Recruit update - January 2022

The roll-out of the first series of minor product updates for this year has now completed. Most of the updates and new features apply to the new Recruit User portal, so for those customers who haven't yet migrated over, there's now even more to look forward to!

Recruit and Recruit admin

Data-driven vacancy approval workflows
For customers who have more complicated vacancy approval workflows with branching logic (different types of vacancy request requiring different approval paths), this is currently managed by displaying multiple buttons at the bottom of request submission or approval forms and relies on users clicking the correct button.

This new functionality allows us to only show the correct button at the bottom of the form and hide all the other ones, based on data that exists on the request form itself. This logic may be based on a single field or on multiple. e.g. For a Replacement role in Marketing in Germany, the Submit button displayed could send the request to approval stage X, whereas the Submit button for a New position in the UK, could send it to approval stage Y, etc.

For customers who don't currently have specific field (or fields) that may be used to define the required logic, it may be advantageous to add a new field to the vacancy request form to support this new feature as it will greatly reduce the chances of users using the wrong approval workflow.

Candidate portal

Improvements to candidate portal Location search
The first of two changes has been made to the candidate portal location search. This search field allows a candidate to type in the name of a place or a postcode and search to find vacancies closest to that location. Where a location with the same name exists in multiple countries, this could cause confusion, as the distance search has to pick one to use as the central pin to form the basis of a distance search.

e.g. A search for just "Christchurch" (without specifying a country as well) for a company with vacancies in both UK and New Zealand would always place the central pin in Christchurch, New Zealand as it's a bigger, more commonly searched location in the third party solution we use to return global geo-codes.

The first improvement we have made here is to replace the original search text with the full details of the location actually searched, so a user will be able to more clearly see what location has been searched and will be able to update the country if required.

e.g. "Christchurch" would change to "Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand" after doing a search.

Hot on the heels of this change, we have another update waiting in the wings, where we will be implementing an IP address lookup feature to query a global database of IP addresses to ascertain which country the person doing the search is currently in. If there are two locations with the same name and one of them is in the same country as where their IP address places them, we will then prioritise that one.

This won't be perfect, but we expect it to do what people expect in the vast majority of cases.

i.e. For someone on a computer or device in the UK doing a search for "Christchurch", the search term would update to "Christchurch, England, United Kingdom", whereas for someone in New Zealand, it would update to "Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand" after they click "Search".

Performance enhancement to auto-complete list fields, based on very long lists of options
It recently became apparent that some customers have implemented list-based fields, with in excess of 10,000 options, which was having an impact on the performance of pages displaying these fields.

Provided the field type is set to be auto-complete, the performance of these pages has been improved massively. Previous load times could be 10-20 seconds and are now generally 1-2 seconds, depending on the complexity of other elements on the same page.

Enhancement to auto-complete suggested selections
Related to the above issue, with lists, based on such large numbers of options, it becomes more likely that the same text may be present in more than one option. e.g. Searching for Chester would find Dorchester, Manchester, etc. This could also then result in an exact match not appearing in the top 10 suggested selections, even when a user types in the full text of what they wanted to select.

Exact matches will now therefore be returned at the top of the search results and prioritised over non-exact matches, rather than the suggested selections all appearing in alphabetical order.

Vacancy sharing options in the new User portal
These options are now only shown for open vacancies, as candidates can't apply to closed vacancies. This will avoid the accidental sharing of vacancies to people which they couldn't apply to.

Vacancy reference numbers added to various other places as standard in the new User portal
In order to help users identify a specific vacancy, where customers may have multiple vacancies in the same location with the same vacancy title, we will now be displaying reference numbers as standard in the new user portal wherever a vacancy title appears.

This release includes adding the reference to the vacancy filter field in Other recruitment lists. Following swiftly behind this release, this will be displayed in a number of other places in the new User portal as standard as well.

Vacancy title now a standard field in Other recruitment lists which links to Vacancy details page
This change benefits users who aren't Hiring Managers, but who need to interact with candidates for specific tasks, such as panel screening, panel interviews and offer approval, etc.

Unlike Hiring Managers, these users can view candidates across multiple vacancies in one list and don't have access to the Vacancy tiles that Managers have access to on the Vacancies page, where more detail is available.

We have therefore added vacancy title as a standard field to the "Other recruitment" lists and also allowed access to the vacancy details page for these users by displaying the vacancy titles as links.

Resolved various other minor issues
This release addresses all known issues that have been reported by users who have already been migrated to the new user portal.

Integrations

Updated NHS Jobs vacancy posting integration
We've been developing a new integration platform and API methods to make integrations quicker and easier to both use and to implement. We're then using this new platform to build an updated integration with NHS Jobs, to tie into the roll-out of NHS Jobs 3.

Recruit configuration tools (System Builder)

NHS Jobs vacancy posting configuration page
A new page has been added to the Vacancy posting section to allow configuration and mapping of fields and values for the new NHS Jobs posting integration.

New URL literal control
A new control type has been added to avoid one use of ad hoc HTML in configuration. The new control takes the data from a field, either as a whole or partial URL to allow this to be displayed in any of the following ways:

• iFrame - e.g. user to display a third party web page of a video interview in an iFrame within another page in Recruit
• Link - display the URL as a clickable hyperlink, e.g. link to an online test summary report, which may be returned by a third party
• Image - display a linked image as an image, e.g. a relevant logo, based on a brand vacancy classifier

Images and iFrames may be configured with the following height settings:

• Small
• Medium
• Large
• Video (16:9 aspect ratio to be used for all videos)

Both the hyperlink and the title (the link text) may be formatted as required.

Example usage:

1. Company name vacancy classifier, with requirement to display different logo from the assets directory, based on the selected company on a vacancy:
   • Display type: Image
   • Link format string: {!System.FrontEndUrl}assets/images/{0}.png
   • Title format string: n/a
   • Size: As required, but probably small
2. Display a link to a test results view in a third party system, where a unique link for each candidate is returned via an integration and stored in Recruit:
   • Display type: Link
   • Link format string: {0}
   • Title format string: Click here to view the results for this candidate
     N.B. It is not necessary to use the {0} merge field unless you want to merge in the actual link in the link text as well
   • Size: n/a
3. Display a candidate's video interview outcome in an iFrame, based on a URL returned via an integration with a video interview provider:
   • Display type: iFrame
   • Link format string: n/a
   • Title format string: n/a
   • Size: As required, but probably large
4. Display a YouTube video selected on a vacancy in an iFrame, based on a YouTube embed (important) URL selected from a list of videos in a vacancy field:
   • Display type: iFrame
   • Link format string: n/a
   • Title format string: n/a
   • Size: Video

New HTML literal control
A new control type has been added to avoid another use of ad hoc HTML in configuration. The new control takes the data from a field and can display it in the following ways, alongside other relevant text:

• Text block
• Heading
• Sub-heading
• Information box (grey box)
• Caution box (amber box)
• Success box (green box)
• Warning box (red box)

Markdown may also be used if required.

Example usage, e.g. for a field for someone's first name:

• Field: Person.Firstname
• Text format: Hello {0}. Welcome to your onboarding portal.
• Display type: Sub-heading

If the candidate's name was "John", this would merge in their name where the {0} merge field resulting in the following text being displayed as a sub-heading:

Hello John. Welcome to your onboarding portal.

Configuration of data-driven workflow for vacancy request approvals
A new option may be selected in the definition of requisition actions buttons in exactly the same way as show/hide visibility may be configured for vacancy form fields. Simply add a Visibility child element to a requisition action and set the required show/hide logic, based on a selected vacancy classifier.