Gem ATS: Job approvals

Overview

The Job approvals functionality in Gem allow your team to establish an approval process for new jobs based on department and location, ensuring new job requests go to the right set of approvers in the correct order. This article covers how to understand and create job approval processes, and how to approve, reject, or request changes to a job.

Requirements

• Your team must use Gem ATS.
• You must have admin access in Gem to set up an approval process.

Set up a new job approval process

We recommend organizing approvers into multiple steps. This ensures that approvals are requested and confirmed in sequential order. For example, to have approvals go up the org chart for that team, you can set up the approval process as follows.

• Step 1: Hiring manager
• Step 2: Senior leader above the hiring manager
• Step 3: Executive above the senior leader

Each approver in the chain receives an email prompting them to approve or request changes to the job before it's opened.

To set up a new approval process:

1. Select your account at the bottom of the main sidebar, then select the Admin settings option in the dropdown.
2. Select the Gem ATS header.
3. Select the Approvals tab.
4. Select the Job approvals header to open the job approvals settings.
5. Select the + New approval process button.

6. In the Job approval settings section on the left, enter a name for your approval process. Select one or more dropdown options to add locations and departments for this approval process.
7. In the Step 1 section, select a user to be the first approver in this process. To set the hiring manager as an approver, select the + Add approver by role button, then select the Hiring manager on the job option. If the user set as the hiring manager changes in the future, this setting automatically updates.
8. To add additional approvers to this step, select the + Add approver by name button, then select each user from the User dropdown.
9. By default, the Require approver(s) to approve in this step setting is set to all. To change this, select all, then select a different number of approvers from the dropdown.
10. To add additional steps, select the + Add approval step button, then select the users and the number of required approvers for each step from the dropdowns.
11. After you've added all of the required approvers, select Save in the top right. The page updates to confirm the new approval process is saved and active.

Use a custom job approval process

In addition to the department- and location-based approval processes you configure in Admin settings, you can attach a custom approval process directly to an individual job. This is useful when a specific job requires a non-standard approval chain.

Follow these steps to create a custom job approval process:

1. Create your new job as normal, following the steps in Gem ATS: Create a job.
2. When you reach the final step of opening the job, rather than selecting the Send for approval button at the bottom of the screen, instead select the Use custom approval button.

3. Choose one or more approvers for Step 1, then add additional approval steps if required, following points 7 to 10 from the Set up a new job approval process section above.

4. When you’re ready, select the Send for approval button to submit this job for approval. The first step approver is immediately notified via email to request their approval.

5. If at any point prior to submitting the job you decide you don’t want to use the custom approval process, select the Remove custom approval button to return to the original, default approval process.

How an approval process works

When an approval process is active, it's automatically applied to new jobs in the department or location defined in the approval process criteria. If you want to apply an approval process to a specific department or office, you'll need to select those settings for that approval process.

The job approval process for a specific job is displayed on the job details page for that job.

The job can't be opened until the approval process is complete.

Approval process priority

You can't create approval processes that have overlapping department and location settings. For example, the following two approval processes can't exist at the same time.

• Approval process A
• Department: Customer SuccessLocation: San Francisco
• Approval process B
• Department: Customer Success / SupportLocation: San Francisco / New York

If a new approval process is created with overlapping department or location settings as a current approval process, the following error message is displayed to prompt you to edit the new or existing approval process to remove the overlapping criteria:

Error message text: This approval process would apply to the same jobs as the approval process [Process name]. Overlapping values: [Values].

An exception to this is if you create an approval process for All Locations or All Departments. In this case, if there's a more specific approval process for a certain department or location, the specific process will be applied over the general one.

View job approval status

To view the approval status of an existing job:

1. In the main sidebar, scroll down to the ATS header and select the Jobs option.
2. Select the job name you want to view the approval status of from the list of jobs. You can also search the list by entering the job name in the search bar.
3. At the top right corner of the screen the Status dropdown will display as ⟲ Pending approval.
4. In the job’s Job settings tab, scroll down to the Job approval section where each approval step lists its approvers and their current status. If an approver has approved the request, the timestamp of their approval is displayed.

