Below are some best practices for implementing critical features of the HAPI solution offerings, accompanied by screenshot examples (when applicable) from some of our existing partners.
These practices and decisions have proven successful, and failing to implement these features in the same manner can lead to hardships and a decline in user adoption and usage.
Positioning the Advertise/Promote step during the job creation process
Order rates are significantly higher among users who can promote their jobs directly within the same workflow where they create jobs on the respective ATS platform. We have seen that this ultimately leads to a higher usage of the HAPI advertising solutions. Without this step, we have seen significantly fewer campaigns being ordered by users.
There is some room for creativity in how it is designed or implemented, as each partner's workflow may be different, but from the VONQ perspective, what we recommend is that this step be included within the standard User flow. This can be done either before the job is published/saved, or by directing the User to a “Promote your job” type of landing page immediately after job creation.
See below an example of how a partner implemented this as one of their 5 core steps when creating a new job.
Providing a direct ‘Advertise’ option from the Jobs page
It is proven that suggestive buttons attract attention and engagement. From the overall Jobs page that Users will be familiar with, providing a direct and clear pathway to advertising their job is instrumental in increasing the usage and number of campaigns that get ordered. This CTA should be eye-catching to the User, and should fit in both theme and language with your platform and workflows.
The page that the User gets brought to should include the respective HAPI features, being HAPI My Own Contract and/or Job Board Marketplace, to allow the User to advertise with their own contracts or by using the Marketplace that VONQ provides.
This is an example of how a partner implemented this CTA cleanly and clearly.
Creating a clear distinction between Marketplace advertising and advertising using customer’s own contracts
Making it simple for users to use their own contracts for advertising and search the Marketplace for additional job boards is a proven requirement for creating a cleaner UX and increasing overall usage amongst your user base. When things are complex or require multiple steps to navigate, usage decreases.
Having a familiar feeling to the advertising process while it’s integrated into the rest of the ATS platform is important to capturing successful engagements from customers. Don’t have this step or workflow look and feel significantly different than the rest of the platform. Users should feel as though they are seamlessly able to browse a marketplace while also using their own contracts they are bringing with them. If this flow feels disjointed, customers will try to avoid using it.
See below an example of a partner’s UI for advertising options.
Provide a clean and concise UI for customers to see ordered campaigns
If you're using our Elements widgets, implementing this is very easy since it is fully provided as a drag-and-drop feature. If you are using our API, it is essential to provide this information to the User in an easily understandable manner. Users will want to see which information on which campaigns has been ordered and which are active in a simple manner.
The important bits of information to display to the User are the job board(s) ordered, the expected duration of the campaign (broken down by job board if possible), the date it was published and will expire, the status of the campaign, and the live job link (for each board), etc.
This is a screenshot of how we built this in our widgets:
This is immensely critical as Users will want to know what they are purchasing, and can be implemented in a number of different ways, but finding the “sweet-spot” for giving customers the high-level bits of information regarding each product, while providing a method to dive deeper and read more about each product without leaving the page, is vital for delivering a positive UX.
We’ve seen some partners implement this by providing smaller tiles at a high level that include the Logo, the Duration, the Cost, and the name of the job board. Then, when hovering over the tile, it displays more information regarding the job board/product and what the customer will be purchasing.
For obvious reasons, making the VONQ HAPI features available to all of an ATS's users from the onset is a huge driving factor for increasing usage. Allowing full user access to these features will not only gain traction but also assist in providing feedback and ultimately working towards the best user experience we can deliver through this partnership. The more people use the features, the more opinions we can gather on what works well, what doesn’t, and how we can improve to deliver the best product.
If only a limited subset of users has access to these new features, then we are severely limiting our potential ceiling of revenue generation. Implementations in the past that have allowed Users to add on these features if they want have struggled. In our experience, not many customers ultimately take this action, resulting in a usage loss. Give access to 100% of your user base and don’t limit the possibilities to only a subset.
If there is a worry that inserting these features would cause negative disruption in current User workflows, we have not seen this to be the case in prior implementations. Users will adjust quickly should a flow change, but it is also worth noting that our features are built and offered with the goal in mind of fitting seamlessly within your current flows. We would be happy to work with you to identify the simplest way that our VONQ offering can fit within your platform.
Smartfill for prefilling Product Search Filters / HAPI JM checkout / HAPI Job Post checkout
Smartfill utilizes AI to prefill job post requirements, leading to a smoother and faster checkout process. The accuracy of the Smartfill response is dependent on the amount of context provided, whether in a structured or unstructured format.
‘Opt-Out’ within Settings
Related to our recommendation of activating the HAPI feature offering for all users, we understand that not all customers will want these capabilities turned on. In an effort to support all workflows, we recommend allowing these features to be turned off for a specific customer. This would be something that is managed within the respective client’s Settings in the ATS platform.
