Managing Hiring Plan settings: req fields, approvals

📌 Prerequisite: Prior to starting setting up and using the Hiring plan, Super Admins need to check if the colleagues who will get involved with requisitions have the right permissions in Workable and are assigned to relevant departments/locations.

Enabling Hiring Plan

1. Visit your user icon in the upper right of Workable
2. Click on Settings and select Hiring Plan
3. If this is the first time you enable Hiring Plan features on the account, click the switch to turn on requisitions. This action will display some additional settings to manage later on. 

 

Managing requisition fields

Before you start using the Hiring plan, choose how your requisitions will be coded and set the Requisition fields that will need to be filled each time a requisition is created. You can also choose which fields will require re-approval if you edit a requisition along the way. 

Code your requisitions

Enable the switch for automatic requisition code generation if desired and set the code's prefix along with the code's starting number. Each time, the code will automatically increment by 1 for each new requisition created, and it won’t be possible to manually edit the code.

Leave the switch disabled if you prefer to manually enter the code each time.

Configure the requisition fields

Default requisition fields

Once you enable the Hiring Plan, you will see the below default requisition fields. 

Field	Notes
Job title	Mandatory field. Not possible to edit or delete.
Department	Mandatory field—taken from the job. You can edit the 'Field completion' setting.
Requisition Location	You can set this as the job's location or choose a different one altogether. You can edit the 'Field completion' setting. When edited, it always triggers re-approval.
Hiring Manager	Mandatory field. You can edit the 'Requires re-approval' setting.
Requisition owner	Mandatory field. You can edit the 'Requires re-approval' setting.
Plan date	Mandatory field. You can edit the 'Requires re-approval' setting.
Reason	You can edit the 'Requires re-approval' setting. Dropdown options are: New Hire Replacement: replacing someone who left the company Backfill: filling the position of someone who moved internally
Employment type	You can edit the 'Field completion' and 'Requires re-approval' settings.
Experience	You can edit the 'Field completion' and 'Requires re-approval' settings.
Salary range	You can edit the 'Field completion' and 'Requires re-approval' settings.
Notes	You can edit the 'Field completion' and 'Requires re-approval' settings.

Enable/Disable fields

Certain default fields are mandatory and cannot be disabled (the toggle will be greyed out). These are the core details required for each requisition. If you do not plan to use a field, click the switch to turn it off. The field will not be used when creating requisitions from now on, but it can be re-enabled for future requisitions at any time.

 

Add new fields

To add your own fields:

1. Click "Add another field" at the bottom of the list
2. Fill out the field name and pick the field type (and the multiple-choice options if applicable) according to the data you are looking to gather

Each field has "Field completion" and "Requires re-approval" options:

• Field completion: Should this field be required to be filled in when a req is created, or is it optional (can be filled out later)?
• Requires re-approval: Do changes to this field need to be re-approved if the req is edited?

In the above example:

• Plan Date (the month when a hire should be planned to start work) is required at the creation of the req and requires approval if changed 
• Salary Range isn't required at creation because it might be formalized later, however, once the salary is added it will require approval
• Business Unit isn't required at creation and if it changes later it doesn't need to be approved, allowing for the most flexibility

Edit fields

Edit fields by clicking the three dots menu to the right. Some default fields may not allow editing of specific settings. 

Delete fields

Requisition fields already used in requisitions cannot be deleted. If you added a new field by mistake and hasn't been used yet you can delete it by clicking the three dots menu to the right. 

Changing the order of fields is not currently supported.

 

Setting up approval workflows

Each requisition created with Workable's Hiring Plan must be approved before it can be opened and there is no way to bypass this process. Selected users or groups of users will review requisition details like title, start date, and salary filled using the fields above.

The approvers get notified by email once a requisition needs reviews and they can approve the details or reject them from the hiring plan dashboard with a note if an update is required. After the approval process is complete the req stakeholders are notified and the Requisition Owner or a Super Admin can officially open the requisition.

You can request requisition approval from:

• Any Workable user (excluding external recruiters)
• A specific user type, for example: 

• Super Administrators group: any Super Admin in Workable can approve the requisition
• Recruiting Administrator group: any user who is assigned as a 'Recruiting Admin' in the req's department/location can approve the requisition
• Hiring Managers group: any user who is assigned as a 'Hiring Manager' in the req's department/location can approve the requisition

These users will see all of the details that were entered when creating a requisition. 

Default approval workflows

When you first enable requisitions, you'll need to set up a default approval workflow. You can edit or build more custom approval workflows at any time. 

1. Navigate to the Hiring Plan section of your account
2. Add approvers to the Default approval workflow section. In the below example, the approval request will be first sent to members of the 1st approval group (in this case Natalie). When someone from the 1st group approves, only then it will be sent to the members of the 2nd approval group and so on.

If the requisition gets rejected, req stakeholders are notified immediately. The requester can update and resubmit the requisition, which will begin the approval workflow again.

Custom approval workflows

1. Under the same page, locate the Custom Approval Workflows section at the bottom.
2. Select "Add a new custom approval workflow" or edit an existing workflow.
3. Provide a name for the workflow to make it easily identifiable. Then set the department(s) and/or location(s) for which this workflow will be used. 
4. Add approvers as you did with the default approval workflow.

If either the department or location field is blank then the workflow can apply to any department/location. For example, a blank department with a “Boston, MA” location would mean that the workflow is selected for all departments, but the requisition must be in Boston. 

Set a broad location to make the workflow available for requisitions in a big region. The location could be set to “Canada” and the workflow will be available to requisitions in Canada, even though the job itself is likely to be in a specific office (e.g. “Vancouver, Canada”).

You can return to this setting to edit any of your approval workflows. Note that by default, if you update an approval workflow, it will not be updated for the requisitions that are pending approval. To re-trigger it while a requisition is still pending approval, follow the steps outlined here.

 

FAQs

Can I reorder the requisition fields? 

Reordering requisition fields can only be executed by our support team, and it applies only to the fields added manually, not the default fields in your hiring plan settings.

How does the approval workflow selection process work? 

Approval workflows are selected automatically when a requisition is created. The custom approval workflow that best matches the requisition's department and location will be selected. The default workflow will be selected if there is no match for the department and location combination.