Partner Hiring

This article covers how to use Flo Recruit for partner hiring. While there is overlap in setup with other types of hiring, we will consolidate a majority of instructions for you here while pointing out nuances and special considerations for these extremely strategic searches. Note that this will involve the following modules: the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), Interview Events, and Candidate Review. If you do not already have one or more of these modules and are interested in adding them to your account, please reach out to your Account Manger.

While you wouldn't post a partner position publicly, you can create a job requisition in Flo Recruit as a means to discreetly store candidate information and track their journey in the pipeline. With Interview Events, you will be able to keep a record of interviews and trigger evaluation forms. And with Candidate Review, you can easily link or export important information to be securely shared across team members.

We will cover all of this information as follows:

Let's begin!

First, you will need to set up a few items from the account settings. Click on the gear icon near the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar and look under "Job Settings." You can begin with departments and positions as these will be some of the first required fields necessary for creating a job requisition. Again, this does not need to be shared publicly, but will be a way to store candidate information.

Departments and positions are easy to add by clicking on the plus sign icon and typing in your entry. You can keep these more broad such as "Firm" for the department and "Partner" for the title. This may be best if you are consolidating your requisitions more broadly, such as "2025 Partner Candidates." Alternatively, you could also create different requisitions for each department or practice area, such as Corporate Partner Candidates, Litigation Partner Candidates, and so on.

If they have not already been added, make sure to "Edit Office Locations" and enter the cities you are hiring for.

Next, create your statuses. Statuses will be used to track your partner candidate's journey through the hiring process.

You will notice that there are several pre-set categories built into Flo Recruit. These are Applied, Screening, Interviewing, and so on. These overall "buckets" cannot be changed, but you do not need to use every category if they are not relevant for your partner hiring needs. While your statuses do need to be organized into the categories you choose to include, the statuses themselves can be whatever you wish. Similar to the department and positions, statuses are free text fields. To add one, click on the pencil icon for a particular category, click on the plus sign icon, and type in your entry.

If you're not sure what statuses to use or which categories they might fall into, here is an example:

Once your statuses are created, you can organize them into a pipeline template. Navigate to this page once again through the account settings and click on Create New Pipeline Template.

You can title this "Partner Hiring" or similar. Click on the three dots for each category to Edit Statuses. Select the statuses that you built out in the previous step from the drop-down. Note that you can drag and drop the order as needed.

You will also notice that you can add an email in association with a status. Some firms like the opportunity to streamline their processes by preloading templates to communicate with the candidate or agency representative through Flo Recruit. Note that you will still be able to modify the emails before they are sent in order to individualize the message for the specific recipient. Other firms take the approach of direct communication outside of Flo Recruit for a personalized touch. Either option is up to you, but just know that creating templates in advance is available if you feel it will be a helpful tool.

Next, we will address Application Questions versus Internal Fields.

For context, Flo Recruit comes with preset sections for Address Information, Work History, Education History, and Personal Information. These can be added to your requisition with one click and already contain the fields that you might expect for this type of information. For example, Address Information will include fields for address line(s), city, state, zip code, and so on.

We will address this again when we cover job creation. We provide this context here, however, as - by contrast - Application Questions and Internal Fields are entirely up to you and completely customizable. Thus, they can be used for essentially any information you want to track that isn't already covered by the preset sections. Examples might be referral name, JD year, current title, current employer, compensation, sector, office preference, practice area expertise, etc.

They are both set up very similarly. Both pages have a "Create New" button where you can then title your Application Question or Internal Field, designate the type (Free text, numerical, etc.), and enter answer options, if applicable.

So what is the difference and how do you decide which to choose? Application Questions are exactly as the name suggests - questions that are asked on the application itself. Thus, they would typically be visible to the candidate and entered by them directly or - alternatively - the agency representative, on behalf of the candidate.

Internal fields are also somewhat self explanatory in that they are only visible to and entered by your team. Of course, with partner hiring, the candidate or agency representative likely would not be filling information out themselves. Thus, if we assume that BOTH routes would ONLY be visible to your team, let's highlight where these show up in the account and some pros and cons to each.

Location: On the application, both on a slide-out menu when viewing a candidate within a specific requisition or from a specific candidate's profile. They can also be included in a Candidate Review (more information on this here) when sharing the candidate's information with other team members.

Pro: The candidate's answers for the particular job will be displayed in the job details table. This table is exportable and you can customize which fields to include through the "Column Management" tool. By contrast, Internal Fields will always display whatever is the most recent answer, regardless of the specific job you are currently viewing. Thus, if you are wanting a quick at-a-glance view for data specific to a particular job, Application Questions may be your best choice.

