Our Product Manager James shares the new features we’ve released in :Recruit and :Onboard to make your life easier, including time-based status change automation, a new way to consolidate candidate tags, approval workflows, and more.

Working from home has certainly been challenging, but when you’re self-disciplined and motivated, it’s been a great opportunity to action lots of outstanding tasks. (And thank goodness for free daycare!)

We’ve been staying connected digitally, but I must admit, it’s been tougher to share the highs and lows. Since returning to the office a few weeks ago, I’ve loved being able to thrive on the feedback and enthusiasm of others, both my team and our customers. Because my job is to “design cool stuff”, it’s important to have that feedback loop when designing said “cool stuff”.

It’s actually been surprising how quickly everything has returned to normal. We’ve changed some of our thought processes –implementing physical distancing, hand sanitising stations and extra cleaning– but after the excitement of seeing everyone in-person again, we’ve all just gotten back down to business. We all need a bit of normal back in our lives, so anything we can do to capture that is worthwhile.

So, what have we been up to? There are some exciting new features I’m excited to share with you.

Time-based status change automation

Many of our clients have to manage a huge amount of applications, particularly in recent times with a greater number of people entering the talent market. So many applicants, in fact, that it’s been difficult for them to get back to all their candidates.

While our Applicant Tracking System, Scout Talent: Recruit, has always had the capacity to send bulk communications to candidates with certain statuses, changing statuses hasn’t been automated.

Now, employers can commit to reviewing all candidates, within a certain number of days. After that time has elapsed and you’ve likely reviewed and been in communication with all your ideal candidates, you can change statuses in a time-based manner to automate responses to the rest of your talent pool.

For employers, not getting back to the right candidates in a certain time period could be doing them a disservice in keeping them on the hook instead of letting them know they haven’t been successful. This helps to solve that problem.

Automations can be simple and straightforward, and there are other more intricate automation you can establish if you have a unique workflow.

Status changes in :Recruit from :Onboard

For Scout Talent customers using :Onboard for digital contract creation and welcoming candidates to their organization, we’ve made a small, simple change that updates your new hire’s status in :Recruit. This will help procedures going forward (for example, for reporting or if you choose to use our :Engage talent pooling module).

Expanding our tags feature

For clients using :Recruit, you may be familiar with the option to create and manage tags for candidates with skills and attributes from their application. You can slowly start to build up tags for each candidate who applies (and use this in the :Engage talent pooling module, etc.)

We’ve made improvements to this feature, whereby you can now view a page to manage and consolidate the tags used by your organization.

Customized approver workflow

We’ve also created an approval workflow that allows you to assign customized approvers in your workflows. For example, your hiring managers may need recruitment from one person to recruit, and another person to make an offer after the interview stage. Also, your different organizational departments can have their own forms with their own approval levels.

I hope you get some great value out of these new features. Personally, I’m feeling excited about every day and being back in the office. Outside of work, I can’t wait to visit my wife and I’s favourite restaurant, enjoy the space and ambience as restrictions continue to lift. The past few months really makes you appreciate the little things, like the smell of fresh coffee brewing in your favourite café.

Alternatively, feel free to reach out to us at any time on 1 866 474 3140.