Email

To speed up email-outs and overall speed of your system, Perform Zone is now automatically opting out candidates and clients that have had their email accounts closed down (hard bounces). You’ll still see a bounce back message in your email inbox for the first time you try to email them. This opt-out only works if you are using Perform Zone’s Email Forwarder module. See the PZ manual on how to set this up. If you’re not using the Email Forwarder, you can still opt them out manually by following this process:

SendGrid email option. If you’re sending a lot of email out, it’s highly possible that you’ll be put on SPAM lists. To minimize this we have teamed with SendGrid to ensure that you’re emails arrive. SendGrid allows delivering your transactional and marketing emails through the world’s largest cloud-based email delivery platform.
See the PZ manual on how to set this up

From time to time our Email Forwarder struggles with parsing the first and last name data displayed in email addresses. This is due to candidates and contacts displaying their name in their email in non-standard ways.  We’ve fixed the following scenarios:

Comma “Smith, Steve”; lower cases “steve smith”; and first name or last name with one or more upper case (STeVe SmiTh). They all now become “Steve Smith”

Application Screening

We’ve updated some drop downs. In the notice period, we’re now saying “requires notice to resign from current job” and “Immediate Availability”. This was based on feedback from recruiters saying that our previous 1 week, 2 week, 3 weeks, I month, immediate list was to constricting as the dates move when the placement becomes closer.

We’ve also changed the Communication Skills drop down label “Excellent” to “Very Good”. Again, this was based on recruiter feedback that no one really has ‘excellent’ communication skills.

When opening your applicants list, the first candidate in your list will be automatically selected. Handy in the common case of there only being one candidate in the list opened. Also handy as you can now use keyboard arrows instead of selecting a candidate first then using arrows when there are multiple applicants.

When you close a job that has been on hold, PZ was not rejecting all the non-placed candidates. No pop up was appearing when you moved a job to Closed from within job details screen.  A dialog box now appears when an on-hold job is changed to Closed giving you options to take your advert down and/or reject applicants that were not placed.

Task Manager

We’ve made some updates to what now displays in the Tasks list. These will make it even easier for you manage gaining timely interview feedback and updating tasks.

SEEK

Minimize interview no-shows by having an automated SMS sent to your applicant at 7pm the night before. See the user manual on how to activate this.

Exporting

We’ve update the export tool in Applications to allow you to export the mobile phone field as a separate field. This is handy when using your office mobile to bulk SMS. We now have 3 separate phone fields to export: direct line, home and mobile.

Referees

We’ve made some updates in the Candidate referees tab so that they are consistent with our Automated Reference checking tool available in our candidate app, and soon to be available for your website plugins. These updates allow displaying the Referees responses.

Employers list

To assist with your prospecting to employers, we’ve updated the Search options to include a new search field “Last contacted between” with two date fields (Similar to that in jobs search). We’ve also renamed the “last spoke” field to ‘Last Contacted” in both the column list, export, import and column selectors.
‘Last Contacted” field includes single emails, sms and manual text entry (but not bulk emails)

Jobs

You can now search on a Job’s Classification and Sub classification and whether your job contact is opted in.

We’ve added the following fields to the jobs export and import tool: Skills, Visa, Security, Company Profile, Advert teaser (Career Centre), Advert Bullet points (Career Centre), Contact Opt in, and Employer Industry.

In the jobs list we added the ability to display the Employers Industry and the job contacts opt-in status as columns.