Using Drag for Recruiting
Managing recruitment tasks requires at least an inbox, a calendar tool, and a task management app. Sounds like a lot of context switching, right?
But this is the part when you start managing job applications and recruiting pipelines without leaving Gmail. You can even manage the interview schedule in Google Calendar without having to use a separate tab!
This guide will teach you the best practices on using Drag as your new Applicant Tracking System.
Contents:
How to set up Drag as a Recruiting Software
- Create Drag boards to manage job applications.
- Categorize and organize applications.
- Create automations to save you time.
- Define how you will reply to emails.
How to operate Drag for Recruiting
- Control when and who are working on each application.
- Add further context to tasks with notes, subtasks and internal chat .
- Add new applicants manually.
Pro tips
- Connect forms to Drag board.
- Share assignments across different teams.
- Manage your schedule in Google Calendar without leaving Gmail.
Here's how to customize Drag according to how you usually handle your recruiting processes.
The first thing to do is create boards to manage your recruiting pipeline. But first, let's talk about two important planning concepts:
When it comes to structuring your boards, we recommend you plan first how you want to organize your tasks and emails. For example, you may want to create different boards for each job opening. Or you may want to centralize your entire hiring pipeline, or maybe an inbox such as jobs@, and share it with other team members. Once you plan how your workflow will work in Drag, it will be easier to create your new boards.
Drag boards can be shared inboxes, google groups or empty boards. We recommend you think first what types of boards you will likely need. For example, some customers prefer to create an empty board and manually drag specific job applications into that specific board (after a triage, for example). Other customers prefer to create automations to move job applications to a particular board automatically (e.g. "Tech Jobs" board, shared with a technical team, with technical jobs applications). Others prefer to simply plug an inbox such as jobs@ and receive all job applications into the same board, shared with an HR team.
Now that you are aware of these concepts, it will be easier to create Drag boards:
Create your recruiting board(s).
Invite team members to boards (if you need to collaborate with other team members).
This is how a Recruiting board typically looks like:
In Kanban view:
In List view:
Here's how you can change between kanban or list views.
If you go for the Kanban view, don't forget to customize the width of the columns by dragging and dropping them like in a spreadsheet cell š.
When managing a recruiting pipeline, itās crucial to know which candidates are in each phase of the process, who has been communicating / interviewing each candidate, when is the next milestone for the candidate, and other important information without having to ask around or wasting time.
With Drag, you can control your recruiting process in 4 ways:
Customize your columns (if you use Kanban view) or lists (using list view) to adapt Drag to your applicant tracking workflow. For example, you may want to split your boards into stages like these:
New Candidates
Screening
1st Interview
2nd interview
Final Interview
Job Offer
You can create your board according to your current workflow, with names your team will relate, or that are already in use. To rename the columns/lists, simply click on their titles (on the top left). There will be an inline editing input field, just type the desired title and click outside the input field. The names will be auto-saved.
Create Drag's shared tags to segment the candidates based on their qualifications. For example, you may want to tag cards with the years of experience of a candidate, or even their salary expectation value. Put tags on the ones who were referred by someone internally, or create a system of stars, to rate candidates. This makes it easier to know exactly how the process is happening in just a glance, and how you can help your team close that opening as soon as possible.
You can easily filter your boards by tags, which is very handy when there is a lot of applicants on a board.
You can also organize your application cards visually with color coding. Each color can represent something your team needs to know with just a glance. For example, you can attribute just a color to cards containing candidates with portfolios, leaving the ones who donāt white, for example. Or you can attribute colors to channels the applicants came from.
Extra tip: Create a fixed card with the colors and respective meanings to quickly help the team get used to them.
Due dates are very handy when managing recruiting pipelines as they can help you make sure all processes in your pipeline are on track, it reminds you when to follow up with certain candidates and when the next milestone in the process should happen (for example, an interview). We will talk more about due dates and how they work further down in this article.
If you have a standardized process to communicate with job applicants, you probably send the same emails very often. For example, an email welcoming them to the recruiting process, another one to schedule interviews, another one introducing the job offer, and so on.
With Drag, you can turn these most used emails into templates and share them with your team. It means once you have created all the necessary templates, you won't need to worry about spreading them around. They will be automatically available for everyone and the communication across the team will be aligned seamlessly š.
Here's how to set up shared templates.
What if you could stop doing so many manual processes while handling dozens, or hundreds of applications? You can automate several actions inside your Drag boards to save you time. Our automations allow your team to put lots of things in auto pilot.
A few examples include:
Sending automatic templates to candidates that move to the next stage of the hiring process.
Assigning cards to a specific team member based on the emailās content. For example, if they are responsible for a specific job opening that just received an application.
