Building job posting approval workflows

Enabling posting approvals

All approval workflows are managing from your Settings. If you would like to enable job posting approvals:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals > Approval Settings.
• Make sure the 'Require approval to create new postings within Lever' toggle is turned on.

• Additionally, when Lever users are asked to provide approval they will also receive an automated email from Lever. 
  • If you want to require users to authenticate their identity and log into Lever before approving a request, then make sure the 'Require user authentication for making decisions on approval requests' toggle is turned on. 
  • If you also want to hide the details of the request from the email body, then make sure the 'Hide approval details from approval emails' checkbox is 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:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals > Postings.
• Click the Create Approval button and select Default from the menu that appears.

• 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Job posting approval workflows for multi-location postings

Job posting approval workflows will trigger multi-location postings based only on the primary location. Workflows will not trigger based on locations listed as secondary locations. 

The emails that users in your approval chain receive as part of the approval workflow will include the full list of secondary locations. In this way, approvers will still have visibility into the multi-location nature of the posting.

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.

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