Blog/ Zoho Recruit

Dynamic approvers in Zoho Recruit, without a process for every combination

What the client needed

Every job opening went through six approvers. The first three were optional: whoever created the job opening chose them, and it could be all three, one or two of them, or none. The last three were mandatory and never changed, people like the Head of HR and the Head of Finance.

So one job opening might need four approvals and the next one six, with different people in the first slots each time.

Why Recruit can’t do this out of the box

An approval process in Zoho Recruit has a fixed list of approvers. It doesn’t let you take them from the job opening itself.

The obvious fix is a user field on the job opening for each optional approver. But a user field can’t be used as an approver in the approval process, so that goes nowhere.

You could build a separate approval process for every combination of optional approvers. With people changing from one opening to the next, that means a lot of processes to build and keep up to date.

The workaround: lookup record owners

The approval process does have one option that changes with the record. When the job opening has a lookup field, you can make the owner of the selected record an approver. That’s the way in.

1. Create a module for each optional approver role. For this client that meant modules like Team Leads and Regional Directors.
2. Add a record for each person who can approve. Name the record after the person, and make that same person the record owner.
3. Add a lookup field on Job Openings for each of those modules.
4. In the approval process, set the first approvers to the owner of the record selected in each lookup. Then add the fixed approvers after them.

Now the recruiter picks a name from the lookup when creating the job opening, and that person becomes the approver, because they own the record they picked.

What happens when a lookup is left empty

The approval step for that lookup is skipped, and the approval moves on to the next one. Pick one optional approver, and the job opening goes to that person and then the three mandatory approvers. Pick none, and it goes straight to the mandatory three. One approval process covers every combination.

A feature I’d like to see

Choosing approvers per record is a common need, and I’m surprised Zoho Recruit doesn’t support it directly, for example by allowing a user field as an approver. Until it does, lookup record owners do the job.