Set up new candidate application notifications in Slack

TL;DR

If you know your way around Zapier, we provide an easy way for you to get notified every time a new candidate submits an application to your role. This could be via email, Slack or even text message. 

If you want to understand how our webhooks work, there is more information here.

Step 1: Create a role

Create a new role in Applied and navigate to the ‘Basic info’ tab. At the foot of this tab, you will find a ‘push notifications’ input. 

Step 2: Log in to Zapier

Open Zapier and log in / set up and account. You will need a premium account in order to catch a webhook. 

Step 3: Build your custom Zap

Zapier allows you to connect one app (ours) with all kinds of others.

Under ‘Connect this app’, select ‘Webhooks by Zapier’.

Under ‘with this one!’, select the app you wish to connect to: Slack, Gmail or anything else. For the purposes of this exercise, we are selecting Slack. If you wish to connect to Gmail instead, you can use this guide.

Step 4: Choose your trigger and action

The trigger will happen in Applied: when a new candidate submits an application, the system will generate a message and fire it into the ether. We need to tell Zapier to catch it.

Under ‘When this happens…’, select ‘Catch Hook’

The action is what will happen when a new candidate has applied. You will have different options depending on the app you’re connecting to. In the screenshot above, we are connecting to Slack and have chosen to ‘Send Channel Message’.

This means, when a new candidate applies to our role in Applied, we will receive a Slack notification telling us so. 

Hit ‘Try it!’

Step 5: Generate your webhook URL

When you reach the Zap summary page, hit continue.

You can hit continue again on the 'Set up trigger' step.

Copy the URL to your clipboard.

Paste the URL into the ‘Push Notifications’ field on the ‘Basic info’ tab in Applied.

Return to Zapier and test your trigger.

Step 5: Configure your action

Whichever app you’re using for your notification - Slack, Gmail, Outlook - you’ll need to hit continue and sign in.  

Once you’re signed in, select the relevant account, channel, and input your desired message.

Zapier will allow you to use the fields from the test message as placeholders for the messages that will appear in Slack. In the screenshot below, you can see we've used 'Job Title' and 'Job URL' to build a message that will be sent to Slack each time a new application is received.

Finally, test your action before publishing it. 

Check that your Slack notification has been received as intended (or email if you're setting up email).

And don't forget to publish your zap before you finish.

And that's it. The process of setting up an action will be slightly different depending on the app you wish to connect and the action you want to perform. If you'd like to know how to set up email notifications instead of Slack notifications, you can follow this guide.