Location: On the application, from the slide-out menu when viewing a candidate within a specific requisition. Or on the candidate's profile on the left-hand side. Just like Application Questions, they can also be included in a Candidate Review when sharing the candidate's information with other team members.

Pros: Internal Fields can be included as columns on the Reporting > Candidate Filters page, while Application Questions cannot.

This page is ideal for viewing and exporting data across all jobs. Note that you can still filter by Application Questions or export them via the "Candidates Jobs Export." That being said, Internal Fields are ideal on this page if you want to be able to customize the columns, both when viewing and exporting. This comes with the caveat that, as mentioned, Internal Fields will display the most recent answer.

There's a lot to think about during initial setup! But now you've done a lot of the work. Let's talk about creating your job req!

Navigate to the Jobs page and click on Create New Job.

Begin by titling your job. As discussed, you can keep these more broad, such as "2025 Partner Candidates" or you can separate them out by department or practice area, such as Corporate Partner Candidates, Litigation Partner Candidates, etc. In either case, it's easy to duplicate jobs so you'll only need to set them up once and can modify any details as needed.

Fill out the rest of the required fields, marked with a red asterisk. Note that many firms will select all of their applicable locations for the "Office(s)" field and will denote a specific office for the particular candidate through either an Application Question or an Internal Field.

A job description likely will not be necessary as this is only be for your internal use. You can also leave "Will agencies be able to apply to this job?" as "No." You will still be able to enter which agency submitted a candidate, where applicable. This particular setting references the Agency Portal and is only relevant if you were to have agencies submit candidates directly. For the last step of the "Job Details," you can leave your job as private.

Next, you will build out the application itself. Note again that this is information that you can enter, as opposed to the candidate themselves. As noted earlier in this article, there are several preset sections you can choose to include, which are easy to add with one click.

For Candidate Documents, you can add as many document types as you would like. If you do not see the document you need, starting typing the name and the option to create a new document type will become available.

You can add any Application Questions you created during the initial setup by adding a Custom Questions Section. When you click Add Question, the customized options will appear in the drop-down. You can drag and drop these to appear in your desired order.

Speaking of ordering, you can click Reorder Sections at the top of the page to rearrange the different parts of your application.

Lastly, select your Partner Hiring pipeline on the third step of the job creation. With that, your requisition is ready to go!

Click on Add Candidates and enter the individual's name and email through the +New Candidate icon.

If you do not have the candidate's email address, a tip is to enter this as firstname.lastname@notarealemail.com. For example, john.doe@notarealemail.com. This is a domain owned by Flo Recruit. It allows you to fulfill the required email address field, but any candidates using this domain will simply show up like so:

Once you add a candidate's name and email, you can designate their source and status. Lastly, confirm that you would like to add them to the job.

Once added, click on the candidate's name. This will open a slide-out menu. From here, use the pencil icons to edit the various sections. You will be able to enter the candidate's information, as well as drag and drop or upload documents.

For candidates submitted by an agency, you can add the agency's information through the slide-out as well. Note that you can preload the agencies you typically work with, as well as any associated contacts at said agency, through the account settings. See more information on this here.

Within this same slide-out, you can change a candidate's status like so:

If you chose to create an email template in association with a status, note that you can modify the template for the specific recipient before sending it, as shown below.

To schedule a candidate, you must first create an interview "event." To do so, navigate to the Events page, click on Add Event, and select Interviews.

You can continuously add various candidates to an interview event. Similar to jobs, you can once again decide if you'd rather keep your events more broad, such as by year, or more department-specific, such as "Litigation Partner Candidate Interviews." Note that, unlike jobs, interview events cannot be duplicated. Thus, depending on your desired setup, copying and pasting information might be needed.

Select hybrid if you plan to host interviews both virtually and in-person. You are required to enter an event description, but for partner hiring purposes, this will only be visible to you. The event organizer is the individual who will receive the accepts or declines of your interviewer's calendar invites - more on that later. You can leave Law School Event as "No."

For the "first day" section, you can simply enter when you estimate interviews will start. On the next page of creating your event, we will cover how to set up more specific times. Note that an interview event can span multiple days, weeks, or even months.

For the location information, you can input the physical address of the in-person interviews. If you will be scheduling interviews for multiple office locations, you can choose to leave this blank and use the "--" option for the "Office Location" field. If this option does not populate in the drop-down, you may need to add it first through the settings of the account under "Edit Office Locations."

