Job Alerts allow you to actively engage with your talent pools, simply by advertising new roles. As candidates register and sign up for job alerts, any roles that match their preferences will be automatically emailed to them, encouraging them to apply. You can manage this entire process, including dictating exactly which preferences to match on and the frequency of alerts, all within Eploy Job Alerts.
As well as dictate the preferences, you can also manage:
How often alerts are sent to encourage the right kind of engagement, but also avoid pestering potential candidates.
Alert email content, ensuring that any comms meet your brand standards and guidelines.
Summary emails, used when multiple jobs published on the same day meet the candidate preferences.
The Job Alerts module also allows you to preview on behalf of any specific candidate, whilst also giving a summary of engagement such as number of subscribers, number of matches and number of emails to be sent.
Managing Job Alerts
Job Alerts are all managed within Admin > Job Alerts.
If you have multiple candidate portals, you can have separate settings for each website. This allows you to ensure that any email templates are on brand and ensure candidates are directed to the right place to apply for the role.
Click into the existing settings to begin configuring the preferences, the frequency and the emails used to alert candidates.
Job alert settings are broken down into three different sections.
Details
This section controls the fundamentals of job alerts, including whether they are active, when they start sending and which templates to use:
Active - This should only be ticked when fully configured. If you ever wanted to stop job alerts for your website, you can uncheck this option.
Send Job Alerts From - This date field looks at when the vacancy was created, so if you only want your job alert settings to apply going forward, you can set the date that you intend to make it active. However, if you already have roles on the system and would like to include them in your alert settings, you can back-date this field to capture the roles you require.
Email Frequency - To ensure that you have the right level of engagement with your candidates, you can use this setting to specify how often job alert emails will be sent. If Hourly, candidates will be matched with active vacancies based on their preferences once per hour and will trigger any appropriate emails, whilst if Daily, this check only takes place once per day. If the candidate does not match with any roles during the frequency set, no email will be sent.
Maximum emails to send - This setting is linked with the Email Frequency and allows you to specify how many emails the candidate will receive for each Job alert cycle. For example, if you set this to 3 emails and the candidate matches with four vacancies, they will receive one summary email detailing the four roles, rather than four separate emails. If only 3 vacancies were matched, they will receive three separate emails.
Email Template - Separate - This is the email template used when the candidate matches with vacancies below the maximum specified above.
Email Template Summary - This is the email template used when the candidate matches with vacancies above / equal to the threshold.
When to Send Alerts
You can control exactly when job alerts are triggered for your website and you should consider when your jobs go live when making a decision on timings and days included. Job alerts will be triggered when a job is advertised on the website or when the candidate signs up for job alerts, so depending on when your roles go live, emails could be sent over the weekend or overnight etc.
Use the following fields to create a schedule that works for both your vacancies and your candidates, allowing at least a 4 hour window each day:
Start Sending Emails - This will be the earliest each day that job alerts will be triggered. Based on the number of roles that have gone live since the last job alert was triggered, this could lead to your summary email being triggered at this time (if the threshold has been reached).
Stop Sending Emails - This will be the latest time each day that a job alert will be sent. Use this to help avoid job alerts being triggered overnight.
City (Time Zone) - This field is linked to the start / stop sending times and will set the timezone.
Send on DAY - These tick boxes indicate which days are included when triggering job alerts and allow you to prevent alerts from sending on weekends etc.
Preferences
This section allows you to define how your job alerts match with candidates based the vacancy requirements and candidate preferences. When these criteria are specified on the vacancy record, any candidates who have opted into receiving alerts will receive any that match with their preferences:
Preferred Department
Preferred Location
Maximum Distance from Job (this is a radial distance from the Candidate's postcode)
Preferred Function
Annual Salary Required
📌 Note - For each option that you have ticked, the role will have to match all of the settings with the candidate. Also, consider whether you are actually capturing this information. For example, if you're not actively capturing the preferred function, if this option is selected, no Job Alerts will send.
The final setting is which contact preference to check when triggering job alerts. As a default it will look at the 'Would you like to receive Job Alerts from us?' question. You can also chose to include any other preferences from your consent module, if created.
Click Save to confirm your settings - if making active (at the top of these settings), Job Alerts will begin to trigger based on your sending times.
Previewing Job Alerts - testing your settings
Once configured, you can also Preview your job alert settings, which will give you an idea of how many candidates have opted in, as well as how many emails are likely to be triggered.
To view this, click Preview at the bottom of the settings page to see the following summary:
Candidates - This is the total number of candidates on the database
Candidates Subscribed - This is the number of candidates that have currently signed up for job alerts.
Live Vacancies - All of your current live vacancies.
Live Vacancies Matches - Based on your settings, this is the number of vacancies which will trigger alerts to your subscribed candidates.
Candidates Matched - Based on the live vacancies, this is the number of candidates who will match with the roles according to your current settings.
All Vacancy Notifications / Matches - This figure shows the number of emails which will be triggered, based on the number of live jobs which match with subscribed candidates.
Below the dashboard summary, you can preview the actual alerts received by specific subscribed candidates at any time. To do this, type in the candidate details in the Candidate drop down, select the record and click Preview.
If the candidate would receive less than the threshold for the summary, the preview would show the individual alert email, whilst if they were to exceed it, the preview will be the summary email.
Job Alert Email Templates
The templates used within Job Alerts can be found on the emails tab within Admin > Job Alerts.
Click into an existing template to edit or click New to create either a summary or detailed template:
Details Templates - These are used when individual roles match with the candidate and allows you to include more vacancy specific information, such as job descriptions and direct apply URLs.
Summary Templates - These are used when the roles matched to a candidate reaches your designated threshold. Rather than sending multiple detailed emails, the summary template is triggered instead.
Template Content
Once within the template editor, you can configure the basic details of the template, including the internal title, the method of contact (email, SMS or both) and whether the template is active or not.
Once this has been set, you can move into the email content where you can set the subject of the recipient emails, insert merge fields or attach files.
Within the HTML editor, you can configure the content of your email as required, before then choosing to include merge fields as required to draw information through from the vacancy.
As these are job alert emails, make sure you include either:
The Vacancy Website URL, which will link directly to the vacancy, allowing the candidate to read more information about the role.
The Vacancy Apply URL, which will by-pass the advert and start the log in / application process for the candidate.
The Results Link, which will show all of the roles which match the candidate preferences (this should be used in Summary templates only).
Once you have configured your content and inserted your merge fields, you can finish off your template by choosing to include any read receipts or email tracking, as we all configuring an associated SMS template.
Click Save to confirm your changes and your template will be available to select within your job alert settings.