Building job posting approval workflows

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Available for Roles Super Admin, Admin
Permissions • Edit approval chains for requisitions, postings, and offers
Packages LeverTRM for Enterprise, Advanced HR add-on

Approving job postings quickly is a key part of enabling your recruiting team to hit their hiring goals. Lever’s job posting approval process ensures that all stakeholders have approved each posting before it is published. This article deals primarily with how to build job posting approval workflows. To learn how job posting approval workflows operate in practice, check out our help article on requesting job posting approval.


Locating the posting approvals interface

All approval workflows are managing from your Settings. To locate the posting approvals interface:

  • Navigate to Settings > Approvals
  • Make sure the 'Postings' tab is selected and the 'Require approval' toggle is turned on.

Approvals section of Lever Settings, Postings tab selected

Building the default posting approval workflow

The default posting approval workflow is applied to all postings that are not subject to a custom posting approval. There can only be one default posting approval workflow in a Lever environment. To build the default posting approval workflow:

  • Click the Create Approval button and select Default.
  • Click the Create Approval button and select Default from the menu that appears.

Close-up of Create Approval button with menu containing Default and Custom options. Default option is highlighted on hover.

  • Select criteria using the menus in the 'Details' block to define which postings to which you want the custom approval workflow to apply.
  • In Step 1 of the approval editor, start by adding approvers. If you are adding more than one approver, you must also define the minimum number of approvers required to approve the posting. There are three types of posting approvers you can add:
    • Dynamic approvers - users with a specific relationship to the posting, defined as follows:
      • Posting hiring manager — the Hiring manager of the posting, defined during posting creation.
      • Posting owner - the Owner of the posting, defined during posting creation.
    • Static approvers - specific users in your Lever environment
    • Custom approvers - an approver 'token' with a custom title; during posting creation, the user drafting the posting will select an approver from among the users in your Lever environment to fill the spot of the token. If an approval chain contains multiple custom tokens, an approver must be chosen for each token before approval can be requested. To learn how custom approver tokens appear in the posting creation process, refer to our help article on requesting approval for postings.

Approvers field in approval editor.

Dynamic approvers appear in blue, status approvers appear in grey, and custom approvers appear in pink.

  • If you wish to make a multi-step approval chain, click on the Add Step button and repeat as necessary for each additional step you wish to add. In a multi-step approval, the posting passes to the next individual or group of approvers in the sequence once approved by the minimum required number of preceding approvers.

pproval editor with multiple approver steps and arrow pointing to Add Step button.

  • When you have added all required approvers to the chain, click the Create button at the top of the editor.

 

If you are building a multi-step approval workflow with dynamic and/or custom approvers, check to make sure that the same individual will not prompted for approval at multiple points in the workflow.

The default posting approval workflow will activate upon creation. All posting created will be subject to the approval workflow unless superseded by a custom posting approval workflow.

Building custom posting approval workflows

Custom posting approval workflows can be used to supersede the default posting approval workflow for postings that meet a specific set of criteria based on department/team, work type, locations, and/or posting distribution. To build a custom posting approval workflow:

  • Click the Create Approval button and select Custom.

Close-up of Create Approval button with menu containing Default and Customs option. Custom option is highlighted on hover.

  • Select criteria using the menus in the 'Details' block to define which postings to which you want the approval chain to apply

Close up criteria buttons in posting approval editor.

Example of a custom posting approval workflow that applies to multiple departments, locations, and distributions.

  • Proceed to add approvers, steps, and defining minimum approver requirements as you would to build the default posting approval workflow (outlined above).
  • When you have added all required approvers to the workflow, click the Create button at the top of the editor.

If a posting meets the criteria of conditions in more than one custom approval workflow, the workflow with the largest number of matching criteria will take priority. In cases where the same number of criteria match, the matching criteria will be weighted in terms of importance as follows: (1) Team, (2) Department, (3) Location, (4) Work type, (5) Distribution

Example
A 'Client Experience Representative' posting is submitted for approval. The posting is associated with the 'Client Experience' department and has a work type of 'Part-time'. There are two active custom posting approval workflows, with the following criteria:

      • Workflow A:  Departments/teams - all; Locations - all; Work types - Part-time; Distributions - all
      • Workflow B: Departments/teams - Client Experience, all teams; Locations - all; Work types - all; Distributions - all

Although the 'Client Experience Representatives' posting meets the same number of criteria in both approval workflows, Workflow B will take precedence because the department criteria has a higher importance than the work type criteria.

Editing and deleting posting approval workflows

To make changes to a posting approval workflow:

  • Navigate to Settings > Approvals
  • Make sure the 'Postings' tab is selected.
  • Select the posting approval workflow that you wish to edit.
  • Click the Edit button in the approval editor.

Approval editor with arrow pointing to edit button.

  • When you have made the necessary changes, click the Save Changes button.

To delete a posting approval workflow:

  • Navigate to Settings > Approvals
  • Make sure the 'Postings' tab is selected.
  • Select the posting approval workflow that you wish to delete.
  • Click the ellipses (⋯) button in the approval editor.
  • Select Delete Approval Workflow.

Approval editor with option extending from ellipses button to delete approval workflow.

Approval workflows can also be edited and deleted by clicking the ellipses (⋯) aligned with each entry in the 'Approvals' list and selecting the corresponding option.

Close up of Approvals list with menu extended next to one approval entry with options to edit or delete it.

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