Greenhouse User Guide

Meet Greenhouse: The Applicant Tracking System CS&S uses to manage hiring processes

Greenhouse is an applicant tracking software and hiring platform that streamlines job post creation, candidate management, reporting and compliance.

All of our fiscally-sponsored project teams have access to Greenhouse to meet their hiring needs. As a one-stop shop for hiring, Greenhouse provides clarity and transparency when CS&S approval is needed (i.e. to post a new job and to send an offer letter) and autonomy for projects to run their own processes with an easy-to-follow structured hiring format.

While Greenhouse is the only ATS that CS&S supports, FSPs are welcome to use preferred external hiring systems provided they maintain applicant records for up to 3 years in fulfillment of federal compliance requirements.

Overview of how CS&S supports FSP teams working with Greenhouse

When using Greenhouse, all hiring teams will follow the same set of steps:

1. Job creation

2. Request CS&S approval to go live with a job post

3. Manage a hiring plan and scorecard

4. Candidate management (progressing and rejecting candidates)

5. Review applications

6. Interviews and scorecard submissions

7. Offer creation

8. Request CS&S approval to make an offer

Hiring teams must request approval from CS&S at 2 stages in the hiring process: before going live with a job post (step 2) and before making an offer (step 8). Approval requests are submitted and processed in Greenhouse. No further communications with the CS&S team are necessary to complete the approval process.

CS&S can support hiring teams with:

• Greenhouse account user management:

  • Request user invitations for members of your hiring team as needed via email to fsp at codeforsociety.org.

  • Note that anyone can be a user on CS&S’s Greenhouse account so long as they do not already have a Greenhouse account affiliated with another organization.
    

• Feedback on job post content;
  

• Sharing job posts on the CS&S website (by default) and NTEN job board (by request);
  

• Guidance on hiring plans and scorecards:

  • CS&S HR is available for synchronous and asynchronous support when it comes to providing feedback and answering questions regarding your hiring plan.
    

• Joining 2nd round interview committees:

  • Our team has expertise in operations, finance, governance and programming. To request a core team member join your hiring committee, contact fsp at codeforsociety.org.

  • Participation is subject to scheduling capacity.

CS&S does not provide support with:

• Job creation in Greenhouse;

• Sharing job posts outside of our website and NTEN job board;

  • To see a list of suggested posting locations, check out our Job posting guidance.

• Leading on hiring plan design;

• Candidate management and communications;

• Application review;

• Interview scheduling;

• Reference checks;

• Platform issues.

Greenhouse support resources

While hiring teams are able to navigate the platform autonomously, Greenhouse provides extensive support features to answer any questions and support real time problem-solving.

Key support features include:

• Greenhouse Support: a robust library of support articles covering a wide range of use cases;
  

• Learn Greenhouse: a video library with topics from platform navigation to hiring best practices. Note their course packages for different hiring team roles and live training schedule;
  

• “Get help” function: the chat box icon on the bottom left of your screen in the Greenhouse platform will expand to a chat bot. If you indicate that the chat bot responses are not helpful after 2 attempts it will give you the option to contact support, followed by an option to email or live chat. With the live chat function, support specialists will work with you to address platform issues in real time.

  • This function is recommended if platform support is needed.

Job creation

The first step in any Greenhouse hiring process is to create a new job. Once you have an account invitation and logged in, follow steps to create a new job outlined in the job creation support article.

Notes on fields in Job Creation workflow:

• Choose a starting point: We recommend you copy an existing job in order to work from previous CS&S hiring processes as a template.

  • Toggle the Job Status search filter to All Statuses to select from CS&S’s full Greenhouse job history.

  • Once your project has already launched a job in Greenhouse, you’ll be able to copy your project’s previous jobs to reuse project-specific language and processes. 

    • Note that previous jobs have likely been closed, so you'll need to include closed jobs in your search to be able to copy them in job creation.
      

• Department: Select your project name, or CS&S core team department.
  
  

• Office: All CS&S jobs are in our “Remote” office.
  