Qualifying questions are helpful for any information you want to be visible to the interviewer directly in the virtual interview room if you would like an easy way for interviews to see both their schedule and this additional candidate data in one place. Tip: use the variable {{conferencing_link}} in the calendar invite to members if you would like for the virtual room information to be accessible for in-person interviews. If using the final schedule email to members, the candidate's name will already be hyperlinked with this information.

You can customize qualifying questions through the account settings.

To enter qualifying question answers for a candidate, navigate to their profile. One way you can do so is by searching for and clicking on their name from the Candidates page.

From the profile, hover over the three dots next to their name and edit. Here, you can enter qualifying question information. If you do not see this option for one or more of these questions, you may need to add the candidate to an interview event that asks these questions first.

Once again looking at setting up your interview event, you will want to include any documents that you'd like to be visible to the interviewer in the "Request Documents from Candidate" section. Don't let the name deter you - you do not need to actually request the candidate to upload these documents, as they will carry over directly from their application. In fact, you can even set these as "do not request." The purpose here is simply to ensure visibility for the interviewer.

To collect feedback, first turn on this section. You will see the option to include the candidate's photo or not, which you likely would only have if you uploaded the photo to the profile directly yourself. You can also opt to send automated reminders to the interviewers to fill out their evaluations.

Under Edit Feedback Options, you can create your specific questions. This is also accessible through the account settings. Once your questions are created, you can add the relevant ones via the Add Question button. Drag and drop the feedback questions to your preferred order.

Here is an example of the interviewer's view when they go to leave feedback:

Next: emails! Similar to the status emails, it is up to you if you'd prefer to turn these off for more personalized, direct outreach to the partner candidate. You'll still be able to share the Flo Recruit meeting link with the candidate and we'll show you how a little bit later.

Your interviewers can receive an Outlook calendar invite and/or a final schedule email. As mentioned, any acceptances or declines will go to the event organizer. Something to highlight for in-person meetings is that we highly recommend calling out in the body of the invite to check the location for details on room number or meeting place.

On the next page, you will actually schedule the specific interview. To do so, first click on the +Time Block icon.

Select the date and start time. Designate how many interviews the candidate will go through and the duration for these slots. If the slots vary in length, you can use the "custom timeslots" option. You can also select if the time block is virtual or in-person, but note that specific time slots within a virtual time block can be in-person or vice versa.

When you click Next, the settings you will see won't be relevant for your purposes as they apply for when candidates are signing up for an interview time themselves. Thus, you can simply set "candidates allowed in time block" to 1 and click the Create Time Block button.

Once the time block has been created, you can add the candidate to it by clicking on the +Candidate icon. Search for the candidate in your list, select them, and confirm.

Once added, the option to assign interviewers will appear. Search for and select the interviewer(s) for each slot.

If helpful, note that you can upload your interviewers in bulk through the Members page of the account under "Bulk Upload Members." This can streamline the scheduling process as they will be readily available in your list of interviewers.

When you click on an individual timeslot, you can modify the interviewers, time, timezone, and video link. This refers to if you'd rather use the Flo Recruit link or paste in a custom link, such as Zoom, Teams, or Webex. The latter may be necessary specifically in the case of using a conference room, but we recommend reaching out to your IT team to verify which software your conference rooms are most compatible with.

You will also notice "Interview Type." This will give you the ability to make a particular slot virtual or in-person. If you select in-person, an additional room number field will populate. This could be an actual room or a specific meeting place, such as a restaurant. This will appear in the location field of the Outlook Calendar Invite to Members.

When you are ready, save your event. Other features of note are the ability to copy both interviewers' and candidates' video links. This can be helpful if you are sending correspondences directly, as opposed to through Flo Recruit.

Additionally, you can also copy an interviewer's feedback link if you ever need to leave feedback on their behalf.

Speaking of feedback, we highly recommend utilizing the Candidate Review tool to easily share evaluations and any other candidate information or documents that you'd like to include. This is easy to set up and customize. It can be shared as a link that live-updates with new information or as a convenient PDF export. As mentioned earlier in the article, you can learn more about this module here.

In this article, we walked you through the various customizable setup items for your Applicant Tracking System and how to tailor them to partner hiring. We also covered how to apply those settings when creating a job requisition. Once this is created, you will be able to add candidates, store their information, and update their status. By creating an interview event, you can schedule these candidates for both virtual and in-person calls, as well as collect feedback from the interviewers. Lastly, we pointed you to where you could find additional information on the Candidate Review tool, which can be used to share candidate information, documents, and evaluations to different team members.

If you'd like to discuss your partner hiring needs more in depth, reach out to your Account Manager or message us in the help chat to let us know you'd like to set up a meeting. We look forward to showing you how you can tailor Flo Recruit's modules to your unique hiring needs.