A pre-onboarding flow that you can customize to send invites to the candidates who have cleared the interview and been selected for your organization. This onboarding flow enables them to know about your organization, fill out their personal and professional details, allows you to release and obtain signed copies of the terms and conditions of employment, a background check authorization letter, a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), and other company-specific forms required to be completed by the candidate before joining the organization.

Candidate onboarding is facilitated through a portal and your new hires will not have access to Zoho People.

Watch How to Set Up Candidate Onboarding Flow

Procedure to Set Up a Candidate Onboarding Flow

To set up a Candidate Onboarding Flow, navigate to Settings > View all > Onboarding and do the following.

Set Up a Portal Name

The portal access URL will typically be in this format: https://people.zoho.com/[portalname]/cp/preonboarding.

1. If you are a first time user, navigate to Settings > Onboarding > Flows > Candidate Onboarding > Flow, and enter your Candidate Onboarding portal name.
   
   

   The portal name can only contain alphanumeric characters, special characters and spaces are not allowed.
   
   

   

   The entered portal name URL will be https://people.zoho.com/zenithsolutions/cp/preonboarding

2. If portal name is already defined, you can click on the edit (pencil) icon to edit and enter the new portal name.
   
   

   If you have already initiated the Candidate Onboarding process for your new hire and later updated the portal name, the existing link shared with your new hire will become invalid. You will need to send them the updated link to access and complete the Candidate Onboarding process.
   
3. Click Copy portal link to share with candidates, to copy and share updated Candidate Portal website URL to your Candidates for whom the onboarding is initiated.
   
   

Edit Flow

1. Navigate to Settings > Onboarding > Flows > Candidate Onboarding > Flow, click on the Edit (pencil) icon.
   
2. Edit the Flow Name to your organizational preference.
   
   
   
3. Enter the portal access link expiration duration in days and click Save.
   

   

   The maximum allowed expiry period is 120 days.

   

   The candidate onboarding portal will be accessible to the candidate for the specified number of days from the date of initiation of their onboarding process.
   

   For example, if you set the expiry to 15 days, the portal link will become invalid 15 days after the initiation of the onboarding process for the candidate. They will have to contact their HR partner for a new URL to complete the onboarding.

Set up Candidate Onboarding Flow

To set up a Candidate Onboarding Flow, navigate to Settings > Onboarding > Flows > Candidate Onboarding > Flow, and click on the Flow Name.

Welcome aboard

1. Home page video URL
   
   You can add an URL of the introductory video of your company in the Home page video URL. This will be embedded and made viewable to the candidate on the welcome page of the portal.
2. Select the HR partner
   Select the HR partner who will be handling the candidate onboarding of your organization.
   
   
   

You can modify the HR partner assignation before sending invitations to your new hires.

Profile

Profile section contains the Zoho People's Candidate Form, which is available under Settings > View all > Onboarding > Extended service. This form will appear in the Profile section of the candidate onboarding portal, where your candidates can view and fill in the necessary details.



Candidate information form contains the following sections, you can customize the form to your organizational preference by editing them.

1. Candidate details: This section contains form fields to collect candidate personal details.
   
2. Address details: This section contains form fields to collect candidate address details.
   
3. Professional details: This section contains form fields to collect candidate professional details such as skill set, source of hire, tentative date of joining and so on.
   
4. Educational: This section contains form fields to collect candidate educational details.
5. Experience: This section contains form fields to collect candidate work experience details.

You can customize the Description shown in the profile section to your preference that will be updated in the profile interface of the onboarding flow.

Forms

Documents and Policies

Enable the Documents and Policies tab to share the onboarding documents with the candidates that are to be signed, read, and accepted during their onboarding process. 

Customize the Description shown in the Documents and Policies section to your preference, which will be updated in the Documents and Policies interface of the onboarding flow.

Documents to be read and accepted

Add documents that are to be read and accepted, or signed by the candidate.

Only Mail Merge templates are supported in this section.

