Creating your vacancy

Once you have submitted your vacancy, it will then proceed through an auto-notification process.  The number of steps in the approval process will vary depending on the organisation, and the Final Approver in the process is highlighted in bold below.

Responding to queries

1. Once you have selected the ‘Request Approval’ button, the approval process will commence.
2. The approver will receive an email notification, including a link direct to the vacancy, asking them to review the request.
3. The approver will review the vacancy and will have the option of Approving or Not Approving.
4. If the approver selects “No”, they will add comments or queries for you to respond to.
5. You must regularly check the Approval dashboard to monitor the progress of your vacancy requests. Any approvals “rejected” will appear in the Approval Rejected  Alternatively, if you open the vacancy, you will see the status has changed to ‘Update Vacancy and Resend’.
6. If you click on the Update Vacancy and Resend button, it will take you to a ‘Review Vacancy’ page. Under the Description tab, you can scroll to the bottom on the pages to see the reason for rejection. 
7. By clicking on the ‘Edit’ button at the top of the page, you can make the changes requested to the relevant field and/or add any comments in the Comments on Approval Process field at the bottom of the page.
8. After you have updated the details or added comments, scroll to the end of the page and press the ‘submit’ button and an email notification requesting re-approval will be sent to the approver who declined it initially.

•  You will not go back to the start of the process. For example, if HR, Job Evaluation and Finance all approved the vacancy but the Head of Service declined/queried the vacancy, once you update the information, it will go back to the Head of Service and continue through the next stages of the approval process. 

9. The vacancy will continue through the approval process until it has been approved or rejected by the final senior officer.

Exempt Posts

The Corporate Management Team will agree which vacancies will be ‘exempt’ from the approval process.  This list has been compiled on the principle that all posts contained within, are critical occupations which must be filled due to statutory or similar staffing requirements. Consideration has also been given to those posts / occupational groupings where rolling recruitment is needed as there is high frequency / turnover.

All exempt posts created on the Oleeo recruitment system will still be subject to vetting by the HR Advisor (where applicable), Job Evaluation and the Recruitment Team prior to the advert being placed on the corporate website.

1. Once the Final Approval has been given, a notification will be sent to the Recruitment Team to review and activate the vacancy. They will be responsible for ‘Activating’ the vacancy and posting to the relevant portal(s).
2. You will receive an email notification as soon as your vacancy is “live” on the system. The status of your vacancy will also appear as ‘Active – Open to Applications.
3. You can also check the status of your vacancy by clicking on the Active Vacancies – Live on website tab. Alternatively, in the Opportunity page, you can click on the Publish to Candidate Search Engines tab, and it will show which portals the vacancy has been posted to.

Promoting your vacancy

As the recruiting manager, you can use QR codes to promote your vacancy alongside the job search pages.

1. Open your vacancy and select the ‘Publish to Candidate Search Engines’ tab.
2. You will see unique links to URLs for the vacancy, which you can include in any promotional materials.

• Details: Will take you to QR Codes to take applicants directly to either the advert or the application form.
• Portal URL: Link will take applicants direct to the job search portal.
• Advert URL: Link will take applicants directly to the application form for the vacancy.

By default, the person who creates the vacancy will automatically be listed as a ‘participant’ and will have access to the vacancy.

There may be instances where you need to give colleagues access to the vacancy – they could be helping with shortlisting or involved in the interview panel; or you may be going on leave or one of the approvers may be away from work, so you need to give other people access to your vacancies. 

1. Open your vacancy and select the ‘Participants’ tab. 
2. Click on the +Add Participant button and a new box will appear.
3. Select the ‘User/Profile’ by doing a soft search – start typing their name and options will appear – some users may have multiple profiles, so choose the profile for the role you want them to undertake.
4. Choose the appropriate category – normally there will be a default option for you to choose. If a default option does not appear, select the type of role the participant will undertake e.g. Screener/interviewer
5. If you want them to be responsible overall for coordinating the recruitment process for this vacancy, then select the ‘Co-ordinator’ box.
6. If the person needs to view applications, then select the ‘Can View Applications’
7. Next, click on the ‘Add Participant’ button and the individual will be added to the list of participants.
8. A list of participants will appear with access to the vacancy. You can edit or remove participants.

