Job applications

Template overview

With this template job candidates can easily look up and apply for job openings at your company. It is optimised for use on WhatsApp, Messenger and our web widget.

Job candidates can either browse through the list of job openings or directly ask about an opening for specific position. After selecting the job they are interested in, the bot will ask them a few questions (including contact details, motivation and resume) to complete their application. If they don't see any job they are interested in, job hunters can also do a spontaneous application.

How to customise this template

Make sure to always update the NLP after loading a template!

Flow: General

Block: Introduction, We're hiring

Modify the text in these block so it reflects the branding of your own business. Replace Sinch with the name of your own company.

Flow: Job application

Users can access this flow by clicking on the See open positions button in the We're hiring block or by triggering the Find_job intent.

Block: Route job

When the user's message matches the Find_job intent, this Go To block will steer the conversation in the right direction. If the user's message specifies the role they are interested the bot will detect this as the @job entity and store in a variable of the same name. There are 3 scenarios:

1. If the user doesn't mention any specific job in their message (e.g. Show me your job openings) they are redirected to the list of job openings.

2. If they do specify the job they want to apply for (e.g. Are you hiring a full stack developer?) the user is immediately redirected to the relevant job description.

3. If the user asks about a job for which there is no vacancy they will see the No open jobs block.

For scenario 2 you will need to add two conditions for every vacancy that you want to advertise. The first condition redirects the user to the relevant job description if they are on WhatsApp; the second one redirects the user to the relevant job description if they are on another channel.

Block: Route channel - Open positions

If the user clicks on the See open positions button or by their message matches Find_job without mentioning a specific job, this block will redirect them to either a list menu (on WhatsApp) or carousel (on other channels) with the vacancies.

Block: Open positions WA

For users on WhatsApp this block shows all vacancies in a WhatsApp list menu. Add a Go To button for each of the jobs you want to advertise.

Block: Open positions

For users on other channels this block shows all vacancies in a carousel. Add a carousel item for each of the jobs you want to advertise.

Job description blocks

For every vacancy that you want to advertise in the bot you will need two blocks with a job description, one for WhatsApp and one for other channels.

In addition to the description itself, each block should include an Apply now and Not now thanks Go To button. In the non WhatsApp blocks you can also include a URL button to the full job description on your company's website. As URL buttons aren't available in WhatsApp you can put the full URL in a separate text message in the WhatsApp blocks.

Block: Route channel - file upload

This block redirects the user to the Ask for resume block if are on the web channel and to Upload resume Input Validation if on another channel.

Block: Upload resume

For users on the web channel this block uses Chatlayer's file upload functionality to let the user upload their resume. If the upload is successful the bot goes to the Set var candidate_resume to {uploadedFileUrl} block where the link to the file is assigned to a new variable. If the upload fails the user is redirected to the Failed uploading resume block and asked to try again.

Block: Upload resume Input validation

For users not on the web channel, this block uses an input validation with the input format set to image to allow them to send their resume. The image format works for checking if the user's response matches any file format (not just images) rather just a text message. The link to the file is saved in the candidate_resume variable.

Block: Send to Airtable

After the user has answered all questions, this block sends all the candidate's information stored in the bot's session variables to an external database so it can be accessed later. By default, this template sends the information to an Airtable using the Create Record function of our Airtable integration.

You can read more about Chatlayer’s Airtable integration here.

Not using Airtable within your organisation? You can link any type of database to this bot, as long as it has an API. Read more about integrations here.

You will need to customise this block by connecting it to your own Airtable account and your own Airtable base. However, when you have newly imported the Job Applications template, it will be linked to this Airtable base. Feel free to use it as an example of what the data in your own Airtable should look like, but make sure to replace it once you start using the bot for your own organisation.

The Candidates table in the sample Airtable base

If you do not yet have an Airtable account set up in Chatlayer, you can do so by clicking Connect new account and following the steps in the pop-up window. You will need your Airtable API key for this, which you can find on your Airtable account page.

Once you have set up your own Airtable base, head back to the block in Chatlayer. In the Base field replace the ID of the example Airtable base with the ID of your own Airtable base. In the Table field replace the example ID with the ID or name of the table in your own Airtable base where you store the candidate data. You can find your Airtable's base ID and table IDs here, or in the URL of your table view.

Flow: FAQ

This flow can answer some of the basic questions candidates might have about the application process. Each type of question is corresponds to an intent. When a user asks a question that matches that intent the block with the relevant answer is triggered.

If you want to add a question to this FAQ section, you can simply create a new intent in your bot's NLP section, add some expressions with variant phrasings of the question (at least around 20) and link this intent to a new block containing the answer to the question. If one of the questions isn't necessary for your bot, you can simply delete the intent and the block that is linked to it.

Make sure that all of the built-in answers in the blocks are in line with your company's hiring policy.

NLP

In addition to changing the flows, you will also need to make some changes to the entities in the NLP section of your bot. The contextual entity @job captures the job the candidate is interested in. You will need to replace the example values by the vacancies at your own company. Adding synonyms for the entity values ensures that the correct job will still be detected even if the user phrases it in a different way, e.g. ML engineer vs. machine learning engineer.