The Agency Portal Settings define how agencies work with you. These settings should be configured as part of the initial setup before inviting agencies.

In this section, you control key behaviors such as default language and currency, duplicate candidate prevention, agency recruiter permissions, communication preferences, ATS integration, and role-based access. Configuring these options upfront helps ensure clear ownership, smooth collaboration, and proper alignment with your SmartRecruiters workflows.

This article provides an overview of each setting and explains how it impacts agency activity across the platform.

Accessing the Agency Portal Settings

You can find the Agency Portal Settings by navigating to:

AgencyHub (left side bar) → Agency Portal Settings.

Basic Portal Settings

Within Basic Portal Settings, you control:

• The default language for agency hiring

• The default currency for agency hiring

Duplicate Candidate Prevention

⚠ Please make sure to correctly configure how duplicates are handled.

Choose whether agency candidates are blocked on:

• Current Job only, or

• All jobs

If Current Job only is selected, multiple agencies can propose the same candidate for different jobs.

The look-back period determines how long an agency retains ownership after introducing a candidate before another agency can propose the same candidate.

Credit System & Busy Spots

Credit System

The credit system limits the number of candidates an agency user can propose to a job. The goal is to encourage agencies to submit only the most suitable candidates.

• For every candidate moved to Interview in Recruitee, a new credit is awarded to the agency user.

• When a candidate is rejected, no new credit is awarded.

Busy Spots

Busy Spots help agency recruiters focus on roles that need attention rather than submitting candidates to jobs with already well-filled pipelines.

Agency Recruiter Permissions

You decide how much control agency recruiters have over candidate movement.

• View Only: The agency environment mirrors all candidate movements inside Recruitee.

• ⚠ Full Control (ATS Synced): Agency recruiters can move candidates within your Recruitee environment (except to Hired, unless explicitly enabled).

You may also allow agency recruiters to move candidates to Hired, depending on your configuration.

Chat & Communication

• All Agency Hiring Email Notifications

  This is your master switch for agency-related email notifications. When Enabled, your team can receive emails about agency hiring activity; but only if their role also has email notifications turned on in the Permissions tab. Toggle this off to silence all agency hiring emails across your org instantly.

• Email Notification Recipients for Candidate Related Chat Messages

  Control who gets notified by email when a new candidate-related chat message arrives. Choose Disabled to send no emails, Hiring Team to notify everyone on the candidate's hiring team, or Specific Users to hand-pick exactly who gets notified.

• Select Users to Notify

  This appears when "Specific Users" is selected above. Search for and add the team members who should receive candidate chat message emails. If no one is added here, no notifications will be sent.

• Hide Individual Agency Recruiter Names

  When Enabled, your team will only see the agency's name in chat — not the individual recruiter's name. Useful for keeping communication clean and brand-consistent when working with multiple agency contacts.

• Hide System Messages

  HirePort automatically logs system events in chat (like star rating changes and stage updates). Toggle this to Enabled to hide those automated messages and keep the chat view focused on real, human-written conversations only.

• Notes on New Messages

  Decide whether the AgencyHub should automatically create a note every time a new message is received. Set to Always to log every incoming message as a note, or Never to skip note creation entirely. Shown on the right side of the candidate profile in Recruitee.

• Who Can See Notes

  Choose the visibility for notes that the AgencyHub adds. Always Public means everyone in your company can see them. Always Private lets you restrict visibility to specific people (notes may contain sensitive information).

• Create Salary & Benefits Note on Introduction

  When Enabled, the AgencyHub will automatically generate a note containing salary and benefits details whenever an agency introduces a candidate.

• Choose Who Can See Notes (Recruitee Only)

  When notes are set to private, use this setting to specify exactly which team members can see them. You can assign access by individual Users or by Roles. Anyone not listed here won't see the notes at all.

Screening Questions

Enabling ATS Screening Questions allows agencies to complete screening questions normally filled in by candidates applying directly.

• These questions appear when an agency proposes a candidate.

• They are also visible in HirePort at the bottom of the job page.

