Roles & permissions
The three hiring roles Vakanssi adds to WordPress, Recruiter, Hiring Manager, and HR / Compliance, and exactly what each one is allowed to do.
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You probably do not want everyone on your team to have the keys to your whole website just so they can review candidates. Vakanssi solves this with WordPress roles. A role is a named bundle of permissions attached to a person’s user account.
When you activate the plugin, it adds three hiring roles alongside WordPress’s built-in ones, so you can invite a colleague who works with candidates but cannot touch your pages, posts, or plugins.
All three roles are part of the free plugin, and each person has exactly one role.
Hiring only, not your whole site
The three Vakanssi roles carry no content permissions. Someone with the Recruiter role can log in and use the Hiring screens, but they cannot edit your pages, posts, themes, or plugins. The one exception is that Recruiter and HR / Compliance, the roles that manage jobs, can upload files to the Media Library, which the job editor needs. They still cannot edit or delete anyone else’s media.
Because a Recruiter, Hiring Manager, or HR / Compliance user has no content or admin permissions, logging in takes them straight to Hiring HQ instead of the generic WordPress dashboard, and that dashboard, if they open it anyway, is kept free of blog widgets like Quick Draft and WordPress news.
This only applies to someone whose account is hiring-only: a user who also edits your site or is an Administrator keeps the normal WordPress dashboard.
The roles
Recruiter
The day-to-day hiring seat. A Recruiter can see and review applications, move candidates through the stages, edit application details, evaluate candidates, schedule interviews, create and manage jobs, work the Candidates database (the talent pool) Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license, and collaborate with notes.
What a Recruiter cannot do: permanently delete an application, or delete a candidate (which would take their applications, files, and interview history with it, so it needs the same permission as deleting an application), export candidate data, edit the hiring stages themselves, or change any other Vakanssi setting, all of that lives on the Settings screen, which only HR / Compliance and Administrator can open.
Hiring Manager
The lighter reviewer seat, for the team lead who interviews and gives a verdict but does not run the process. A Hiring Manager can see and review applications, move candidates between stages, evaluate them, schedule interviews, and collaborate with notes. They cannot edit application details, delete applications or candidates (only their own notes), manage jobs, work the Candidates database, or change settings.
HR / Compliance
The trusted seat. HR / Compliance holds the full set of hiring permissions: everything a Recruiter has, plus the sensitive ones, which are permanently deleting applications, exporting candidate data, and changing Vakanssi settings.
Administrator
WordPress’s built-in site-owner role. Administrators always have every Vakanssi permission. The plugin re-grants them all on every update, so an upgrade can never lock the site owner out of their own hiring data.
Who can do what
| Ability | Recruiter | Hiring Manager | HR / Compliance | Administrator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| See & review applications | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Move candidates between stages | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Evaluate candidates: set the star rating, fill in Scorecards Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Schedule interviews | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Add notes, plus @mentions and assignment (Collaboration Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit application details, mark withdrawn / reopen, attach or remove files, send a message to a candidate, resend emails | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Configure the hiring stages | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Create & manage jobs | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Work the Candidates database Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Delete applications permanently | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Export candidate data | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Change Vakanssi settings | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Some abilities belong to Pro modules Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license: Scorecards, Collaboration, and the Candidates database (Sourcing & CRM). Scorecards and Collaboration use permissions every role already has, so their screens and buttons appear once Pro is installed and the module is on under Hiring, then Tools, then Features.
The Candidates database permission is different: only the Pro plugin adds it to Recruiter and HR / Compliance. On the free plugin those screens and buttons are simply absent. See Managing features and Free vs Pro.
Giving someone a role
To invite a new person:
- Click Users in the left sidebar of the WordPress admin, then click Add New User.
- Fill in a username and the person’s email address.
- Open the Role dropdown and choose Recruiter, Hiring Manager, or HR / Compliance.
- Leave the notification option ticked so WordPress emails them a link to set their password, then click Add New User.
To change an existing user’s role:
- Click Users in the left sidebar, then All Users.
- Hover over the person’s name and click Edit.
- Open the Role dropdown, pick the new role, and click Update User.
The change takes effect immediately. The next admin page they load shows or hides the matching Hiring menu items.
One more limit: assignment visibility
Roles decide what kinds of things a person can do. There is one setting that further limits which candidates they can do them to: Assignment visibility, on the Collaboration tab Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license. When it is on, Recruiters and Hiring Managers only see candidates assigned to them, or still unassigned, while administrators and HR / Compliance always see everyone. It is off by default. See Collaboration.
Notes for developers
Under the hood, each ability in the table is a WordPress capability with a vakanssi_ prefix, and every permission check runs through a filterable authorization policy, so you can tighten or reshape all of this in code. The full list of capability names lives at Capabilities.
One housekeeping note: uninstalling (not just deactivating) Vakanssi removes the three roles and strips its capabilities from administrators. Your users remain, but a former Recruiter or Hiring Manager will need a different role. See Backups & data.