July 2019 Release Notes

Interview self-scheduling

Interview scheduling is a labor intensive process for recruiters and candidates alike - it usually involves multiple touch points between the parties trying to find times that work. In July 2019 release, we are introducing interview self-scheduling tool that will help recruiters schedule candidates faster while reducing the time it takes. 

Interview self-scheduling allows recruiters to suggest interview time blocks and send them to candidates. Candidates select time slots based on the interviewers’ calendar availability.

Interview self-scheduling uses real-time interviewer availability to inform candidate time slot selections, so customers need to enable a calendar integration in order to benefit from self-scheduling. Self-scheduling is supported for all calendar integrations available to  SmartRecruiters customers - Google Calendar, Office 365 and Exchange.

The self-scheduling option is available on the Interview tab of the candidate page. An interview scheduler can choose between scheduling a new interview (an option that takes them to the familiar interview scheduling functionality) or inviting a candidate to self-schedule. This choice will be presented as a dropdown linked to the “Schedule” button.

Customers who do not have a calendar integration enabled will continue to see only the option to schedule interviews, and will not see the new self-scheduling option. 

All users with a hiring team role permission to schedule interviews against a job will also have access to self-scheduling. Self-scheduling does not have it's own permission configuration. 

Preparing an invitation to self-Schedule

Once the scheduler selects the self-scheduling option, they will land on a self-scheduling workflow. In the first step, schedulers can specify interview details, such as step, location, event title, interview type (which will apply to the interview when it is scheduled automatically), as well as duration. Duration defines how time slots will be presented to the candidate. Duration options are 15, 30, 45 minutes, 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 hours.

In the second step, schedulers can select blocks of time on the calendar where they are open to scheduling an interview. Schedulers are presented with a week view and can select blocks of time by clicking and dragging the cursor. You select blocks of time over multiple days, and navigate between days and weeks. By default, you will see the calendar in the timezone of your browser, but you can view it in a different timezone by clicking on the timezone letters (in this case, CST). 

Schedulers can choose to view their own calendar or calendars of hiring team members. For example, if a recruiter is scheduling a 1-1 with their candidate, they need to select only their own calendar (selected by default). If a recruiter is scheduling a 1-1 screen with a hiring manager, they will need to select the hiring manager on the “Hiring Team” sidebar, and un-select themselves. Finally, if a recruiter wants to schedule a screen between a candidate and multiple interviewers (e.g. hiring manager and the person who is shadowing them), they will need to select calendars of both of those people. 

Note that schedulers can only select self-scheduling time blocks for hiring team members. Resources, such as conference rooms, are not supported. Room availability can change frequently, so we recommend adding a room to the interview after it is scheduled. Users will be able to do this easily by editing and updating the interview.

Selected interviewer time blocks will be shown below in the interview summary section. 

Schedulers can further configure the settings of the future interview by specifying whether it should a private one (showing as “busy” on the interviewers calendars without disclosing details). This functionality will work exactly like with the traditional scheduling.

Lastly, schedulers can craft their message to the candidate that will accompany an invitation to self-schedule. There are two ways to do this. First, SmartRecruiters Admins can configure new email templates under a newly created template type “Invitation to self-schedule” on the Email Templates configuration page. Second, schedulers can send a custom message. 

Once the invitation to self-schedule is sent to the candidate, a record about it will appear on the Interviews tab, and the email message will be recorded in the Emails tab. 

Self-schedule interview drafts 

In the same way that drafts are saved for normal interview scheduling, self-scheduled interviews will also be saved as drafts if you don't complete the interview scheduling workflow. It also extends the scope of information that can be saved and reused. Interview details, such as interview properties, time blocks, candidate email content and  and private yes/no selection will be pre-loaded. 

Additionally, in a self-scheduling interview, time blocks that you have selected across multiple invitations to self-schedule will also be saved. For example, when a recruiter needs to invite three different candidates to self-schedule for an interview with a hiring manager and selects time blocks for that hiring manager while scheduling the first candidate, the same time blocks will load automatically when the recruiter starts creating an invite for the second candidate, and selects the same hiring manager’s calendar. Time block selections will be preserved for the duration of the login session so that it’s easier to schedule multiple candidates with the same people.

What the candidate sees

When the candidate receives an email with an invitation to self-schedule, they can click on the self-scheduling link to land on a page that will show all of the options available to them. Those options are updated in real time based on the calendar availability of interviewer(s). If the interview was scheduled for multiple interviewers, all of them need to be still available in order for the time slot to show up. If an interviewer has an all-day event scheduled in their calendar, the time slots for that day will or will not be presented to the candidate depending on the status of the all-day event in the calendar. If the status of an all-day event is "busy", the time slots for that day will not be shown to the candidate, and vice versa.