  

• Requisition ID: This field enables CS&S to identify each unique job in our hiring history, even if position titles are the same or similar. Use the “Generate Requisition ID” function to follow our identification convention.
  
  

• Opening ID: “Openings” refers to the number of positions you expect to fill with this job post. If you plan to hire 1 person, the opening ID should be “1”, and “2” for 2 people, etc.
  
  

• Target Start Date: The date you enter as your “target start date” will be used to calculate whether your hiring process is on track for your desired timeline.
  
  

• A job kickoff form may help your team align on aspects of the hiring process and position, but this step is not required.
  
  

• Once your request has been approved by a member of the CS&S team, the job you have created will be “live” in the Greenhouse platform. This does not mean that your job post is public. A live job is ready to progress in the hiring process. The following section details how to make your job post public.
  
  

• You will still be able to add openings and edit job information once the job is live.

Managing your job post

Once your job has been approved and goes live, publish the job on the CS&S website via Greenhouse. Create and manage the job post published on the CS&S website by following the steps outlined in the external job post support article.

Notes:

• Post to: All jobs should be posted to “Code for Science & Society.” We do not offer an internal job board at this time.
  

• Toggling the job post status will publish and deactivate the public application link.

  • You do not need to contact CS&S to request a job posting be published or removed from our website, as hiring teams control job posts autonomously in the Greenhouse platform.

  • All deactivated job posts will be published on the jobs archive of our website by default.

    • Contact fsp at codeforsociety.org to request that your post is not publicly archived.
      
      

• Post Description and Basic Application Information: You can find content guidance on our website, including required language for fiscally-sponsored projects, recommendations and words to avoid.
  
  

• Custom application questions: These fields can provide an alternative to cover letters, wherein project and position-specific questions can be posed to glean more direct and detailed responses than a cover letter may offer.
  
  

• Settings: The CS&S core team includes demographic questions in order to generate reports on the diversity of our applicant pool and measure progress in our goals to engage increasingly diverse candidates. This option is recommended for projects, but not required.

  • It is not required that the EEOC questions be included at this time.

  • Note that there is overlap between the demographic question set and the EEOC questions, and the demographic set has a broader range of response options.
    
    

• Generate a tracking link to share your job post url.

  • Using unique tracking links for each unique posting location enables metrics on candidate source quality.

Updating your hiring plan

Once your job post is live and you have started collecting applications, be sure review your interview plan, including: a scorecard with focus attributes aligned with an ideal fit for the role, the number of interviews you plan to hold with each candidate as they progress through your hiring process, along with expected duration of each interview and designated interviewers.

Notes:

• If you copied an existing job in the job creation step, the interview plan will be copied as well. Be sure to review and edit this to suit the needs of your position.
  
  

• In order to be added as an interviewer for your job, all members of your interview committee must have a Greenhouse user account (created by request to fsp at codeforsociety.org).
  
  

• You can continue to edit your interview plan, including the number and duration of interviews and corresponding scorecards, as you move through the hiring process. Just be sure to follow the best practice of ensuring all candidates are measured by the same criteria (i.e. Do not make changes to a scorecard if you have already begun evaluating candidates in that round).

Candidate communications

As you reject and progress candidates through your hiring process, all candidate communications are integrated with Greenhouse and archived in the candidate’s activity feed. You can use CS&S email templates or create your own to streamline communications around rejections, interview invitations, and process updates. Greenhouse’s maildrop feature enables external correspondence to be logged in the activity feed via email.

Notes:

• When creating email templates for your project, they must be added to the organization-wide templates in order to be used by other members of your team (“My templates” will only be available to you).
  
  

• You can add email correspondence to the corresponding candidate’s activity feed in Greenhouse at any time by forwarding the thread to [email protected], or blind-copying the maildrop address in your correspondence.

Application review and candidate management

As your hiring committee proceeds with the application review stage, note that reviewers will not use your scorecard until you reach the interview stage of your hiring process.

Notes:

• CS&S has not enabled any stage transition configurations. Rejecting or advancing candidates will not trigger any automatic candidate communications.
  
  

• Bulk actions enable you to review, advance or reject multiple candidates at once.
  
