Convert: How to add a Custom Question to a Flow

Adding a custom question to your Flow allows you to gather specific information from candidates that is relevant and pertinent to your candidate engagement strategies at relevant touchpoints during the candidate journey. Convert helps you capture this data in a format that is useful and easy to create.

Custom questions are linked to custom fields, which means that the information you’ll collect will be logged on each candidate’s profile, and can be used at any time during the candidate journey. You may wish to make immediate use of the information you capture, using recipes to trigger campaigns. Or, you may wish to add candidates to specific Pools based on custom question responses. There are many possibilities! The important thing to know is that the information you need will be gathered easily and stored for your use, whatever that may be. You may wish to dig further to understand how data gathered using a custom question on a Flow is actionable using Recipes and can be reported on using Data Explorer. 

Flows are part of Beamery Convert, which was released as part of an Early Access Program in September 2020. For an overview of Convert, click here.

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to add a custom question to your Flow: 

1. To begin, you’ll first need to create a custom field in your Beamery instance. Note that only Admin users can create custom fields, so if you do not have this permission level you will need to reach out to one of your Beamery admins to request that this field is created.  Answers to your custom question submitted by candidates will populate into this custom field. 
2. To create your custom field, navigate to Settings, and then choose Custom Fields from the menu on the left-hand side.
3. Next, click on ‘Create Custom Field’. Then, give your custom field a name, and if your organization keeps custom fields in folders, add the custom field to the relevant folder.
   
4.  Next, choose the user roles that you would like to be able to view this custom field and its contents. Restricting the custom field to only be visible to certain user roles means that only those users will be able to see candidate responses to Flow questions that are linked to the custom field.
5. Finally, select the custom field ‘Type’. There are four custom field types, and each will require a different type of response from the candidate when they complete the custom question. 
   1. Single-Select - You will need to pre-fill the options, and candidates will be able to select one option from a drop-down menu. Here is an example of how a single-select field would appear as a flow question:
      
   2. Short Text - Candidate will be able to enter a free-text answer here, up to 100 characters. Here is an example of how a short text field would appear as a flow question:
      
   3. Multi-Select - You will need to pre-fill the options, and candidates will be able to select multiple of these options from a drop-down menu. Here is an example of how a multi-select field would appear as a flow question:
      
   4. Date - Candidates will be able to choose a single date, using a date picker.

      Here is an example of how a date field would appear as a flow question:
      

6. Finally, click ‘Save’ to complete the creation of your new custom field. 

7. Now, Navigate to ‘Marketing’ and then select the ‘Convert’ tab. 

8. You can either add your custom question to a new Flow or edit an existing Flow.

9. In the ‘Edit Page’ area of the flow builder, click on ‘Form’ to see the existing questions in your Flow and add a new one.
   

10. Then, in the ‘Form Elements’ area of the Flow Builder, click on ‘custom question'. 

    
    

11. You will see a custom question appear in the ‘Edit Page’ area of the Flow Builder. Use the ‘Link a Custom Field’ dropdown to select the custom field you just created to add this as a custom question to your Flow.
    

12. You can use the ’Question text’ field to rewrite the question in a more candidate friendly way. For example, if you have created a field called ‘Graduation Date’, you can change this on your Flow to say ‘When did you graduate college?’
    

13. If your custom field is a Single-Select or Multi-Select field, you can choose which of the options will be visible to the candidate for them to choose when they complete your Flow. For example, if you have created a custom field to track the area of interest of your candidates, and you will be sending your Flow to candidates with customer success careers, you can choose to expose only the options that are relevant to customer success candidates.
    

14. Lastly, you can choose whether this question should be a required question in order for the candidate to be able to submit the Flow, by checking the ‘required’ box.
    

15. Once you are happy with your custom question, you can move on and add more questions in the same way, or you can save or publish your Flow by clicking the relevant button. Note that only admin users can publish Flows.

In Summary…

Adding custom questions to Flows is simple, and allows you to gather actionable and meaningful information from candidates when they complete Flows. The answer a candidate provides to a custom question is logged on their candidate profile in Beamery, meaning that this information can be used at relevant future points in the candidate journey, as well as immediately upon submission of the Flow.

Have questions about Beamery Convert? Reach out to support@beamery.com.

Additional Resources

An Overview of Convert
How to Create a Flow
What's the Difference Between a Beamery Form and a Convert Flow?
An Overview of Data Explorer