The candidate-facing scheduling page includes the Brand name selected for the job when it's created, as well as the job title. The candidate scheduling page is fully mobile responsive and will show the options in the time zone based on the candidate's browser time zone. For example, if the scheduler selected time blocks in Eastern Time (EST), but the candidate is located in Pacific Time (PST) as set in their browser, they will see the time slot options in PST. The candidate can also change to view slots in a different time zone - this may be handy if the candidate is traveling. 

When the candidate selects a time slot that works for them, they will see a screen inviting them to confirm their choice. They can always go back if they select the wrong time slot.

Candidates can simply respond to the invitation email if none of the time slots suggested work for them. This is indicated on the scheduling page. Their response will be recorded under the Messages tab on their candidate application page in SmartRecruiters. The interview scheduler will also receive the email response in their inbox. The scheduler can continue the email conversation to schedule from there.

When the candidate clicks to “schedule meeting”, they see a confirmation page, and an interview is scheduled for all interviewers. The candidate also receives a calendar invite with all interview details previously specified by the scheduler. 

The calendar invite will be accompanied by a simple email stating that the interview is confirmed - for the benefit of tracking the timing of such emails, the email will also be recorded in the Email messages tab against the candidate record in SmartRecruiters.

If the candidate needs to reschedule, they can keep using the same self-scheduling link. They simply select a different time slot (again, based on a real-time availability of interviewers) and confirm. 

This will reschedule an interview for all interviewers, and send an updated calendar invite to the candidate as well. The invites to candidate are sent in the universal calendar format (.ics file), so they can be easily used with any calendaring software that the candidate may use. 

Lastly, if the candidate wants to decline an interview invite, they can do that by declining their interview invite - a notification about that will be sent to the scheduler. This functionality works identically to the traditional interview scheduling.

Once the candidate confirms the interview, and information about the interview will be shown in all places where information about traditional interviews appears - homepage, job activity tab etc.

Watch the following video for a demo of the new self-scheduling functionality: 

Assessments auto-triggering

Previously, Admin users could configure custom steps in the hiring process to include assessments. However, sending the assessments to a candidate who made it to that step still required a manual action from a member of the hiring team. In the July release, we are introducing an additional setting for assessments so they can be triggered automatically.

Admin users can configure auto-triggering an assessment under Admin/Settings » Hiring Process and then choosing a specific step. 

When an application moves into the hiring step where the auto-triggered assessment has been enabled, the candidate will be automatically sent the assessment in the background. The same automation would apply to a group of candidates when they are bulk moved to a hiring step that includes an auto-triggered assessment.

Watch the following video for a demo of assessment auto-triggering: 

Tableau Web Data Connector v2

The updated Tableau Web Data Connector integration allows users to access data from custom reports built in Report Builder directly in the Tableau Desktop application. This will help recruiting to drastically speed up their ability to create and easily refresh dashboards created using Tableau.

To take advantage of this integration, customers will need to download Tableau Desktop and have an active license. Admin users will also need to provide their SmartRecruiters API key (or SmartToken) to import data into Tableau. 

Follow these steps to use the integration: 

Select Your Report

Find API Key 

Import Data 

Watch the following video for an overview of the updated Tableau Web Data Connector and other reporting enhancements: 

Brand new application experience

SmartRecruiters is continuously dedicated to giving your candidates the best application experience, providing you with happy applicants and the highest conversion rates in the industry.

Candidates will experience a modernized look and feel when applying to one of your jobs. This update also includes new functionalities. Candidates will find it easier to add and edit their application, with a new font update, better validation, and smart date pickers.

Before:	After:

This update also includes these additional functionalities:

• The job title and company is displayed at the top of the page, reminding the candidate of the job he is applying to.

• Candidates can now drag-and-drop their resume directly on to the page for a faster way to upload their resume.

• Candidates will be able to see quick validation feedback after filling out a field on the application form. This validation also improves the accessibility of the entire application experience:

Watch the following video for an overview of the exciting changes to the candidate application experience:

Mobile Hiring App: Action Center

Hiring Managers using our mobile Hiring App are usually on the go, and try to use the app to obtain quick insights about their jobs and take quick, impactful actions. Our Actions Center helps them review their hiring funnel quickly, and send nudge reminders to interviewers who have not completed their reviews of previously interviewed candidates. 

The Actions Center is now the default home screen for our mobile Hiring Apps. It consists of two sections, Screening and Review Reminders. Users of the app can switch between the Actions Center and Hireloop views using a toggle.

