Best practices: Template jobs

In Greenhouse Recruiting, template jobs include the key components for most of the jobs your organization will open. By reducing the manual need of entering repetitive information, such as desired candidate attributes or common interview questions, template jobs can help streamline your job creation process. 

Below, we'll cover some best practices for your team to consider when creating template jobs.

Using job templates

The number of templates you create will depend on the size of your organization and the differences between pipelines per department. If each department or hiring manager has a unique component to each interview, it may be worth creating a template just for those instances.

Regardless of how many template jobs your organization creates, every template should include basic information captured for every job.

Using the components listed below, consider the following best practices when configuring your job template: 

Job info

Internal job name	A name indicating that the job is a template job (you'll want to provide additional detail if you have multiple templates). Example: [TEMPLATE] Sales Engineer
Set as a template	Be sure to check the box to make the job a template so it is selectable in the future.
Department	Add the template job to the appropriate department.
Custom fields	Enter any information that you want to pre-populate.
Optional information for interviews	If you'd like to add more context regarding the template, or information about the format for other others to follow, enter it here.

Job kickoff

A job kickoff is an essential step in the structured hiring process. During this time the recruiter and the hiring manager align on the goals of the hiring process and collaborate to define the scorecard and interview plan for the job.

Learn more about setting up the job kickoff form.

Scorecard

Add scorecard categories that are relevant for all jobs such as the following:

• Requirements (e.g. "Fits our salary range" or "Based locally")
• Company attributes
• Qualifications
• Department attributes

Add example characteristics to help your team brainstorm skills they should include.

Interview plan

Define a basic interview pipeline with stages that all jobs will most likely include (such as application review, phone screen, face-to-face, and offer).

Customize the interview kits for interviews that will happen across all jobs. Check out the recommendations below:

• Phone screen – Add custom questions (questions the interviewer will ask) and select focus attributes for topics that are covered on all phone screens (such as tell me about yourself, desired salary range, and availability to begin work).
• Culture fit – Add custom questions and select focus attributes for the traits that represent your company culture.
• Other interviews – If you have any interviews with standard questions and criteria that you're evaluating, add them to the interview kit.

Hiring team

Grant Job Admin permission to all users who should have access to copy the template to create a new job.

Job post

Description	If there is consistent messaging about your company, benefits, or other information, include it in the description box.
How candidates apply for this job	Select Optional or Required on all basic information fields, and add custom questions that should appear on all applications.
Settings	Determine standard settings.

Once you've configured all the steps in the job creation process for your template job, click Finish.

After you click Finish, the status of your template job depends on the following:

If your organization has an approval process for new jobs, your template job is saved in Draft status until it's approved.

If your organization does not have an approval process, your new job is automatically set to the status Open.

Reporting

You can exclude template jobs when running reports on Greenhouse Recruiting. To exclude your template jobs when running a report, expand Filters and more at the top of the report, navigate to the Job Filter section, and click Change Filter. In the subsequent box, uncheck the box next to Include template jobs.

Additional resources

• Create a template job
• Mark existing job as template job