You can simplify the create vacancy process by using templates to pre-populate the fields in the create vacancy form.

1. From the left-hand menu, select Vacancies, then select Templates. In the top right-hand corner of the page select the New Template button.
2. You will then be taken to a new page to complete three steps of creating a template.

• Step 1: Opportunity Creation Method
• Step 2: Candidate Forms
• Step 3: Completing Vacancy Details

3. You will be asked for the template a Post Title.
   • Remember, other users may have access to your template when creating a vacancy, you should be as clear as possible. You may wish to pre-fix your post title with your service area or team or school title to make them easier to search form. Remember to add the Welsh version of the post title.
4. You will be required to select how you will create the template from 3 options:

5. Click on the ‘Continue to Candidate forms’ button.
6. This step identifies the forms that the candidates will complete at each change of status in the workflow. These are set to defaults, and you should not change any of the settings. Simply scroll to the bottom of the page and move to Step 3 by clicking on the ‘Continue to Opportunity Details’ button.
7. This will take you to your Opportunity Details section, which have been set to default, so you do not need to complete any of their fields.

8. You will also see the Opportunity Description fields, which mirror the create vacancy page. For setting up the template, none of the fields on this page are mandatory.  You can complete as many or as few as required.  You will see that all the fields are marked with an asterisk however, this is to highlight the fields which will be mandatory when you come to create a live vacancy using this template.  You only need to complete the fields that you want to be pre-populated when you select this template.

9. Once you are happy, click on the Create Vacancy at the bottom of the page to save the template to the system.

• As with creating a vacancy, templates get assigned a unique ID number.
• You can edit the ‘Details, Description and Participants’ tabs at any time.

A template will help you save time by pre-populating some of the fields in the create vacancy form. 

1. When you create a vacancy, the first thing you are asked to do is to ‘Select a Template’.
2. Click on the ‘Select Template’ field, a drop-down list of templates will appear, or you can start typing the name of your vacancy in the soft-search field. If you do not have the option to select a template, or the vacancy you are looking for does not appear in the search menu, it is because a template has not been created for that vacancy.
3. From the drop-down list, select the vacancy template you require.
4. The pre-populated form (based on the fields you completed when setting up your template) will appear, and you can make changes to the relevant fields.
5. Select the Create Vacancy
6. The ‘status’ of your vacancy will change to ‘Draft’ and this allows you an opportunity to check that all the information is correct.

• You will be able to make amendments until you are ready to send it for approval. 
• If you want to make changes to your advert, in the ‘Description’ tab, click on the ‘view’ button, and it will change to ‘Edit’. Click on ‘Edit’ and you can make changes.  Once completed, scroll to the bottom of the page, and press the ‘Submit’ button.

7. You will then be prompted to ‘Request Approval’. Once you have selected – request approval – this will start the approval process.  You can check the status of your request on the Vacancies Awaiting Approval Dashboard.

You can also set up the Interview Scoring Template if you are likely to ask similar questions at interview.

1. Click on the ‘Description tab’.
2. Click on the ‘Setup Interview Scoring’ tab.
3. Complete the template with your standard interview questions. For setting up the template, none of the fields on this page are mandatory. You can complete as many or as few as required.
4. Press ‘Submit’.

Adding Participants to your Template

If you regularly involve the same participants in your vacancies, you can add them to your templates.

1. Click on ‘Participants’ tab.
2. Select ‘Add Participant’.
3. Select their user profile (normally their Recruiting Manager profile)
4. Select Category – it will default to the category.
5. If you want them to be able to make changes to interview schedules, tick the ‘Co-ordinator’ box.
6. If you want them to be able to view applications, tick the ‘Can View Applicants’ box.
7. Click ‘Add Participant.

Bear in mind, the first time will always take the longest amount of time but the next time, if it is the same vacancy, it will be easier as most of the work has already been done. And, if you have set up a template, it is even easier.

However, when planning your recruitment timetable, particularly setting closing dates, please make sure you allow time for your request to go through the approval process.

To find out what to do next, please look at the ‘Managing and shortlisting applications’ section.

For any queries, please remember you can always contact your Departmental Superuser or the Recruitment Team.