To add the documents to this section:

1. Select the predefined Mail Merge Templates from the dropdown.
   

You can define a mail merger template in Zoho People in Settings > Onboarding > Automation > Templates > Mail merge templates, where you can set up your custom templates.

Example Mail Merge templates:

1. Offer letter
   
2. Terms and conditions of employment
   
3. Background check authorization letter
   
4. Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), and
   
5. Other company-specific letters
   

For more information on mail merge template, refer to Automation - Overview & Use Cases.

2. Enter the document name.
   
3. Select the sign type as:
   
1. Accept/Decline: To allow candidates to read and select accept or decline.
   
2. Zoho Sign: To allow candidates to read and sign the document.

E-Sign options are available only if you have integrated Zoho People with any of the available E-Sign platform such as Zoho Sign, DocuSign or Adobe Sign, For more information on e-sign integration, refer to E-Sign Application Integrations.

4. Click ellipsis icon to view and edit the documents added from Mail Merge Templates.
   
5. Click Add to add more documents that are to be read and accepted
   

You can add the documents to this section that are added to your Organizational Files in the Zoho People Files service and for which the applicability is set to all. To add documents to the Organizational Files, refer to Organizational Files.

Checklist

Checklist in Candidate Onboarding are limited to administrator use and are not available to candidates.

Include a checklist in the flow before inviting the candidate to make it available for any subsequent candidate onboarding.

To add and know more about Checklist, refer to Automation - Overview & Use Cases.

Once the candidate completes the onboarding process, administrators can validate and complete the checklist. Checklist for the candidate record is available in Operations > Onboarding > Candidate Onboarding Reports > Onboarded. Click on the record to view and complete the checklist.

Save and Preview Onboarding Flow

Click Save after setting up each tab to save the configuration of your candidate onboarding flow.

Add New Flow

You can create multiple Candidate Onboarding flows for your organization, which enables you to conduct a personalized onboarding process for your new hires based on their work location and designation.

To create a Candidate Onboarding flow based on location and designation:

1. Navigate to Settings > Onboarding > Flows > Candidate Onboarding.
2. On the flows tab, Click Add New Flow.
3. Enter the Flow Name.
   
   
   
   
4. Select applicable locations.
5. Select applicable designations.
   
6. Enter the portal expiry duration in days and click Save.
   
   

   The Candidate Onboarding portal will be accessible to candidates only for a specified number of days from the initiation of the process. If the portal expires, candidates can contact their HR partner to regain access and complete their onboarding.
7. Upon adding the flow, set up the Onboarding Process, refer to Set Up Candidate Onboarding Flow.
8. Click Save.
   A new onboarding flow for specified location and designation will be created.

Reorder Onboarding Flows

The Candidate Onboarding flow will be triggered for your candidates based on the listed order. You can re-order any of the custom Candidate Onboarding flow by simply dragging the flow up or down.

Candidate Flow applicable to All must be placed at the last.

As per the flow order shown in the above image:

1. If you trigger Candidate Onboarding for the Austin location, the corresponding flow for Austin will be triggered.
2. If the Candidate Onboarding is triggered without specifying the candidates designation or location, and if there is no specific flow for the selected location or designation, the default onboarding flow applicable to all will be triggered.
   

Enable, Disable, Edit or Delete Onboarding Flows

You can enable, disable, or delete the onboarding flow when there are no onboarding in progress for the corresponding flow. 

Candidate Onboarding Flow Preferences

1. Navigate to Settings > Onboarding > Flows > Candidate Onboarding > Preferences.
2. Enable Allow administrators to mark the onboarding as completed to allow administrators to manually mark the onboarding as completed for the candidates who have completed their onboarding process, this option allows you to review the details provided by the candidate and mark their onboarding as completed.
   
3. Set Tentative date of joining preferences for the candidate.
   
4. Click Map Form Fields and select the relevant candidate form fields for the provided employee form fields to update candidate information to the employee form.