Context
Creating jobs and templates is key to a smooth onboarding. While Mercu lets you make changes anytime, a well-structured setup with relevant content ensures a seamless experience.
Before we dive in, we strongly recommend watching this video, as it visually outlines the key concepts and best practices.
Preparation
While you could set up your jobs and templates directly in Mercu, we don’t recommend it. It’s much easier to first document everything in a document or digital whiteboard and then create it in Mercu.
This approach allows you to easily rearrange, edit, and align details without navigating the platform while still getting familiar with it.
We recommend setting up a document or digital whiteboard before planning and designing your jobs and templates.
Exercise 1: Listing out all your roles
As a first exercise, list all the roles you regularly hire for. You can include niche or ad-hoc roles, but since these are unlikely to be templated, they are less relevant.
The output of this exercise should be a list of all roles for which you plan to create job templates.
A role should have its own job template in Mercu if it requires a unique workflow, content, and questions. Additionally, two roles with different names cannot share a template, as the role name is locked at the template level to ensure consistency.
Exercise 2: Defining each role's job stages
Now that you've listed your major roles, define the job stages for each one. Job stages represent the steps candidates go through on their way to being hired or rejected.
The output of this exercise should be a list of job stages and their relevant objectives for each role.
Typically, a role includes a screening stage, an interview scheduling stage, an offer stage, and a rejection stage. However, job stages are fully customisable: you can include multiple scheduling stages, none at all, or even asynchronous video/voice interviews. The key is ensuring the stages accurately reflect your hiring workflow.
As you define the stages, consider the actions each stage should trigger for the candidate (see Exercise 3). Some stages may not trigger any action and can simply serve as holding stages (e.g., for shortlisting candidates).
This exercise needs to be completed for each role that you listed in Exercise 1.
A note on asynchronous video/voice interviews
Mercu supports asynchronous video and voice interviews. If this is included in your plan, you would typically set it up as a replacement for an initial screening call with a recruiter and create a dedicated stage for it.
A note on 3rd-party non-HRIS/HRMS integrations
Mercu supports integrations with various third-party tools that are not HRIS or HRMS platforms. Examples include background check tools, digital form tools, and psychometric assessment tools.
If any of these integrations are included in your plan, you can trigger them by adding an integration module to a job stage. For example, to initiate a background check, you would create a "Background Check" stage and add an integration module in Mercu to connect with the background check tool.
Exercise 3: Designing content for each job stage
Now that you've defined each role's job stages, it's time to get into the designing the relevant content. This is where Mercu differs from most existing Applicant Tracking Systems, as they do not support automating candidate screening, interview scheduling, and communication at scale.
The output of this exercise should be the actual content and questions you want to include in each job stage.
Anatomy of a job stage in Mercu
With the exception of the 'Review' and 'Rejection' stages (see below), every job stage has the following structure:
Welcome message: Sent to the candidate when they enter the stage. It should be concise and provide brief context on where they are in the hiring process and what to expect next.
Example: Hey {{firstName}} 👋, great news! Your application stood out, and we're inviting you to record a quick voice or video introduction. This helps us get to know you and your passion for our brand better.
Body content: Sent sequentially after the candidate taps "Continue" on the welcome message. This section can include a mix of content modules (e.g., sharing company culture) and question modules (e.g., asking about availability, past experience, or preferred location).
We recommend keeping this section to 6-8 modules, where each module is either a block of content or a single question.
Conclusion message: Sent after the candidate completes the body content.
Question types in Mercu
Mercu supports a variety of question types:
Short answer
Yes/No
True/False
Multiple choice (single option select)
Acknowledgment
Mercu also supports branching within the body content. To read more about this, please take a look at this.
Review stages in Mercu
A review stage has no content attached to it and does not trigger any messages when a candidate is moved into it.
Review stages are typically used as "holding stages" for shortlisting candidates, but you can use them in any way that best suits your process.
Rejection stages in Mercu
Rejection stages in Mercu are single-message stages. They do not include a welcome message, body content, or conclusion message. Instead, they trigger a single, customisable message informing the candidate that they were not successful.
Next steps
Congratulations! You've completed the exercises for creating jobs and job templates.
Here’s what we recommend for the next steps:
Review all three exercises, ideally with your team or leadership, to gather feedback and get sign-off.
Refine job stages and content. Doing this in your document or on your whiteboard is much easier than making adjustments directly in Mercu (though not impossible).
Create jobs, stages, and content in Mercu, and set up templates. You can do this yourself or reach out to your onboarding manager for assistance.