In addition to standard ATS screening questions, you can create custom screening questions specifically for agency submissions.

These questions:

• Are answered by the agency recruiter when proposing a candidate

• Can be tailored per job

• Help you collect additional, role-specific information

• Appear on the candidate profile for your hiring team to review

Custom screening questions allow you to standardize the information you expect from agencies and improve candidate evaluation consistency.

ATS Integration (Advanced)

Advanced Settings Include:

• Candidate Name Suffix 

Add a custom text suffix that will automatically appear after every agency candidate's name in Recruitee. For example, entering "via via Agency" would display candidates as "John Doe via Agency"; making it easy to identify which candidates came through your agencies at a glance. Leave this empty if you don't need it.

• GDPR Consent Duration 

Choose how GDPR consent validity is calculated for agency-introduced candidates. Select Custom to define your own number of days, or Use Recruitee to follow whatever consent duration is already configured in your Recruitee settings.

• Custom Consent Duration 

When "Custom" is selected above, set the exact number of days that GDPR consent remains valid for a candidate's data. The default is 30 days — adjust this to match your company's data compliance policy.

• Candidate Tags in ATS 

Control what tag information gets added to agency candidates in Recruitee. Choose All Tags (Include Fee) to show the agency name, company name, and recruitment fee. Select No Fee Tag to include everything except the fee. Choose No Tags to add no tag information at all.

• Hide Rejection Reason from Agencies 

When Enabled, agencies will only see that their candidate was rejected; they won't see the specific reason why. This is useful for keeping internal feedback private while still keeping agencies informed of outcomes.

• Hide Hiring Team 

When Enabled, the names and details of your hiring team members will be hidden from agency-facing job pages for agencies. Keep this Disabled if you want agencies to know who they're working with.

• Candidate Transfer Tracking

If enabled, agencies remain updated when their candidate is moved from one job to another.

When a candidate is transferred within Recruitee:

1. A new interview process is created

2. The original agency remains the source

3. The agency stays informed of all movements

• Candidate Source Label

If you prefer a uniform source label for agency candidates (instead of using the agency name), you can define it here.

⚠ Ensure this label does not conflict with other sourcing channels (e.g., career site, social media).

Default Stage Settings

In Default Stage Settings, you define which stages:

• Trigger email updates to agencies

• Are visible in the agency candidate pipeline

⚠ The first stage mapped as Introduced determines where agency candidates enter the Recruitee pipeline.

Select Hide for Agencies for stages that should remain internal only.

Hidden stages will appear in a separate section below.

Permissions

Under Permissions, you can configure what each user role can see or manage in the AgencyHub. These roles align with the user roles defined in Recruitee.

Select a Role to Configure

1. Use the dropdown at the top of the Permissions section.

2. Select the role you want to configure (e.g., Standard User, Manager, Administrator).

3. The displayed permissions reflect the current configuration for that role.

Managing Permissions by Feature

Contracts

Controls access to contract agreements.

• None: No access

• View: Can view contracts

• Manage: Can create and edit contracts

• Admin: Full control, including deletion

Agencies

Manages recruitment agency access.

• None: No access

• Assign: Can assign agencies to jobs

• Manage: Can invite and remove agencies & can edit agency details

• Admin: Full control, including adding/removing agencies

Chat

Controls chat functionality.

• None: No chat access

• Interact/Admin: Can view and participate in chats

Email Notifications for This Role

Determines whether users assigned to this role receive email notifications for AgencyHub activity.

• Disabled: Users with this role will not receive email notifications

• Enabled: Users receive email notifications for chat messages, candidate updates, and other HirePort events

⚠ Email notifications are sent only to users who are part of the Hiring Team for a specific job.

Additional notification preferences can be configured under Chat & Communication within the Agency Portal Settings.

Troubleshooting & Support

If you encounter issues during setup:

• Ensure you have the necessary administrative permissions

• Clear your browser cache and try again

• Contact Recruitee technical support for assistance

Need help?

Contact Recruitee support.