Screening section 

• This section shows a list of jobs with counts of candidates that users would like to review. 

• Jobs that show up in this section must fulfill the following: a) the job is in an active status and b) the user is a member of the hiring team. 

• Users can configure the list of jobs that show by choosing the hiring process status they want to filter by. All top-level hiring process stages are supported. When it comes to hiring process steps, only the custom hiring process steps configured in the default hiring process are available for selection. 

• Limitations: up to 10 jobs are displayed in this section and up to 50 applications are shown per the selected stage or step. 

Review Reminders section

• This section shows a list of candidates who still haven't received a review from an interviewer 3 days following an interview. 

• The list is available for users who are a) assigned the Hiring Manager role on a job and b) where the job is in an active status. 

• Users can choose to remind an interviewer to leave a review. This sends a Direct message to the interviewer via Publisher. 

• Reminders older than 31 days are cleared automatically from the list. 

• Limitations: only reminders for up to 10 jobs are displayed.

Watch the following video for an overview of the new Action Center on the Mobile Hiring App or click the following link to download a PDF version:

SmartCRM: Campaign audiences and more

SmartCRM enhancements include a big update to Campaigns, as well as many delightful improvements to Lead Capture Forms and Communities.

• Campaigns 
  • Campaign audiences
  • Campaign localization 
• Lead Capture Forms_​​​:
  • Auto-reply configuration
  • Country code picker 
  • Deactivate Form
• Communities: 
  • Search bar in Prospects tab 
  • Sort prospects
  • Prospect quick filters 
  • Prospect actions and bulk actions
  • Add prospects to a community 
  • Blocked activity in a closed community

Campaign Audiences

The first version of campaign audiences will provide users with the ability to define a filtered list of prospects to be included in a campaign based on their location, proximity, community application status and screening question answers. There will be an additional step added to the campaign creation workflow. 

Sourcers can select multiple values under the audience filters, except for the proximity filter. Prospects matching any of the selected values will be included in the campaign audience. For example, if "Berlin" and "London" are both selected under the location filter, prospects with location matching either city will be included in the campaign.

Sourcers can also use multiple filters together. Prospects need to match values in each of the filters to be included in the campaign. For example, if the value "Berlin" is selected in the location filter, and the status "Interested" is selected in the community application status filter, all prospects in Berlin who have "Interested" status will be included. A prospect in "Berlin" with a different community application status won't be included. 

There is one exception when location and proximity filters are used together. Prospects matching any of the selected values for these two filters will be include. For example, user selects location "Los Angeles" and proximity "50 miles around San Francisco." Prospects that match either one of these selections will be included in the campaign audience.

After creating and launching the campaign, the campaign audience will be visible in the campaign dashboard.

Campaign localization

Campaign creators will be able to choose their preferred language for the email footer and unsubscribe page to match the language used in their campaign email. This will be required to create a campaign. 

Lead Capture Forms: ​​​​​Auto-reply configuration

Lead capture form wizard now contains a setting to turn the default auto-reply message on or off. Auto-replies are active by default, but sourcers can switch them on or off at any point.

Lead Capture Forms: Country code picker 

A country code picker has been added to the phone number field on lead capture forms. The country code will default language of the form. For example, if the form's language is English (US), the country code will default to +1.

Lead Capture Forms: Deactivate form

Search bar in the prospect tab 

Users can now search through all text inside candidate profiles and resumes using the new embedded search bar in the Prospects tab. All search features including partial queries, boolean operators and advanced search strings are supported. Visit Search Tips and Tricks for more details around people search functionality. 

Sort prospects

Users will now be able to sort prospects in a community by Last name or Modified date on the Prospects tab. Prospects are listed from A to Z when sorting by name. When sorting by Modified date, prospects will be sorted from top to bottom by most recently updated status. 

Prospect actions

Users can take actions on individual prospects in the Prospect tab. Available actions include:

• Add to job: Add the prospect to a job and create an application. Prospect will be added as a Lead. 
• Add to community: Add the prospect to another community. Prospect will be added in "Added" status. 
• Mark as "Not interested"
• Mark as "Not selected"
• Remove from the community

Users can also perform the same set of actions on prospects in bulk. 

Quick filters in communities

Sourcing teams can click on the counts in the community funnel to quickly filter the prospect list by each community stage.

Add prospects to a community

Sourcers can now add prospects directly to communities by filling their profile information or uploading and parsing their resume. If a candidate profile exists already, the prospect will be merged with the existing profile. The same merge rules are applied. 

