Workflow Automation
Like any project we tackle through life, finding a job consists of working our way through a series of tasks that will ultimately lead us to the project's completion. In the case of a job seeker, finding a great job!
Other industries have many options when it comes to managing their day to day tasks. Take CRM systems (Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zendesk Sell, etc) as an example. Sales reps use their CRM to track potential customers, opportunities and all the activities they need to complete to close an opportunity; this includes automatically creating certain activities when the opportunity reaches a certain stage.
We believe the job search has many similarities with a sales pipeline, where jobs are opportunities that require repetitive tasks in order to be 'closed', i.e: getting the job. A typical job search consists of tasks like:
- Follow up a week after applying.
- Send a thank you email a few days after the interview.
- Find a contact within the company to reach out to.
- Practice interview questions after scheduling an interview.
- Prepare a custom cover letter before applying for the job.
Introducing Workflow Automation
Our new workflow automation feature was built for organizations that are helping job seekers during their search. It allows your organization to design workflows that will automate the assignment of activities you want your job seekers to complete when opportunities reach certain stages. With workflows you can setup automated processes like:
- When a job seeker moves a job opportunity to the Applied stage -> Create a new 'Follow up' activity due 1 week after the job was moved.
- When a job seeker saves a new job opportunity -> Create a new 'Find a contact within the company' activity due the day the job was created.
A worfklow consists of a trigger and one or more actions.
Trigger
A trigger is the event that must occurr for the action(s) side of the workflow to be initiated. A trigger consists of an actionType
and one or more conditions
.
Action Type
For now we offer two trigger action types:
- Job Created: Job seeker saved a job.
- Job Moved: Job seeker moved job to another stage.
Conditions
Trigger conditions give you the ability to target more specific actions. For now, there are three kinds of trigger conditions:
- Job was created or moved onto stage of type X: Triggers this workflow ONLY when a job is created or moved onto a stage of the type selected.
- Job was created or moved onto stage named X: Triggers this workflow ONLY when a job is created or moved onto a stage that matches the name entered.
- Job owner matches custom field value: Triggers this workflow ONLY for job seekers that match this field value. This is useful if you want to create workflows that are exclusive to a specific group of job seekers (i.e: My job seekers in New York). You can read more about Custom Job Seeker Fields here.
If you leave the trigger conditions section of the workflow empty, then the workflow will be initiated by all actions of the type selected for action type. So, if you selected 'Job Created', then this workflow will be triggered by any jobs created by your job seekers, regardless of who the job seeker is and what stage the job was saved to.
Actions
The action(s) side of the workflow details what Activities you want to create when the workflow is triggered. When designing a new 'Create Activity' action, you will have to enter values for the following fields:
- Activity Category: Select one of the default or custom activity categories from the dropdown field.
- Title: This will become the
title
for the Activity. - Note: This will become the
note
for the Activity. - Start At: This will become the
start at
field for the Activity. You will notice that there are two fields to fill in:Trigger date field
andAdd minutes
. The trigger date field represents a date extracted from the trigger action, this will be the basis for thestart at
field. You can then use theAdd minutes
field to push the activity'sstart at
date into the future. For example: If you selectJob created date
for theTrigger date
field and then1440
for theAdd minutes
field, then the activity will be assigned astart at
date 1 day (1440 minutes) after the job was created.
It is important to note that all activities created will be assigned to the job that triggered the workflow (i.e: The job that was moved or saved), and it will also be assigned to the owner (job seeker) of the job.
Where to add and update workflows
Go to your advisor portal, and click on the Workflows section on the left side menu. You will be able to create new workflows and update existing ones from there.
Testing a workflow
Once you have setup your workflow, the best way to test it is to complete the trigger action (move a job or save a job) and then go to the Job's expanded view, if your workflow was setup correctly, you should see a new activity on the Timeline section of the job modal, like seen below.