When to use Pools, Skills, Profile Tags, Global Tags, or Custom Fields

Skills, Profile Tags, and Global Tags in Beamery give you a range of labelling options that allow for easy filtering and segmentation of your CRM. Pools in Beamery give you a way to build lists of candidate profiles that are easily accessible and shareable, and Custom Fields allow you to choose which information you collect, and who has access to see this information.

Functional Comparison
Use Case Recommendations
Examples

Functional Comparison

Check out the below table to understand the functional difference between Pools, Skills, Profile Tags, Global Tags and Custom Fields. As you decide which option to use, this will help you to understand which of these features meets your functional needs.

	Pools	Skills	Profile Tags	Global Tags	Custom Fields
Integrate with ATS	NO	YES (Workday only)	YES	YES	NO (unless this has been specifically mapped for your organization)
Bulk Action Candidates	YES	NO	NO	YES	NO
Add via Recipe	YES	NO	YES	YES	YES (excluding multi select fields)
Import via CSV	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Set permissions/Make confidential	YES	NO	NO	NO	YES
Admin-controlled list of options	NO	NO	NO	YES	YES
Folder across Pools, Vacancies and Recipes for easy filtering	NO	NO	NO	YES	YES
Can be made mandatory when creating contacts	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO

Use Case Recommendations

Check out the below table to understand the Beamery recommendations for which feature or features are best suited to common Beamery use cases. As you decide which option to use, this will help you to understand which of these features meets the needs of your specific use case.

	Pools	Skills	Profile Tags	Global Tags	Custom Fields
Manage Silver Medalists	YES	NO	NO	NO (unless using the Workday Silver Medalist tag)	NO
Manage information on DE&I or ERG groups	NO	NO	NO	NO	YES
Track Candidate Skills and Capabilities	NO	YES	NO	NO	NO
Recruiters can quickly add their own label to track additional information, e.g. qualification or preference	NO	NO	YES	NO	NO
Track list of candidates for future communications	YES	NO	NO	NO	NO
Track Feedback or NPS	NO	NO	NO	NO	YES
Manage Integrated compliance fields	NO	NO	NO	YES	NO (unless this has been specifically mapped for your organization)

Examples

Pools

Pools in Beamery allow you to build lists of candidates which can be made public or private, and can be easily shared with other Beamery users. Pools are the recommended option for managing Silver Medalist candidates, or tracking lists of candidates for future communications as they are designed to make this type of candidate management easy. Learn more about Pools here.

Check out the below list of examples of Pools in Beamery:

Accounting
Administration / Clerical
Customer Experience
Customer Service
Engineering
Finance
Facilities
Human Resources
Information Security
IT Operations
Legal
Marketing
Operations
Sales
Services
Supply Chain
Software Engineers - Front End
Software Engineers - Back End
Engineering Interns
Data Scientist
Silver Medalists
Low Data Quality
High Data Quality
No Email

Skills

Use the Skills field on the profile to highlight candidate skills or capabilities, especially those that are relevant to the roles hired for at your organization. Using the Skills field in Beamery will help you to save time when sourcing, as Beamery’s AI-Powered Smart Sourcing features leverage the information held in the Skills field of a Beamery Profile. Declared Skills are skills found in a contact's resume, or application enriched from a social profile (like LinkedIn) or added manually by a user. Suggested Skills are skills Beamery's AI has inferred based on the contact's Primary Job Title. Learn more about Skills here.

Check out the below list for some examples of Skills in Beamery:

Javascript
Python
CSS
HTML
Excel
Thought Leadership
Video Production
Database Modeling

Profile Tags

Profile Tags in Beamery are used to label individual candidate profiles, and a Profile Tag can be created by any user. This offers more flexibility when compared with Global Tags, which are controlled by admin users. Profile Tags can also be synced with your ATS via an integration, which makes them ideal for information that you would like to travel between your ATS and Beamery. Learn more about Profile Tags here.

Check out the below list for some examples of Profile Tags in Beamery:

Qualification - MBA
Certification - Salesforce
Preference - Remote Work
Preference - Night Shifts
Preference - Weekend Availability

Global Tags

Global Tags in Beamery are a higher level foldering system than Profile Tags, which allow for the tagging of various elements throughout Beamery, including Profiles, Pools, Vacancies and Recipes. Global Tags are managed by admin users, allowing users to choose from a controlled library of options when applying Global Tags. To ensure data completeness, Global Tags can also be made mandatory when creating a new Profile, Pool, Vacancy or Recipe. Global Tags can also be synced with your ATS via an integration, which makes them ideal for information that you would like to travel between your ATS and Beamery. Learn more about Global Tags here.

Check out the below list for some examples of Global Tags in Beamery:

Education - PhD
Education - Masters
Seniority - Entry-level
Seniority - Junior
Seniority - Mid-level
Seniority - Senior
Seniority - Executive
Resurfaced Contact
Readiness - Ready Now
Readiness - Ready Soon
Readiness - Ready Later
No Email
Implied Consent
Consent Required

Custom Fields

Custom fields in Beamery should be used to track any bespoke, Beamery-specific information that your organization has decided to collect from candidates. Admin users in Beamery can set which Beamery users can see a Custom Field based on their permission level in Beamery, which makes Custom Fields ideal for use cases like gathering DE&I or ERG group information. Learn more about Custom Fields here.

Check out the below list for some examples of Custom Fields in Beamery:

Primary Area of Interest
Secondary Areas of Interest
Career Change Timing
Willing to relocate
Willing to Travel
People Leadership
Current job situation?
Level of interest in hearing from us
Things I'd like to hear about
Recruiter Rating / Validation
Candidate Assessment Score
Culture Fit
Interview Feedback
Passive / Active
Validated by Business
Data Request
Data Request Comments
Race (US EEO)
Ethnicity (US EEO)
Gender Identity
Veteran Status
Disability

In Summary…

Use this article for guidance when you need to decide whether a Pool, Skills, Profile Tags, Global Tags or Custom Fields is the best fit for your needs. Please reach out to support@beamery.com if you have further questions about these features.

Additional Resources

An Overview of Pools
An Overview of Using Skills in Beamery
Using Profile Tags in Beamery
Using Global Tags in Beamery
Using Custom Fields in Beamery

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