Moving emails automatically to a specific board or column based on which alias they were sent to depending on what team you are hiring (e.g., careers-marketing@, careers-dev@, etc).
Your recruiting boards contain emails, to which you can reply from your user@ email address or a shared email address such as careers@ or jobs@.
More than that, you can choose a "Reply Default" for your emails. If you define careers@ as your default reply email, all replies will come straight from that email address (yes, even if you are logged in to your account!). But if you want to give a more personal touch, itās also possible to revert it to the talent acquisition email you already use! Versatility is everything in Drag ā¤ļø.
Read here the step by step to set your reply default.
You have set up all your Recruiting boards in Drag. Well done! šNow, it's time to learn the best way to use it daily.
Now that you have your board all set up, applications start coming in. A Recruiting team needs to have transparency, and everyone needs to know who is working on which applications.
With Drag, you can use assignments and due dates to ensure your team wonāt miss any deadline or even let something undone. With assignments, you always know who is working on what application.
Oh, and you can see what emails are assigned to you in 1 click with the "Assigned to Me" view under each board.
As mentioned earlier, due dates can be very handy when managing recruiting pipelines. You can, for example, assign an interview date and time to a candidateās card and have it displayed on your board.
Due dates can also be synced to your Google Calendar, so you can build your interview schedule without leaving your inbox.
Recruiting teams need to be on the same page while working on applications, and Drag's collaboration features help you and your team achieve that. Read more about these features here.
1. Notes and Task tabs
You can type all the essential information you need about a candidate on the tabs and "Notes" inside any card you open. You can also create a checklist of tasks you may need to perform while handling that application, as an example āAsk for a previous job referenceā. Both tabs can be found on the top of the email detailed view, next to the email title.
Example:
In the example below, the user is handling the application of candidate Sharok. In the "Notes" tab, the user can have the information notes of Sharok, including his expected salary, and LinkedIn profile URL. On the "Tasks" tab, the user has added the action points aligned to be completed while they are handling Sharokās application. This way, all the information the user needs about Sharokās process is in one central place.
And you don't need to go inside each card to read the context about each applicant. Just use the dropdown arrow on each card to have this visibility right from your Drag task board.
2. Internal team chat
There's an internal team chat inside each card where you can talk to any teammate about any specific application. Instead of going to a chat app to talk to them and giving all the context, you need to handle that assignment. Then, you can simply mention them on the chatbox and start talking about it.
Example:
You are going through an application, and you have an interview scheduled with that candidate, but you wonāt be able to attend. But you know your teammate Samantha is available on that day. Go to the chat inside the card and simply mention @Samantha and ask her to cover for you. She'll read it and have all the context necessary to jump on and help you with the interview.
Drag cards can contain emails or not. Each email you receive is automatically converted into an email card, but you can also manually create new cards for applications that didnāt arrive for you through the common channels. For example, someone in your team has referred a candidate and had their CV with them. You can create a card for this application on your board, and it will be alongside the other cards with emails.[Here's how you can add new cards manually](/en/article/how-do-i-create-a-new-card-p94m01/) on Drag boards.
Many times, candidates apply for jobs through forms on the companyās website or others. With Drag, you can send the formsā data directly to your boards by setting specific automation.
For example, is your form generates results sent to your email address careers@, you can set an automation so that every incoming email from specific forms should be automatically moved to a recruiting board.
Many times, it's necessary to handle applications across your organization and receive collaboration from other teams. Instead of forwarding emails around or creating duplicate tasks, Drag allows you to share them across various teams within your organization very quickly.
You are working on a hiring process for a Content Marketing Analyst. The final interview is with the manager of the Marketing team. So you have two options: first, invite the Marketing manager to the Recruiting board for this opening and assign candidates to him. Or you can have a secondary board shared with the manager or the Marketing team (depending on how they are making decisions), and send the applications on the final interview stage (along with all the historical conversations and information about those candidates) to this board.
Instead of using a third-party Calendar app, you can use Calendar to manage all your interviews and other recruiting appointments. Better yet, you can do it without having to open another tab. Go to the vertical menu on the right of the screen and click on the Calendar icon.
Then a pop-up will open with the schedule minimized per day. There you will be able to manage and check all your appointments, including the ones youāve created using Dragās due dates.
If you want to learn more about what you can do with Google Calendar, read this article.
And there you are! You can now use Drag to manage and track all the applicants, and finally, fill those job openings seamlessly š.
Still need help? Our Support Team will love to help at support@dragapp.com.
But this is the part when you start managing job applications and recruiting pipelines without leaving Gmail. You can even manage the interview schedule in Google Calendar without having to use a separate tab!
This guide will teach you the best practices on using Drag as your new Applicant Tracking System.