Providing this allows the clients that do not have a need for the VONQ feature-set to disable and remove these steps from their normal user flows. We don’t anticipate many clients will do this, but providing flexibility is important to delivering a positive UX. Some people might not be ready for it yet, but by having it enabled by default, and simply providing an “opt-out” function, awareness is made that this feature exists for them should they turn it back on.
Offer relevant Payment Options
If payment options are limited, significantly fewer campaigns will be ordered. Flexibility with payment options is immensely critical. We have observed campaign ordering rates as low as 80% for partners offering only Credit Card purchasing as an option, a trend observed in both the US and Europe.
If you do not have the ability to manage payments yourself, with HAPI Payments, customers can top up their wallets and pay for campaigns using Credit Cards, Direct Debit, and even PO Invoicing, across multiple different currencies, which can be configured at the client level. With all options enabled, it is unlikely that a customer would not place an order due to not having a preferred payment method available to them.
Job Board Source to Applicant Hire Tracking
Implementing UTM Codes behind the products ordered through VONQ campaigns is a critical practice for a couple of different reasons. Without understanding where your applicants are sourcing from, advertising success rates can begin to decrease. Implementing UTM codes is quick and simple, leaving no reason to leave this feature out.
Utilizing UTM codes gives deeper analytical insight into the sourcing of clicks on ordered campaigns. With this feature, the entire candidate journey from click to applicant to qualified applicant and ultimate hire, can be tracked. It’s all in the numbers. With this information, you’re giving more power to your customer to get the answers and insights they want faster and more conveniently with this feature in a self-service manner.
Suggestive Advertising Triggers
Sometimes, customers that utilize the advertising capabilities offered to them will not get the best results. This is obviously not ideal, but it happens. It can be due to a variety of different reasons, but at the end of the day, the easiest solution sometimes is simply to change their advertising plan/actions.
As a recommended practice to help support these clients, it is beneficial to instill performance tracking for the jobs that a client has posted, and for those that aren’t performing well, provide a more obvious path to advertising options.
We have seen other implementations look something along the lines of:
- A job is not receiving clicks or applications
- Highlight/Promote this job by moving it to the top of the screen or somewhere apparent to User
- Surface the low-performance metrics of said job, and immediately provide a CTA button guiding the user to the advertising flow for said job
Implementing a feature like this will drive engagement and usage up significantly amongst your users. When implemented correctly, this can increase revenue while at the same time pushing your users towards more successful campaigns and candidate search experiences.
Hide Optional Fields during checkout
To improve the experience you can hide optinal fields during checkout. For example, the fields below.
Pre-filling Channel Specific Fields (e.g. BfA)
You can have your customers pre-fill job board-specific fields during contract set-up.
Or, you can pre-fill it for them.
Hide fields on the order review page
You can simplify the experience for users by reducing the number of fields, options and tabs on the order review page. For example:
Option 1: Expand/Collapse all of the tabs (eg, Recruiter Info)
Option 2: Hide a specific tab (eg Target-Group)
Implement the following code: window.hapi.ui.service.hideElement("div#order-review-step-accordion-target-group")
Option 3: Disable Order Review Step Completely
Other Tips and Tricks
Here are some key takeaways from our integrations with existing API partners.
Job Description length
Some of the job descriptions that came in only contain a couple of sentences. This is not accepted by most of the job boards and will be rejected. Please ensure we receive a comprehensive job description that includes details about the company, tasks, and responsibilities.
Postal Code
In some orders, postal codes containing just 000000 are sent to VONQ. However, these types of 'fake' values are rejected, especially by LinkedIn, which is one of the most important boards. Please make sure that a valid postal code is filled in.
Apply URL based on browser language
Some Job and/or Apply URLs that we received contained a language code (e.g., DE), which shows an error when viewing the website with a browser set to EN, for example. This leads to errors on VONQ's side because we can't verify whether the Apply URL is actually working.
Job description markup
We have been receiving orders with markup (HTML elements) that are not accepted by job boards. Please know that we only accept the following elements:
Full description of the job posting, including all possible sections
Allowed tags: a[href|target], em, b, br, strong, i, li, ol, p, ul
Note: The use of inline style tags is not recommended and should be avoided to prevent unintended display issues.
Company logo
Please send the company logo in PNG or JPG format. SVG is not allowed.
How do I decide which jobs are published to the OPN?
There are three main options that partners can choose from:
- Automatic inclusion – All jobs of all customers are published automatically.
- Customer-level setting – Customers can decide in their settings whether to publish all jobs or not. If toggled on, their jobs are included.
- Job-level setting – Customers decide per individual job whether it should be published to the OPN. This can be set during job creation or in the advertising section.