Block activity in closed communities

When a community is closed, the sourcing team will no longer be able to perform the following actions:

• Add new prospects in the community or update the community application status of existing prospects.
• Publish new lead capture forms or re-activate existing forms of this community. All existing forms are deactivated automatically.
• Schedule or launch new campaigns and, replicate or edit existing campaigns.
• Create new connected searches or re-run existing connected searches.

After reopening the community, all actions will be available again, but no campaign or form will be activated automatically. 

Watch the following video for a demo of the SmartCRM enhancements included in this release: 

Delightful Improvements

Here's a list of smaller but no less delightful things are are part of our July 2019 release.

Bi-directional calendar sync

Many interviews have last-moment changes driven by the change in interviewer availability. When those changes happen, many interview organizers take the route of updating interviews in their calendaring system directly. Bi-Directional interviewer sync allows companies to define the level of flexibility for those last-moment interview changes originated from the calendaring system.

Bi-Directional interviewer sync is supported for all calendar integrations available to SmartRecruiters customers: Google Calendar, Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange. Admins can turn on bi-directional sync from their calendar Integration configuration tab.

When Admin turns on the Interviewer Sync option, they can specify whether they would like to allow adding only, removing only, or both adding and removing interviewers from the calendar directly. 

Job RefId added to emails notifications and interview invites

Many jobs share the same job title, and when someone receives emails about such jobs, it is difficult to distinguish them. In many cases, the email recipient needs to click on the email to log into SmartRecruiters in order to verify which job is the email referring to.

We have included REF ID into emails and notifications that, according to our customers, have been causing the most confusion. Specifically:

• Job and Offer Approval request emails now include REF ID of the job which provides the context of the approval email. The subject lines will now read: "Recruiter XX sent you a job (offer) approval request - REF123
• Interview calendar invite email now includes REF ID of the job for which an interview is being organized. In the body of the invite, it will now say "Schedule for interview between SmartRecruiters Inc and John Doe (candidate for Product Operations Specialist - REF123)"
• Interview feedback request emails now include REF ID of the job for which the email recipient interviewed a candidate. The subject line will now say: ""What is your feedback on John Doe, candidate for Product Operations Specialist - REF123?" All of these email header changes are translated into all languages.

Candidate name in Publisher emails

Previously, Publisher update emails had the same subject line ("John Doe mentioned you in an update"). In order to look up which candidate was this email about, email recipients needed to open it and see the name in the body of the Publisher message. Additionally, since many email providers, such as Gmail, thread emails based on the subject line, if someone sent Publisher updates about multiple candidates, they would be lumped into a single thread making it hard to read.

We have included candidate names from the Publisher update into the email subject line. This allows users to see easier which candidate is the update about, and prevents updates about different candidates from getting lumped together. The subject line now says: "John Doe mentioned you in an update (Ellen Smith)", where Ellen Smith is the name of the candidate.

URLs hyperlinked in Screening Questions

Screening questions support URL hyperlinks. When you add links to a screening question, Candidates will be able to click and open these links directly. 

Please add the following format in your screening questions setting: [title](link). Some characters will be forbidden for security reasons, such as < > ;. 

In addition to links, we also now support bold and italic in your questions, please add the following in your settings around the words you want changed:  

\n : break line
**text** : bold
*text* : italic

GDPR retention rules apply to referrals

SmartRecruiters offers administrators the ability to set up a GDPR Data Retention Rule. Upon request, if the candidate did not give his consent within 30 days, then the profile will be automatically deleted. 

This rule will now apply to referrals as well. When a user makes a referral in the system, a message is sent to the referred candidate, asking them to officially apply and give their consent.  The email will contain the following message:

Dear [Referral First Name] [Referral Last Name], [Referrer First Name Referrer Last Name] referred you to the position of [JobTitle] in [JobLocation] at [Company]. If you're interested in the position, you can apply by viewing the job ad here [link] and clicking "I'm Interested". If you do not, your information will be deleted from [Company] in 30 days. Thank you, [Company] Hiring Team

If the referred candidate does not apply and give his consent, then they will be deleted automatically from the system after 30 days.The GDPR Retention Rule is optional and can be configured within the Global Compliance setting.  

Please note that: if the candidate was previously in the system and already acquired consent, then the candidate will not receive the referral email indicating the "30 days deletion" and will not be deleted subsequently.  

 

Consent in Job Alerts

A checkbox informing candidates of privacy policies was added to the Job Alert form.

Improvements in Google Search job postings

Your expired jobs will be automatically removed from Jobs in Google Search. Additional updates for made to improve job discoverability in Google Search widget.

