Overview

Offer approvals enable your team to establish an approval process before sending an offer to a candidate. Admins can create an approval process that can include multiple steps and multiple approvers, by name or by role. Currently supported roles:

• Job Hiring Manager
• Offer Hiring Manager

This can be especially helpful for larger companies that have lots of offers going out and need a system of oversight to ensure that others are approving the offers before they're sent.

Requirements

• Your team uses Gem ATS.

(Admin) Set up a new offer approval process

Only Gem ATS admins can set up an approval process.

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 Offer approvals header to open the offer approvals settings.
5. Select the + New approval process button.

6. In the Offer 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 offer option. If the user set as the hiring manager changes in the future, this setting automatically updates.
8. Optionally, select the Add condition option for this or any other approver in the process. This lets you define criteria that the base pay must be outside the set range for this job for this approver to be required as part of the approval process.
9. To add additional approvers to this step, select the + Add approver by name button, then select each user from the User dropdown.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.

How an approval process works

When an approval process is active, it's automatically applied to new offers 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.

Offers aren't sent to candidates until the approval process is complete.

The offer approval process for a specific candidate is displayed on the application details page when the candidate is in the offer stage. To view an offer approval process for a specific candidate:

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. On the talent pipeline tab, select a candidate's name that's in the offer stage. You can also filter by the offer status by selecting Filter by Status, then selecting any of the Offer options in the dropdown.
4. On the candidate details page, scroll down to the Offer header, then select the Offer letter option to open up the offer letter details.
5. The offer approval steps are displayed under the Signers section.

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.

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 Offer approvals header to open the offer 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.

Approve, reject, or request changes to an offer

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

Approvers can respond to an approval request directly from the email or from the offer in Gem. When doing so, they'll have the following options:

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

Approvers have the option to edit a note after it’s been added if the approval status is approved or pending, and the offer hasn’t expired or been sent to the candidate. To do so, select the Edit note button from the Note for approvers section. Note that the email sent when this note was added won’t be edited, only the note in Gem.

Send an approved offer

After all approvers have approved an offer, the approval status for that approver updates to Approved, and the recruiter can send Gem ATS: Send offers and e-signature requests.

Offer reapprovals

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

Reapprovals can also be disabled entirely by admins.

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
• (Admin) Set up a new offer approval process
• How an approval process works
• Approval process priority
• Edit an existing approval process
• Approve, reject, or request changes to an offer
• Send an approved offer
• Offer reapprovals