Contents:
How to set up Drag as a Recruiting Software
- Create Drag boards to manage job applications.
- Categorize and organize applications.
- Create automations to save you time.
- Define how you will reply to emails.
How to operate Drag for Recruiting
- Control when and who are working on each application.
- Add further context to tasks with notes, subtasks and internal chat .
- Add new applicants manually.
Pro tips
- Connect forms to Drag board.
- Share assignments across different teams.
- Manage your schedule in Google Calendar without leaving Gmail.
How to set up Drag as a Recruiting Software
Here's how to customize Drag according to how you usually handle your recruiting processes.
Create Drag boards to manage job applications
The first thing to do is create boards to manage your recruiting pipeline. But first, let's talk about two important planning concepts:
Boards structure
When it comes to structuring your boards, we recommend you plan first how you want to organize your tasks and emails. For example, you may want to create different boards for each job opening. Or you may want to centralize your entire hiring pipeline, or maybe an inbox such as jobs@, and share it with other team members. Once you plan how your workflow will work in Drag, it will be easier to create your new boards.
Boards dynamics
Drag boards can be shared inboxes, google groups or empty boards. We recommend you think first what types of boards you will likely need. For example, some customers prefer to create an empty board and manually drag specific job applications into that specific board (after a triage, for example). Other customers prefer to create automations to move job applications to a particular board automatically (e.g. "Tech Jobs" board, shared with a technical team, with technical jobs applications). Others prefer to simply plug an inbox such as jobs@ and receive all job applications into the same board, shared with an HR team.
Now that you are aware of these concepts, it will be easier to create Drag boards:
Create your recruiting board(s).
Invite team members to boards (if you need to collaborate with other team members).
This is how a Recruiting board typically looks like:
In Kanban view:
In List view:
Here's how you can change between kanban or list views.
If you go for the Kanban view, don't forget to customize the width of the columns by dragging and dropping them like in a spreadsheet cell š.
Categorize and organize applications
When managing a recruiting pipeline, itās crucial to know which candidates are in each phase of the process, who has been communicating / interviewing each candidate, when is the next milestone for the candidate, and other important information without having to ask around or wasting time.
With Drag, you can control your recruiting process in 4 ways:
1. Customize columns/lists
Customize your columns (if you use Kanban view) or lists (using list view) to adapt Drag to your applicant tracking workflow. For example, you may want to split your boards into stages like these:
New Candidates
Screening
1st Interview
2nd interview
Final Interview
Job Offer
You can create your board according to your current workflow, with names your team will relate, or that are already in use. To rename the columns/lists, simply click on their titles (on the top left). There will be an inline editing input field, just type the desired title and click outside the input field. The names will be auto-saved.
2. Use tags to classify candidates
Create Drag's shared tags to segment the candidates based on their qualifications. For example, you may want to tag cards with the years of experience of a candidate, or even their salary expectation value. Put tags on the ones who were referred by someone internally, or create a system of stars, to rate candidates. This makes it easier to know exactly how the process is happening in just a glance, and how you can help your team close that opening as soon as possible.
You can easily filter your boards by tags, which is very handy when there is a lot of applicants on a board.
3. Color coding
You can also organize your application cards visually with color coding. Each color can represent something your team needs to know with just a glance. For example, you can attribute just a color to cards containing candidates with portfolios, leaving the ones who donāt white, for example. Or you can attribute colors to channels the applicants came from.
Extra tip: Create a fixed card with the colors and respective meanings to quickly help the team get used to them.
4. Due Dates
Due dates are very handy when managing recruiting pipelines as they can help you make sure all processes in your pipeline are on track, it reminds you when to follow up with certain candidates and when the next milestone in the process should happen (for example, an interview). We will talk more about due dates and how they work further down in this article.
Standardize your process with email templates
If you have a standardized process to communicate with job applicants, you probably send the same emails very often. For example, an email welcoming them to the recruiting process, another one to schedule interviews, another one introducing the job offer, and so on.
With Drag, you can turn these most used emails into templates and share them with your team. It means once you have created all the necessary templates, you won't need to worry about spreading them around. They will be automatically available for everyone and the communication across the team will be aligned seamlessly š.
Here's how to set up shared templates.
Create automations to save you time
What if you could stop doing so many manual processes while handling dozens, or hundreds of applications? You can automate several actions inside your Drag boards to save you time. Our automations allow your team to put lots of things in auto pilot.
A few examples include:
Sending automatic templates to candidates that move to the next stage of the hiring process.
Assigning cards to a specific team member based on the emailās content. For example, if they are responsible for a specific job opening that just received an application.
Moving emails automatically to a specific board or column based on which alias they were sent to depending on what team you are hiring (e.g., careers-marketing@, careers-dev@, etc).
