A CV-first application asks for the document a candidate already has, gives them a chance to correct what the system understood, and routes the confirmed application to human review. The useful workflow is visible from the public role to the recruiter’s inbound queue.
This guide follows Yena’s documented flow. It separates the product’s current behaviour from the process decisions your team still needs to make, and ends with a fictional test you can run before publishing a real role.
1. Build the career site and review the draft
In Tenant Admin → Career Page, Yena can draft a page from your website. The draft may include the logo, brand colour, company description, About story and reasons to join. Review and edit every section before applying it. The page remains private until you switch it live.
The documented designs are Statement, Warm Team and Bold Dark. Choose the one that makes the role and next action easiest to understand. Keep only About, Team, Why us or photo content that your agency can maintain and has permission to publish. The support guide describes a Google-ready page, not guaranteed indexation or ranking.
For the complete setup sequence, see Yena’s career-page setup guide. German teams can also compare the existing German CV-first career-site guide.
2. Publish a candidate-safe role
A role’s internal description may contain client context, fee notes or search instructions. Yena uses a separate public description for the career page. Write or review that candidate-facing version before switching the role live. If there is no public description, the page does not use the internal text as a fallback. See the publish-a-job guide for the documented controls.
Check the title, locations, department, employment type and work model. If the mandate is confidential, review every public field for indirect clues and obtain the required approval before publishing. Keep screening questions limited to information that the recruiting team will actually review.
3. Let the candidate choose CV-first or manual entry
The application form offers Let Yena read your CV. With a supported file, Yena can prefill name, email, phone, LinkedIn and location. The candidate can correct any value or skip the CV route and fill the form manually. The AI step is an optional aid, not a condition of applying.
The What we understood card shows up to four role-relevant strengths and, at most, one invitation to add something not visible in the CV. It does not show a score, percentage or ranking, and it does not reject the candidate. The candidate can add context in the free-text field below.
After submission, the candidate confirms by email. Only confirmed applications reach the recruiter’s inbound queue, where the team decides what happens next. Read the detailed CV-first application documentation for supported files and the fallback behaviour when parsing cannot complete.
4. Keep screening and status updates human-led
Screening is off by default. When a team enables it under Settings → Client Portal → Link Defaults, Yena can read a confirmed application against up to six criteria for jobs that have criteria and show Yes, No or Unknown to the recruiting team. The setting applies across the workspace; changing criteria does not automatically re-check applicants already in the queue. Unknown means the CV does not say; it is not treated as a rejection. Screening never moves, rejects or emails an applicant automatically. The team reviews the evidence and chooses the pipeline action.
A private candidate status link can show a generic rail — Applied, Reviewing, Interview and Decision — without exposing internal stage names. It is a status view, not a promised timetable. Decide internally who sends a personal update and when.
Supporting references: screen applicants against criteria, review inbound applicants and candidate status links.
Fictional pre-launch test
Fictional example, not a customer result: create a role called “Senior Project Lead — K-TEST-01”, a synthetic CV and a controlled test inbox. Open the public page on a phone, upload the CV, correct the phone number, then repeat once through the manual path. Confirm that the reflection contains no score or ranking, the confirmation email arrives, and the application appears in Inbound only after confirmation. Move the test applicant through a generic phase and open the private status link to check that internal stage names are not exposed.
Launch checklist
| Check | Ready when… |
|---|---|
| Brand and page | Logo, colour, story, address and live switch were reviewed. |
| Public role | Candidate-safe description, location and work model are correct. |
| Application | CV upload, correction, manual fallback, free text and consent were tested. |
| Review | Confirmation, inbound queue, criteria reading and human decision owner are clear. |
| Candidate contact | Status link, personal updates and escalation contact are agreed internally. |
| Measurement | Your team can distinguish page visits, starts, confirmed applications and reviewed applications. |
Try it with non-personal test data
Review the career sites for recruitment agencies and test the workflow with synthetic records before using real candidate data. If the flow fits your process, start a 10-day free trial and keep the first test deliberately small.