Collaboration

Work candidates as a team with @mentions in notes, an owner on every application, and an optional setting that limits who sees which candidates.

Hiring is a team sport, but the discussion about a candidate should not live in a chat thread nobody can find next week.

Collaboration Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license builds on the free notes feature and adds @mentions to pull a teammate into a note, an owner on every application, and an optional setting that controls who sees which candidates. Its companion Pro module, Presence, adds a live indicator so you can see who else is on a candidate.

Start with notes (free)

Notes are your team’s private thread on an application: “phone screen went well, strong on the reporting side, salary expectation around 60k”. They sit right next to the CV instead of scattered across inboxes.

Notes are internal. Candidates never see them on any page or in any email Vakanssi sends. They stay attached to the application, so anyone who joins the process later can read the full history in one place.

The one exception is a personal-data export. If a candidate asks for a copy of the data you hold about them, the text of the notes about them is included, without the name of whoever wrote each one. Write every note as if the candidate might one day read it. See Privacy & Data Retention.

You can edit or delete your own notes at any time; a teammate with rights to delete applications can also remove someone else’s note, useful for cleaning up a stray or outdated one. Notes work on the free plugin. The rest of this page is what Pro adds on top.

The Notes tab shows how many notes an application has, next to the tab name, the same way the Activity tab counts its own entries (since v0.33.20).

Mention a teammate Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

A note only helps if the right person reads it. When you write one, type @ and start a name, or click @ Mention a teammate below the text box, then pick someone from the list with arrow keys and Enter, or a click. Typing the start of a colleague’s email address works too (since v0.33.20), handy when their display name is in a different script.

Each pick becomes a chip in a Will notify row under the note, so you can see exactly who gets the email before you post it. Click the × on a chip to remove it.

Posting the note sends each mentioned teammate an email with the start of your note and a link that opens this exact candidate.

Editing a note later shows the same chips under a Mentions label instead of Will notify, since a name already there is not a fresh notification. Add a name or click a chip’s × to remove one, then Save. Only a name the edit newly adds gets emailed.

Use it whenever a note needs eyes, not just a home. “Can you take the technical screen this week?” with your colleague mentioned turns a note into a nudge.

If the Scope by assignment setting below is on, only teammates who can already open this candidate appear in the list: administrators and HR, plus the assignee, or every recruiter and hiring manager while the application is still unassigned. A mention email never links someone to a candidate they cannot see.

Give every application an owner Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

An Assigned to control sits in the drawer header, next to Edit details, Print / PDF, and Delete, not in a tab, so the owner is visible at a glance without opening anything. Pick a teammate and they get an email letting them know, with a link straight to the candidate. Assigning to yourself sends no email.

Give every application an owner. Unassigned candidates are how someone ends up sitting in the first stage for three weeks, because everyone assumed a colleague had it. With an owner on each one, “who’s on this?” always has an answer.

Assign a batch at once Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

Assigning one application at a time is fine for a trickle of applicants, not for clearing a backlog. From the Applications list view, tick the applications you want to hand off, open the Bulk actions dropdown, and choose Assign to: [teammate], or Unassign to clear the owner on all of them. Click Apply and every selected application gets the new owner in one action.

See who else is on a candidate Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

When two people open the same candidate at the same time, the Presence module shows it. It is a separate switch under Tools, then Features, included in Pro alongside Collaboration. A small row of avatars shows whoever else has the candidate open; hover one for the name (“Sam is viewing this candidate”). On the stage board, the same row shows who else is looking at the board.

It updates live as people arrive and leave. Up to four avatars show at once, and anyone beyond that is counted in a +N chip. When you limit who sees which candidates (below), it never reveals a candidate a colleague is allowed to see but you are not.

Nobody’s edit gets silently lost

Vakanssi also stops two people from quietly overwriting each other, and this part works on the free plugin too, not just Pro. If a teammate changes a candidate’s details while you are editing them, your save does not overwrite theirs.

Instead it tells you what happened and keeps your unsaved edits in the form (“Sam updated this candidate’s details while you were editing. Nothing was saved yet; your edits are still in the form.”), so you can reconcile the two rather than lose one.

Notes are simpler: only the author can edit a note. If you edit one of your own notes in two places at once, the second save is refused and the latest version is shown. The Team rating stars have no such guard: the last click wins.

The same guard covers moving a card on the board: if a colleague moves it while you are dragging, the board updates instead of fighting you. It applies whether you are working from the pipeline drawer or the Candidates screen.

Limit who sees which candidates Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license

By default, everyone on the hiring team sees every application. One setting changes that.

Here is exactly what it does:

• Recruiters and hiring managers see only the applications assigned to them, plus any that are still unassigned. New arrivals stay visible to everyone until someone picks them up, so nothing falls into a hole before triage.
• Administrators and HR always see everything, whatever this setting says. Someone has to hold the full picture.
• It is off by default, so turning the Collaboration module on never quietly hides candidates from anyone.

For a recruiter under scoping, applications owned by someone else simply are not there: not on the board, not in search, not in the counts. Scoping only ever narrows what a role could already see. It never grants extra access.

When to turn it on:

• Agencies, where recruiters on different client accounts should not browse each other’s candidates.
• Larger teams, where several recruiters each run their own roles and want a board that shows only their own workload.
• Confidential searches, like an executive hire or an internal referral: assign it to one recruiter and it is invisible to every other recruiter and hiring manager.