View job approval activity

You can also see details of a job’s approval process in the Activity feed.

1. In the main sidebar, scroll down to the ATS header and select the Jobs option.
2. Select the job name you want to view the approval status of from the list of jobs. You can also search the list by entering the job name in the search bar.
3. Select the job’s Activity feed tab.

4. If needed, select the Approvals option to filter the activity to only approvals-related actions.
5. The Activity feed tracks the following approvals actions:
• Job approval requests created, updated, revoked, sent to each approver.
• Approver actions: approved, requested changes, rejected.
• Custom approval process added, updated, or removed.

Edit a pending approval

While an approval is still pending (i.e. at least one approver has not yet approved it), you can still edit the list of approvers and add or edit a note for approvers.

To edit a pending approval:

1. In the main sidebar, scroll down to the ATS header and select the Jobs option.
2. Select the job name you want to view the approval status of from the list of jobs. You can also search the list by entering the job name in the search bar.
3. In the job’s Job settings tab, scroll down to the Job approval section.
4. Select the Edit approvers button to open the Edit approvers pop-up.

5. From here you can edit the existing approval (e.g. add or remove approvers, and add or remove extra steps) and the note for approvers.

6. When you’re ready, select the Request approval button to re-submit this job for approval. The first step approver is immediately notified via email to request their approval.

Approve, reject, or request changes to a job

Immediately after a new job is created, the job status automatically updates to Pending approval, and the first-step approvers receive an email requesting they review the job.

Approvers can respond to a job approval request in various ways:

• Directly from the email
• From the Job approval tab of the job in Gem

When submitting the approval, approvers will select one of the following options:

• Approve: If they approve the job, the approval process moves to the next approver.
• Request changes: If the approver requests changes to the job, it goes back to a draft state, and the job creator is notified via email. The approver can optionally leave a note when requesting changes, which is sent to the job creator via email.
• Reject: If they reject the job, it goes back to a draft state, and the job creator is notified via email. The approver can optionally leave a note when rejecting the job, which is sent to the job creator via email.

After all approvers have approved a job, the job status updates to Approved, and the job creator can open the job.

Open an approved job

After a job has been approved by all required approvers, you'll have the option to open the job. To do so:

1. In the main sidebar, scroll down to the ATS header and select the Jobs option.
2. From the list of jobs, select the one you want to open. You can also search the list by entering the job name in the search bar.
3. The job status is automatically set to Approved. Select the status dropdown, then select the Open option.
4. On the Finish setup & open job pop-up, select the Open job & publish job post button.

The job status updates to Open. You can review the approval process at any time on the Job approval tab.

Edit an existing approval process

Only Gem ATS admins can edit an approval process. To do so:

1. Select your account at the bottom of the main sidebar, then select the Admin settings option in the dropdown.
2. Select the Gem ATS header.
3. Select the Approvals tab.
4. Select Job approvals header to open the job approvals settings.
5. Select the approval process name you want to edit from the list of approval processes. You can search the list by entering the approval name in the search bar.
6. Select any of the settings on this page to update them.
7. Select Save in the top right. The page updates to confirm that the new approval process settings are saved.

Job reapprovals

You can set custom fields to activate any job reapproval process. This restarts the approval process when changes are made to the job.

Reapprovals can also be disabled entirely by admins.

Additional resources

To learn more about approvals in Gem, check out the following resources.

• Gem ATS: Offer approvals
• Gem ATS: Opening approvals

Have any issues or questions on this topic? Please feel free to contact your dedicated Gem Customer Success Manager directly or our Support team at support@gem.com.

• Overview
• Requirements
• Set up a new job approval process
• Use a custom job approval process
• How an approval process works
• Approval process priority
• View job approval status
• View job approval activity
• Edit a pending approval
• Approve, reject, or request changes to a job
• Open an approved job
• Edit an existing approval process
• Job reapprovals
• Additional resources