One workflow, two kinds of applicant

Overview

A public opportunity gets two very different kinds of applicant: somebody who has never heard of you, and somebody you screened last year.

Treating them identically is the most common recruitment mistake. Send the stranger straight in and you have skipped your own screening. Make the known person re-file a full application and a good chunk of them do not bother. One opportunity can do both, and this article is how.

1. What is a recruitment workflow?

The set of rules on an opportunity deciding what somebody has to do before they count as approved for it.

It is set per opportunity, which is what lets one opportunity ask for a background check while another asks for nothing at all.

2. What are the four actions a rule can end in?

Form + request approval. They fill in a form, then wait for you to review. Safest, and the most work for you.
Request approval. They ask, you approve or decline. No form, still your decision.
Form + auto-approve. They fill in a form and are approved the moment they submit.
Auto-approve opportunity. They click Register and are in immediately.

Two axes really: is there a form, and is there a human decision.

3. How does one opportunity treat two people differently?

A workflow is a list of rules, not a single setting. Each rule carries conditions describing who it applies to, and its own action.

So a public opportunity typically wants two rules:

A narrow rule for people you already know, ending in Request approval or Auto-approve.
A catch-all for everybody else, ending in Form + request approval.

4. Which conditions identify somebody I already know?

Four, and they differ in how much they actually prove:

User is in the Active list in the database. The loosest. It says they exist and are not archived.
User is approved for any opportunity. They have been through your process at least once.
User is approved for the same category. Stronger, because they have done this kind of work for you before.
User is marked finished for a sequence. Strongest. It means they completed onboarding, not merely that they applied.

Pick on evidence, not convenience. If the opportunity involves vulnerable people, "is in the database" is not the same assurance as "finished the onboarding sequence".

5. Careful: conditions stack

Every condition you enable on a rule has to match, not just one of them.

Ticking both "approved for the same category" and "finished a sequence" describes people who have done both, which is a smaller group than either alone. If a rule is matching fewer people than you expected, that is almost always why.

6. The one that catches everybody: rule order

Rules are evaluated in order, and the first rule that matches wins.

A rule with no conditions applies to everyone. So if your catch-all sits above your specific rule, the catch-all matches first and the specific rule never runs.

Narrow rules first. Catch-all last. Always.

This fails quietly, which is what makes it expensive: everything looks configured, nothing errors, and every returning person still gets the long form. If you built the split and it seems to have done nothing, check the order before you check anything else.

7. Worked example

A public "Community kitchen" opportunity, in a Food programme category.

Rule 1. Condition: approved for the same category. Action: Auto-approve opportunity. Somebody who already works in your Food programme registers and is in.
Rule 2. No conditions, so everyone else. Action: Form + request approval. A stranger fills in your general application and waits for review.

Same opportunity, same public link, two experiences, no manual sorting by you.

8. Does this work with a general application form?

Yes, and that is the intended pairing. The general form is what the catch-all rule points at, so new people answer your intake questions once, and every opportunity can then rely on those answers existing.

Give an opportunity its own form only where the questions genuinely differ. A second form is a second thing to keep current.

9. One thing to check before going public

If an opportunity is public but its only rule carries an advanced condition, such as must be active in the database or must carry a profile tag, then every stranger who finds it is blocked by a rule they had no way of satisfying.

A public opportunity is a door. Make sure at least one rule asks only for things somebody arriving from your website can actually provide.

Summary

A recruitment workflow is an ordered list of rules, set per opportunity.
Each rule has conditions and one of four actions: with or without a form, with or without your decision.
Public opportunities usually want two rules: a narrow one for known people, a catch-all for strangers.
Conditions stack. Every enabled condition must match.
First matching rule wins, so narrow rules go above the catch-all or they never run.
A public opportunity whose only rule requires database membership blocks every new applicant.

Recruitment workflow rules: routing strangers and known people differently