What is it?
The Job Alerts facility allows daily automatic emails to be sent to candidates listing any new jobs that match their preferences. If everything is configured correctly, candidates should get a well-matched list of jobs with links to view and apply for them online. A summary of who received an alert is sent to the main LW contact address. Job Alerts are only sent candidates with a job seeking status code of WARM or HOT, see here for what this means. There is also an “opt-out” option that can be accessed by logging into the website.
When to use it
The same criteria is used by the Job Alert facility as with the “magnifying glass” auto-match candidate-to-job function. Therefore these fields need to have been completed in order for the alerts to work correctly. Provided that the main matching facility is working correctly for you, the job alerts will too. The basic criteria used is: SECTOR, JOB GROUP/TYPE/TITLE, WORK HOURS, CONTRACT TYPE, LOCATION & SALARY, and as with the matching facility, if criteria hasn’t been entered the candidate will be included as match (i.e. blank = don’t care).
Setup the Email Template and enable Job Alerts
Under Configuration – choose “Configure Emails for Registrations and Alerts”. Under New Job Alerts, ensure the appropriate tick box is checked (Email or SMS) and then customise the email body as desired. It is essential that the body contains the tag #JobList# somewhere, as it will be replaced with the list of jobs. When you’ve finished press “Save” at the bottom. Note: By default all emails are sent from LW as plain text. You can change this to HTML if preferred but this is a global setting so if used, all email templates will require some reformatting. The body editing box will change to a WYSIWYG editor when you have HTML emails turned on.
Finally, Schedule the Job Alert task
If you have used Job Alerts previously (in an older version of Litework), then a cron job/schedule may already have been setup on your server. Generally this will not be the case and you should simply add your own scheduled task as follows:
Under Configuration (Maintenance) – choose “Manage Scheduled Tasks”. If you don’t see a JOBALERTS task already listed then hit “Add a new Scheduled Task”. Choose JOBALERTS as the type, ensure “enabled” is ticked, leave the “Run Frequency” empty and enter a time in 24 hour format. Then hit save. Note the recommended time is somewhere between 19:00 and 20:00. Firstly jobs are only included if entered on the day of the email, so if it goes out too early in the day, jobs put onto the system later in the day are missed off. It’s also a good idea not to send them too late in the day, as candidates who check their email at home, in the early evening will hopefully have time to look at the jobs and apply for them.