Managing Skills

Skills form a big part of Eploy – From extracting candidate CV’s, building vacancy requirements & setting company preferences, the Skills tree provides an excellent filtering system and allows for extensive searching & quick matching 

Adding New Skills

In order to create new skills, there are a couple of different options. Firstly, use the Admin drop down from the menu tool bar and select New Skills.

This will provide you with a list of potential skills that have been used by candidates in their CVs, but have not yet been added to your skills tree. This screen will allow you to manage these potential skills, by selecting those that you wish to add and those that you wish to ignore. You will be able to see how many candidates in your database have listed these as a potential skill, giving you an idea as to whether you should add them in to your system.

By selecting each record, you can choose to;

• Ignore – this will remove the record from the list.
• Move – This will add the skill to the skill tree and more specifically the skills group selected in the drop down menu.
• Merge – This would merge the skill record with an existing skill. This is ideal if the record is a synonym of an existing skill. E.G – Microsoft Word is a synonym of MS Word. Once these skills are merged, if a candidate used either ‘Microsoft Word’ or ‘MS Word’ on their CV, it would extract the skill and list it as ‘Microsoft Word.’

Adding Bespoke Skills

The other option for adding a new skill would be when working within a candidate/vacancy/contact/company, using the skills tab.

Once on the skills tab, you can choose to either add a new skill group or an individual skill record. To add a skill group, select Add New from the menu bar of the folders section. This will then open a new window.

In the text box, type the name of the skill group you wish to add, then click save. This will create a standalone skill group. If you wish to create a skill group with in another group, simply ensure the group is highlighted before clicking Add New. To create a new skill, select Add New on the skill side of the menu tool bar. In the new window, type the name of the skill and which skill group you would like to add it to. When you click save, the skill will be created. The window will then offer several different options regarding management of the skill. You can move which skill group the skill belongs in, merge with other skills and add synonyms of that skill.

The populate skills checkbox will then search through all CVs in your database and if those candidates have the skill listed; it will populate their record with the new skill. This means that as you build your skills tree and your CV data base, Eploy will automatically tag existing candidates so that all of the information is relevant and up to date.

Once you are finished, click save again and close the box. You have now added your own skills.

Candidate Skills – Adding/Extracting From CVs

When Importing a candidates CVs, Eploy can automatically extract the skills listed within the CV, so that it is auto-populated on the candidate record. To do this, ensure that Skills is checked on the Import Options window; in the Please choose your skill option. (It should be ticket as default.)

Once you have imported your CV, the candidate record will be available (You can search by their name.) Listed in the Overview Section, the skills will be listed and grouped by their Skill Group.

Skilling up - If you wanted to add any skills to the candidate, use the skills tab at the top of the page. This will allow you to search for specific skills, either using the folders on the left or the Selected Skills – Quick Select search bar options. Once you are happy with your additional skills, click Save.

Adding Skills to a New Vacancy

When creating a new vacancy, Eploy will extract skills from the Job Description, Qualifications and Benefits, as long as they match skills that are in already set up in the system. To do this, ensure Auto Populate Skills is checked.

 So, for example, if you include in your job description that a candidate is required to have Microsoft Word training, the system will extract the information and list Microsoft Word as a required skill.  It will then be displayed in the summary page of the Vacancy.

Adding Skills to an Existing Vacancy

If your vacancy already exists, amending the Job description or Qualifications will not automatically add skills to a vacancy. However, you can manually add skills to your vacancy by using the skills tab whilst working with in the vacancy.

This will allow you to search for specific skills, either using the folders on the left or the ‘Selected Skills – Quick Select’ search bar options.  You also have the option to ‘Populate Skills’ – This will perform the extraction of data from the Job Description, Qualification or Benefits into the skills. Once you are happy with your additional skills, click Save.

Adding Skills to a Contact

You can use the same process when adding skills to a contact. This would be done if a contact consistently looks for specific skills within their candidates. You simply go in to the contact that you wish to add the skill too, and then select the skill tab; find the required skill, add to the contact and click save. The skill will then be listed within the summary page of the contact.

Searching via Skills

To search via skills, we need to use the query builder. The process is the same whether you are searching though candidates, vacancies, companies or contacts.

Firstly, select the area that you wish to search in. In the example below, we will be searching for candidates with specific skills. Access candidates from the main page module or the menu tool bar, selecting View – Candidates. Once in candidates, select the query builder.

Select the skills tab at the top of the query builder. In the same way that you add a skill to a candidate, vacancy or contact, add your required skill to your query. However, as part of the query, you have the option of using AND/OR. Using and will mean that the skills are mandatory in your results – only candidates with those skills will be returned. ‘OR’ will allow for more flexibility in your results – candidates with either skill chosen will be returned in the search results.

Once you have selected your required skills, click View Count. This will show you how many candidates will be returned with your search results.

You may wish to amend your skill search if the figures returned do not match your needs, or you may wish to add additional search parameters using the Preferences, Availability, Free Text or All Fields tabs.

Once you are happy with your results, click Apply. This will return your results, enabling you to view the details of each returned candidate. The candidates will be returned with a skill match score, allowing you to quickly find the candidates that closest match your query.

The skill match score is comprised of two figures, both represented as percentages. The first figure is the percentage of skills that are assigned to the candidate. The second figure, which is often the same as the first is the percentage of skills that were extracted from the CV. The only occasion that these figures would be different would be if you had manually skilled-up your candidate by going in to the record and adding skills yourself.

Once you have the results of your query and found your ideal candidates with the correct skill match, you can easily add the details to a long list or even create applications. Simply use the buttons at the bottom to action your candidates.