Define how you will reply to emails
Your recruiting boards contain emails, to which you can reply from your user@ email address or a shared email address such as careers@ or jobs@.
More than that, you can choose a "Reply Default" for your emails. If you define careers@ as your default reply email, all replies will come straight from that email address (yes, even if you are logged in to your account!). But if you want to give a more personal touch, itās also possible to revert it to the talent acquisition email you already use! Versatility is everything in Drag ā¤ļø.
Read here the step by step to set your reply default.
How to operate Drag for Recruiting
You have set up all your Recruiting boards in Drag. Well done! šNow, it's time to learn the best way to use it daily.
Control when and who are working on each application
Now that you have your board all set up, applications start coming in. A Recruiting team needs to have transparency, and everyone needs to know who is working on which applications.
Assignments
With Drag, you can use assignments and due dates to ensure your team wonāt miss any deadline or even let something undone. With assignments, you always know who is working on what application.
Oh, and you can see what emails are assigned to you in 1 click with the "Assigned to Me" view under each board.
Due dates
As mentioned earlier, due dates can be very handy when managing recruiting pipelines. You can, for example, assign an interview date and time to a candidateās card and have it displayed on your board.
Due dates can also be synced to your Google Calendar, so you can build your interview schedule without leaving your inbox.
Add further context to tasks with notes, subtasks, and internal chat
Recruiting teams need to be on the same page while working on applications, and Drag's collaboration features help you and your team achieve that. Read more about these features here.
1. Notes and Task tabs
You can type all the essential information you need about a candidate on the tabs and "Notes" inside any card you open. You can also create a checklist of tasks you may need to perform while handling that application, as an example āAsk for a previous job referenceā. Both tabs can be found on the top of the email detailed view, next to the email title.
Example:
In the example below, the user is handling the application of candidate Sharok. In the "Notes" tab, the user can have the information notes of Sharok, including his expected salary, and LinkedIn profile URL. On the "Tasks" tab, the user has added the action points aligned to be completed while they are handling Sharokās application. This way, all the information the user needs about Sharokās process is in one central place.
And you don't need to go inside each card to read the context about each applicant. Just use the dropdown arrow on each card to have this visibility right from your Drag task board.
2. Internal team chat
There's an internal team chat inside each card where you can talk to any teammate about any specific application. Instead of going to a chat app to talk to them and giving all the context, you need to handle that assignment. Then, you can simply mention them on the chatbox and start talking about it.
Example:
You are going through an application, and you have an interview scheduled with that candidate, but you wonāt be able to attend. But you know your teammate Samantha is available on that day. Go to the chat inside the card and simply mention @Samantha and ask her to cover for you. She'll read it and have all the context necessary to jump on and help you with the interview.
Add new applicants manually
Drag cards can contain emails or not. Each email you receive is automatically converted into an email card, but you can also manually create new cards for applications that didnāt arrive for you through the common channels. For example, someone in your team has referred a candidate and had their CV with them. You can create a card for this application on your board, and it will be alongside the other cards with emails.[Here's how you can add new cards manually](/en/article/how-do-i-create-a-new-card-p94m01/) on Drag boards.
Pro tips
Connect forms to Drag boards
Many times, candidates apply for jobs through forms on the companyās website or others. With Drag, you can send the formsā data directly to your boards by setting specific automation.
For example, is your form generates results sent to your email address careers@, you can set an automation so that every incoming email from specific forms should be automatically moved to a recruiting board.
Share assignments across different teams
Many times, it's necessary to handle applications across your organization and receive collaboration from other teams. Instead of forwarding emails around or creating duplicate tasks, Drag allows you to share them across various teams within your organization very quickly.
Example:
You are working on a hiring process for a Content Marketing Analyst. The final interview is with the manager of the Marketing team. So you have two options: first, invite the Marketing manager to the Recruiting board for this opening and assign candidates to him. Or you can have a secondary board shared with the manager or the Marketing team (depending on how they are making decisions), and send the applications on the final interview stage (along with all the historical conversations and information about those candidates) to this board.
Manage your schedule in Google Calendar without leaving Gmail
Instead of using a third-party Calendar app, you can use Calendar to manage all your interviews and other recruiting appointments. Better yet, you can do it without having to open another tab. Go to the vertical menu on the right of the screen and click on the Calendar icon.
Then a pop-up will open with the schedule minimized per day. There you will be able to manage and check all your appointments, including the ones youāve created using Dragās due dates.
If you want to learn more about what you can do with Google Calendar, read this article.
And there you are! You can now use Drag to manage and track all the applicants, and finally, fill those job openings seamlessly š.
Still need help? Our Support Team will love to help at support@dragapp.com.
Updated on: 22/06/2021
Thank you!