Sharing Documents with Candidates

While you can’t directly attach documents to emails in Applied, there is a way to send documents to candidates when you’re communicating with them from the email drawer: using hyperlinks and cloud storage / file transfer services.

For an explanation of each of these things, please scroll to the bottom of this article.

A step-by-step

If you wish to send an email to (a) candidate(s) with a document that they must download and read/fill out, you can do so by following these steps:

1. Ensure that the file you are sharing is permitted to be shared outside of your organisation.
   
   
2. Upload the file to either your OneDrive/Google Drive OR to a file transfer service such as WeTransfer (make sure that permissions are set so that people outside of your organisation can view the document). 
   
   
3. Create a shareable link and copy it. 
   
   
   
   
4. Open Applied and navigate to the role you are managing.
   
   
5. Select the appropriate candidates and in the blue action bar that appears at the bottom of the page, choose the email icon.
   
   
   
   
6. Write your email and include the appropriate text, something like ‘Download this template’ or ‘View candidate pack’.
   
   
7. Highlight this snippet of text and click on the hyperlink icon.
   
   
   
   
8. Paste your share link and choose the tick to accept it.
   
   
9. Once you are ready to send, send a test email to yourself and check that the link directs to the file you intend to share.
   
   
   
   
10. You can save this email as a new template if you expect to send the same email again - just make sure that the share links aren’t going to expire (this is typically the case with WeTransfer, where the file will only be accessible for one week).
    
    
    
    
11. Hit send. 

What is a hyperlink? 

A hyperlink is simply a link to another location that can be accessed by clicking on a designated word. This is an example of a hyperlink: click here. 

What is cloud storage?

Where you might be used to saving files in a physical location, like your computer’s hard drive, cloud storage is simply a place to store files and data over the internet, which is managed by a ‘host’ company. If you save things ‘in the cloud’ and your laptop went up in flames, it wouldn’t be a disaster (from a file retrieval point of view, at least) because you could access your files from another machine. 

If this doesn’t make much sense, don’t worry. The chances are you’re using cloud storage without really knowing it. Tools like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox are examples of cloud storage. 

What is a file transfer service?

Companies such as WeTransfer have built businesses helping people send documents to others in cases where the document is too large to attach to an email. They allow you to upload a file, create a sharing link and send this to someone else, who can download the file.