Title to open the Hire Approval request.
• Review the request and select Approve and Advance.
• Choose the primary user of the next level from the drop-down.
• Click Submit to confirm.
• The request will advance to the next level with the primary approving official being notified. The process will repeat until all subsequent levels are approval.
• On the last level of the hiring approval workflow a notice will indicate it's the final step and the approving official can choose to "Approve" or "Deny" the hire. 
  • When all approvals have been made or if any primary user denies the hire, the primary users in each level of the approval workflow will be notified of it's completion.
• If each level has been approved, a green "Hire" button will appear in the Applicant File and the  remaining hiring process can be performed.

Deny Hire

This action will reject the hire, send a denial notification, and the initiator will not be able to hire the candidate. If a hiring request is denied, a new hire approval request will need to be submitted with updated information or the candidate should be rejected.

• To deny a requisition, go to Jobs > Job Requisitions> My Approvals.
• Click on the Job Title to open the requisition.
• Review the request and select Deny.
• Click Submit to confirm.
• The status will to Denied, an entry will be made on the Stream of the applicant file and an email notification will be sent to the requester along with all previously selected primary approvers.
• Optionally, if the requester should resubmit their request, use an @mention to add a note in the comment section with directions on how they should proceed including if they should reject the candidate and/or add an internal note on why the hiring request was denied.

Hire Approval Notifications

• Users who are selected as primary approver for a hiring approval level will receive an email notification when the hire approval process is initiated and/or if they are assigned to the level of the workflow.
• When a final determination is made to "Approve and Advance" or "Deny" a hiring request on the last level of the approval workflow, the status will be updated, and an email notification will be sent to the requester along with all previously selected primary approvers.

__________

If at any time an approver denies the hire.

Adding a Hiring Approval Form to a Posted Job

****************when it says "Users cannot edit the hire approval workflow for posted jobs" I thought that meant they can't change once it's added... am I to assume that means they can not add a form to any posted job?

If the Hire Approvals feature was enabled after jobs have already been posted, a form can be added from the Job Details tab of each job. 

• Select Jobs from the menu and open a job by clicking the Job Title.
• Select the Job Details tab and review each of the job detail pages.
• On Step #4 Posting Details, click Edit.
• To add a custom ID or make a change, enter a unique custom ID into the Job ID field.
• Click SAVE to confirm the change.

Items of Note

• Defined is the only type of chain at the moment
• A level is a step within the hire approval process. At each level a (primary) user will need to give their approval or denial of the hire request.
• Primary users are the default users who approve hire requests at each level
• Notifications for this cannot be turned off

Known gaps and improvements

• Users cannot edit or add the hire approval workflow for posted jobs
  • In either a Job template, or while posting a job, get to step 3
  • Locate the "Select Hire Approval Workflow" section
  • Select a hire approval workflow form
• Cannot re-route an approval yet
• Non-primary users in a level don't currently do anything, they will be used for when the rerouting feature is added
• Adding a user or changing a primary user does not affect already started hire approvals
• There are some weird quirks in the user experience that we will adjust

1. Create Hire approval form
2. Configure defined chain for who will give approval
3. Associated hire approval with a job in the job template or during posting
4. Applicant applies
5. User processes applicant
6. If a hire, the user clicks the Initiate Hire Approval process
7. The first user in the approval chain gets a notification that they need to make a decision
8. That user approves
9. Next user in the approval chain gets a notification
10. That user approves
11. Repeat 8 & 9 until all users have approved.
12. If any one user denies the approval the hire approval process is stopped.

Any organization may have one or more people that need to sign off on hiring a new employee.

Without a formal hiring approval process built into the ATS system, they would need to organize that outside of the system which could lead to problems or inconsistencies.

By tracking and defining hire approvals within our system, this allows customers to streamline the approval process and provide them with a cleaner, more enjoyable experience.

• Our system’s design provides for custom roles that may be configured to limit hiring authority to one or more users. ‘Hiring Approval Workflows’ are currently being developed.

• The core of this work is built using our approval-system which was first built with Job Requisitions.
• We will be expanding this capability however to now include defining the approval levels needed for your organization (HR must approve, then to finance, then to IT, then to HR for final).
• Later (not this sprint), we will expand this process to involve Offer Approval as well.
• Please note: there are several components to Hire Approval roughly broken down as follows:
  • Bucket 1 [The Configuration]: Create the Form and define approval layers
  • Bucket 2 [The Request]: User requests approval to hire the person
  • Bucket 3 [The Action]: Defined individuals in the chain approving or denying the request

Though the exact feature this is built for is Hire Approval, the guts of this work is designed to 10x the effectiveness of our platform wide approval flows.

The hiring approval process is going to be different for different clients. Client #1 may want to approve a hire in order to make an offer. Client #2 may want to make the offer before approving the hire because the offer may not be acceptable to the candidate or the employer. Yet another scenario involves a background check. An employer may want to make a contingent offer based upon the check results.