Publishing a role

Why there are gates

A few things have to be true before a job is visible to candidates, and the first two are judgements a machine should not make on its own.

The first is whether this company is who it says it is. A job posting carries a company's name, and anybody can type a company's name into a form. The second is whether the role's basic facts are right. Those facts are shown to candidates, and they arrive as a model's reading of a description.

Both are checked before publishing rather than after, because the cost of getting either wrong is paid by somebody who never sees it happen: a candidate applying to a company that is not the company, or one misled about the job.

No gate takes anything else away

A company that has passed none of the gates can still create jobs, write rubrics, run pipelines, screen résumés, interview and decide. The gates stop a job being published, and nothing else. Nothing is deleted or hidden while you wait.

A draft role lists every gate at once, as a checklist above its tabs: Company verified, Matching facts confirmed, Decision thresholds set, Country set. Each unmet line links to its fix, and Activate stays disabled until all four are ticked.

Gate one: a verified work email

A job cannot be published until somebody at the company has verified an email address on the company's own domain. Personal email providers are refused, and the refusal says so: an address at a consumer provider proves an inbox, not a company.

It is once per company, not once per role. If you signed up with an address on your company's domain, the company is usually verified the moment you finish signing up, and there is nothing more to do. (Signing in with Microsoft does not count; use the link below.)

Otherwise an admin enters a work address in Settings → General → Company verification, we email a link, and opening that link finishes it. The link works in any browser and needs no sign-in, because it is often opened on a different machine, or by somebody outside the team whose address happens to be on the company domain, such as finance or IT.

• Any member can see the state, since everyone meets the consequence.
• Only an admin can act, and an API token cannot do it at all.
• The link expires and can be resent. A newer link replaces an older one, so the most recent email is the one that works.

If we suspend a company (after an impersonation report, for example), its publishing is suspended too: Settings says so, its live jobs are paused, and nothing publishes until the suspension is lifted. Lifting it leaves the paused jobs paused, so you reopen the ones you want.

Gate two: facets confirmed by a person

Every role carries nine structured facts: function, seniority, an experience range, languages, and whether the role offers visa sponsorship, involves travel, involves shift work, or offers relocation support. The careers page and the email inviting a candidate to the AI screen show them only once a person has confirmed them.

A model proposes them from the job description. A person confirms them, and publishing is refused until someone has. Confirming is a separate act from the model's proposal, so the gate never approves the model's own reading.

You can confirm while creating the role, by ticking These facts are right before saving, or later on the job page or the edit page. The tick clears itself if you change a fact after ticking it, so it always refers to what is on screen. Changing a confirmed fact later offers Save and confirm, one click for both.

While candidate matching is switched off, this gate does not block publishing: there is nobody to match the role against. The facts are still asked for, and matching leaves the role out until someone confirms them.

Three things about these facts are easy to get wrong:

• "No" and "not stated" are different answers. A role that involves no travel is a fact a candidate who cannot travel wants to know. A role whose posting does not mention travel is an absence. The editor offers three choices rather than a checkbox, and each is shown differently.
• Confirming a role with no facts set is allowed. "This role has no travel requirement, no language requirement and no stated seniority" is a real answer about a real job. What is refused is publishing without the statement.
• Editing any fact clears the confirmation. The screen says so before the edit rather than after it.

Gate three: both numbers set

Every round after the AI screen can start on its own once a candidate passes the one before, so a role has to say what passing means before it goes live. A job has two numbers:

• a score at or above the advance number (80 on a new job) moves the candidate on;
• a score between the two stays where it is, flagged for review, and a person decides;
• a score below the reject number (65 on a new job) rejects.

The same two numbers are read against the résumé score and after every scored round. Whether they act on their own or only recommend depends on your company's automatic decisions setting; see Deciding.

A new job starts with both numbers filled in, so this gate only stops a job where someone cleared one and saved. A job with no numbers would decide nothing after an interview, and every candidate would wait on a person while the pipeline looked automatic.

Gate four: a country

Job boards and Google will not list a posting without the country it is in, so a role needs one before it goes live. It sits with the role's facts as Country, a two-letter code (US, GB, DE), beside the region and city. The model proposes all three from the location you wrote and you confirm them with the rest. For a fully remote role, the country is where applicants must be. When you create the role, the drafting assistant fills the country in from the location as soon as you give one ("Austin" is US, "Remote — US" is US), and a pasted job description is read the same way before the rubric is written.

If a publish is refused

The button is disabled while any gate is unmet, so this is rare. If a publish is attempted anyway, for example by a teammate in another tab, the refusal names the unmet gate. The company gate is reported first, since nothing publishes without it, then the facts, then the two numbers, then the country.

Where a live role is listed, and for how long

Publishing lists the role on your careers page, in Google's job search, in the sitemap, and in the feeds Jooble, Talent.com and Adzuna read. The listing runs 30 days from publishing. Five days before it ends, the person who posted the job gets an email with a link to renew it.

When the 30 days are up the listing expires: the page stays at the same address and says the role is no longer accepting applications, and the role leaves search and the feeds. The job itself stays open. Everyone already in the pipeline carries on exactly as before. Renew on the job page gives the listing another 30 days from that moment. Pausing takes the page down, and reopening starts a fresh 30 days.

Keep this role private keeps the page working for anyone who has the link and lists it nowhere else: not on your careers page, not in search, not in any feed.

The job page's Listing panel also has ready-to-paste text for LinkedIn, Wellfound and Hacker News's "Who is hiring?" thread. Each carries the careers link with a tag for that channel, so the panel can show how many applicants came from each. LinkedIn does not take postings from us: post the job there, choose to receive applicants on an external website, and paste the link. Every other connection is listed in Integrations.

Limits and edge cases

• A verified domain is not a verified company. What is proved is control of an address on the domain. That is a much better signal than nothing, and it is not a registry check.
• No gate is retroactive. A job published before a gate existed stays published. The gates are checked when a job is published.
• An unpublished job is a draft. The company sees it and nobody else does.