Report Builder Enhancements

Ability to filter reports list

We've introduced the ability for report creators to filter the list of reports. This update is aimed at making it easier to manage the reports list as multiple users can create reports and have those shared automatically. The new filter currently defaults to to show "All" reports. Users can also choose to filter between reports that they created or that were shared with them. 

Users with system role "Standard" user or custom system role that has "View Only" permission for Report Builder will not see or be able to use the filter. 

Additional date filter options

We've added two new date filter options to Report Builder and removed one of the date filters which was causing confusion for report creators. 

New date filters include: 

• Previous year - selecting this date filter will restrict your dataset to the exact start and end dates of the last calendar year. For example, if you create a Job report, choose to filter by Job creation date and select this option, the report will include jobs created between Jan. 1, 2018 to Dec. 31, 2018. 
• Pervious month - selecting this filter will restrict your dataset to the exact start and end dates of the last month. For example, if you create the same Job report, choose again to filter by Job creation date and select this option, the report will include jobs created between Jun. 1, 2019 and Jun. 30, 2019.

You will also notice a small enhancement to provide you with a clear set of dates based on your date filter option: 

We've removed the "Last month." This date filter is a rolling filter that changes based on the date the report is run. It has been introducing confusion among report creators due to its similarity to "Last 30 days" filter option. If you are currently using this date option in your report, your reports will not be affected, and will continue to work as usual. However, we recommend switching to a different date filter by editing the report. 

New Reviews and Tags data fields

We've added Tags data and Reviews data to Report Builder. Users will be able to create a new Reviews report and also to add candidate Tags data fields to the Candidate and Application reports. See the full list of Report Builder data fields for more details. 

General Application included in Report Builder 

Previously, if a candidate was connected to General Application job, then they would be included in the Candidate report. Now, those candidate applications will also be included when users create an Application report. This update will help Administrators to be able to better audit and manage General Application candidates. 

Columns limit increased to 50 data fields 

When creating a report in Report Builder, users will now be able to add up to 50 columns of different data fields. This enhancements allows users to create much more complex reports, combining data from a multitude of different entities in the system. 

Org fields limit increased to 25

When configuring your job fields, you are now able to add up to 25 fields ( including Department, Brand, Country) opposed to 14 earlier.

Marketplace Assessments API enhancement

We've extended the GET:/assessment endpoint with two new query parameters to help vendors more easily search through assessements: candidateUUID and jobUUID. For more information, visit: https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/mark...getAssessments. 

New endpoints in Candidate API 

We've added new capabilities to our Customer API:

• Retrieve a candidate's specific application: For more information, visit: https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.getApplication.
• Add, retrieve and delete an attachment on candidate's application: For more information, visit: https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.attachments.listForJob, https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.attachments.addForJob and https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.attachments.deleteForJob. 
• Retrieve the withdrawal reason on a candidate's specific application: For more information, visit: https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.get and https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/candidate-api/#/candidates/candidates.getApplication. 
• Custom Hiring Team Roles available in the Customer API: Use the Job API to add a user to Hiring Team with a Custom Hiring Team role. For more information, visit: https://dev.smartrecruiters.com/customer-api/live-docs/job-api/#/jobs/jobs.hiring-team.add

SmartLabs

SmartReview

Those who attended HS19 will remember one of the hackathon entries: the Resume Carousel. We're releasing this as part of SmartLabs in the July’ 19 release, and calling it SmartReview:

Now, users will be able to select multiple candidates from the Applicant list of a job:

and then view their resumes side by side. Please note that this will only work with PDF Documents. 

 

You will be able to take quick actions, such as: 

• Add a tag
• Move forward
• Reject 

If you’re interested in using this, you need to use Chrome as your browser so that you can install the following extension from the Chrome Extensions Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smartreview/fpkmokijbacdhcicdmgdioaggjomfbki 

Note that since the resume viewer functionality resides within the Chrome browser, it is not aware of the specific SmartRecruiters user permissions to take certain actions, such as reject or move forward. Therefore, all users will be able to see the buttons "Reject" and "Move forward" in the plugin; however, if they do not have the permission to e.g. reject the candidate, when they click on "Reject", this will not result in a rejection action. Only users with proper permissions will have their actions started in the plugin result in the actual application status changes.

Facebook Jobs v2

Admins can now map a Facebook page to a particular brand in their brand settings. All new jobs created with this brand will be listed on the associated Facebook page.

If no Facebook page is specified in brand settings, all jobs will still be posted to the Facebook jobs feed. However, Facebook's algorithm will be responsible for attribute the job to a particular page.