  

• Candidate tags can be leveraged when filtering candidates for bulk actions.

Interview management

Prior to scheduling candidate interviews, create alignment on your interview committee by adding interview questions and updating the scorecard focus attributes. The criteria you add to your interview plan will be reflected in the interview kit that accompanies interviewer invitations when you proceed with scheduling.

To schedule interviews:

• Request candidate availability
  • To leverage the google calendar integration that enables interview committee availability to inform suggested interview times, projects must use the [project name][email protected] email account to manage a shared calendar that will appear in Greenhouse.

    • Contact fsp at codeforsociety.org if you encounter access issues with your [project name][email protected] account.

    • All projects will have a "[Project Name] Hiring" Greenhouse user account corresponding to their codeforsociety.org email address. This user is automatically set up as an admin on your project’s jobs.
      
      

• Once candidate availability is received, schedule the interview
  • Add the “[Project Name] Hiring” user as an interviewer to schedule an interview with the zoom integration.

    • Projects will receive a Zoom invitation for their [project name][email protected] account. Activate this account to use the Zoom integration with Greenhouse.

    • Select “[Project Name] Hiring” as the Meeting Host

    • Google Meet is an alternative to Zoom that can be selected in Greenhouse when scheduling interviews.

  • Add interviews to the “[Project Name] Hiring” calendar to reflect scheduled interviews in your shared calendar.
    
    

• Once scheduled, send interview confirmation

  • Candidates will not be aware an interview has been scheduled until this confirmation is sent.

Notes:

• When requesting availability from multiple candidates at once, expect to compare their availability manually before scheduling each candidate in the appropriate time slot.
  • If you plan to request availability from a high volume of candidates (6+), the Calendly integration may better support your interview scheduling needs.

    • Be sure to integrate Calendly with your [Project Name] Hiring user account, to enable the calendar feature within CS&S’s workspace.

    • Projects scheduling a high volume of interviews have also opted to use Calendly externally by pasting the link from an external account into candidate communications, and then rather than using the Zoom integration, simply adding a Google Meet link to calendar invitations.
      
      

• We recommend you share the Interviewer guide Greenhouse resource with your interview committee so they know what to expect as they navigate the process.
  
  

• When first using the Zoom integration, we recommend you cross-check meeting IDs in your [Project Name][email protected] Zoom account with the Greenhouse-generated calendar invite for peace of mind.
  
  

• Members of your interview committee will be able to see one another’s completed score cards in the candidate activity feed.
  
  

• Committee deliberation can be facilitated via the notes function, to find alignment before your hiring lead decides to reject or advance a candidate after their interview.
  
  

• Review our resource: Hiring team and interview guidance for best practices, recommended questions and what not to ask.

Reference checks

Once your interview committee has identified a top candidate (or multiple, if you have more than 1 opening for a position), we strongly recommend reference checks.

Notes:

• While you can request reference contact information from a candidate within Greenhouse, and suggested questions will be populated in this stage of your hiring plan, communication and scheduling with references must take place outside of the platform.

Making an offer

When you have progressed a candidate to the final stage of your hiring process, you are ready to create an offer and request approval from CS&S.

Notes:

• Once CS&S has received and approved your offer request, we will proceed with sending our official offer letter email to your candidate, which includes form links as well as the offer letter for signing, CCing the project lead on both.

  • Projects may wish to send an informal offer email to determine a start date with the candidate prior to creating the offer in Greenhouse. No approval is required here, but we do recommend you send this communication through Greenhouse to keep communications logged in their candidate profile.

  • The informal offer email template is available in Greenhouse under “FSPs: Informal offer.” Content sections in brackets require review before sending.
    
    

• For full-time employees, the FLSA status should be “exempt” and the standard hours should be 40. Inquire with fsp at codeforsociety.org if you have questions on this.
  
  

• We strongly recommend you do not reject other top candidates until an offer has been accepted.
  
  

• If a candidate wishes to negotiate the conditions of the offer, you will need to create a new offer version and re-trigger approval.

  • If candidate negotiations require changes to the offer letter template itself, request a custom offer letter from fsp at codeforsociety.org