Opening Tags vs Candidate Labels
What’s the difference?
Opening tags and candidate labels are both handy ways to organize data inside of Trakstar Hire. They operate in a similar manner - helping you to internally identify your openings and your candidates. Both are internal fields - which means that only your team can see these fields. Your candidates cannot see your Opening Tags on your careers page, and they cannot see if you’ve applied a Candidate Label to their profile.
Keep in mind:
- Opening Tags apply to Job Openings
- Candidate Labels apply to Candidates
Let’s go over both options!
Opening Tags
You can add an Opening Tag by going into one of your job openings and clicking Add Tags:
You can free-type the name of your tag, and then select from the existing tags in your account, or select Create option “_____” to create a new tag. Afterwards, hit the blue save button.
Once you create your tags and assign them to an opening, they are visible when viewing your openings list inside of Trakstar Hire. Opening tags are visible to all users who have access inside your account to this opening.
Can I sort or filter by Opening Tags?
Yes! On the left hand side of your openings page, click the blue +Add Filter option, and select Tags from the dropdown:
You can then select which opening tag you’d like to filter by:
And view only the openings that have that specific tag:
How should I use Opening Tags?
There are many ways you can use opening tags, and here are a few examples:
- Department names or IDs: Some teams use tags to indicate that an opening is a part of a specific department, or has a department code/ID associated with it.
- Level of urgency: Have any openings that have a higher priority to be filled? Create a tag titled something like “High Priority”, “Urgently Hiring”, or whatever fits your needs and use that as a way to signal that opening as urgently hiring.
- Distinguish which part of a department or team: The “Team” field on your opening is used to group your openings together. For example, you may have several jobs that all fall into the Sales team, and you use that Team field to group them together. However, you may want to notate that the opening is Outbound Sales versus Inbound Sales. Opening Tags would be a great way to distinguish this!
- Notating a “Fill by” date: If you have a date that you’d like to have the position filled by, you can use an opening tag to notate that date. You can also utilize our auto-close feature to automatically close openings at a date that you set.
Can Opening Tags be pulled to reports?
In the reports in your Reporting Dashboard, your reports filter by Opening Tags:
Candidate Labels
Now, let’s look at Candidate Labels. You can apply a candidate label from within their profile. Once within the candidate's profile, click "Add labels'' at the top of the page, by the candidate's email and phone number:
If there are already labels on a candidate, the option for adding a new label (or editing/deleting labels) will say "Edit labels":
A box displays for adding the label. You can choose any previous labels you've created, or you can type in a new label you'd like to create. For a new label, you will need to either press enter after typing the label or choose to complete the new label from the dropdown that appears below the text you added:
The label will then appear as "complete" and you can click "Save" to add it to the candidate. You can add more than one label at at time as well, simply continue typing and picking labels before clicking "Save":
You can also bulk-label candidates from the candidate list page checking the box next to their name and clicking the Label option:
How can I sort candidates by labels?
Once labels are applied, you can sort candidates via their labels by any of these methods:
Clicking on the label from within the candidate's profile or the candidate dashboard
Clicking "Filter by Label" on the lower left hand side of your candidate dashboard
Through the advanced candidate search feature.
How should I use labels?
Many companies use labels and all use them a bit differently to suit their needs. Here are a few examples that come to mind:
- Using labels for identifying skills: Many users use labels to identify certain skill sets. For example, if you are hiring for a computer programer, and you want to label what tech language the person knows, you could label some candidates as "Java" and other as "Python"
Add a label instead of using the favorite flag: Others use the labels to "shortlist" or identify certain candidates. The favorite flag in the candidate profile (small flag near their name) is handy for this - but the flag is only seen by you as a user. The label can help you identify this candidate to all users who have access to it
- Identify past jobs or experience: Some users use labels to highlight past jobs, college attended, or the location of the candidate
- Highlight when a candidate is available to start work: Perhaps you have an A+ candidate, but they won't be available until later in the year. Or, someone isn't looking for work now, but they're happy if you check back in later in the year. You can use labels to add a date to the candidate - to help you see everyone who is available "Fall 2016" for example.
Can labels be pulled to reports?
Labels can be pulled to your Candidates Report.
Do note: Labels only route to this report if they contain a colon .
For example, Available: Fall 2016 or Language: Java. In these cases, the word before the colon (Available, Language) would be the column header, and the information after the colon would be in the candidate's cell.
Where can I manage my labels?
You can manage the labels that you have created within your Trakstar Hire account in your Settings. Any Super Admin in your account can go to Settings > Candidates Configuration > Labels.
Here you will be able to see every active label currently being used within your account. The number (gray and in brackets) next to each label represents how many candidates are currently attached to that label. You can also edit or delete any of the labels that have been created here.
Clicking on the label itself will redirect you to the Candidate Dashboard to show you the list of candidates associated with that particular label.
One last note...
Screen space is limited on the candidate dashboard, so keep this in mind when using the labels feature. Brief is best. Bulk management of opening tags is not available, but we’d love to hear from you if this is something your team finds valuable! You can do so by sharing that feedback with our team in our Product Portal here.
Questions? Reach out to us at hire@trakstar.com!