This article will cover the required administrative setup steps for Fountain Pool and settings that can be customized to make Pool efficient for your company’s needs.
Before You Start
You need an account role that can change Pool settings. If your company does not use Fountain Hire, skip the sync step; worker records still populate Pool.
Change Settings by Asking Cue
Cue can set and change Pool settings conversationally, so you can adjust a threshold or an eligibility rule without navigating here. The settings pages remain available and work exactly as described below.
Setup Steps
Once Pool is enabled, Talent Profiles will be generated for every worker record currently in your Fountain account.
To start the flow of applicant records into Pool, click Pool in the left side panel and then Settings, under Talent data in the settings menu, click Data migration, then click Migrate.
This ensures your applicants’ data from Fountain Hire continually flows into Pool so you have an accurate pipeline of talent.
Not using Fountain Hire? You can skip the migration step.
How Quickly Records Arrive
The Hire to Pool sync is near-real-time and event-driven. Pool records update as applicants are created and updated in Hire, with a delay of a few minutes up to an hour depending on volume. There is no fixed polling interval, so there is no set time at which records appear.
Expect a few minutes in normal conditions and up to an hour during a high-volume intake. Because the sync reacts to events rather than running on a timer, a record with no recent activity in Hire does not resync on its own. A record that has not appeared after an hour is worth investigating rather than waiting on.
Attributes collected during the Hire application become available as Pool filter options only after they are synced. Use Sync from Hire in Settings > Worker Attributes.
Pool Settings
To access Pool settings, click Pool in the left side panel, and then Settings. A menu on the left groups every setting by what it's for, highlights the page you're on, and keeps every other page one click away.
Talent data: Talent eligibility, Lead capture and Data migration
Matching: Match score
Integrations: Pool in Hire, shown only when Pool in Hire is turned on for your account
Settings opens on Talent eligibility. On a narrower window, the menu appears as a row of links above the page.
View-Only Users See a Summary
Users who can view but not change Pool settings see a summary of each setting instead of the menu.
Match Score
To configure talent-job matching, click Match score under Matching in the settings menu. The page has two panels.
Match Score Threshold
Only show matches with a score at or above this value. For example, you may want to view jobs for which a given talent profile has a 75% match or higher. This threshold also supplies the default percentage offered in the audience filter.
Match Score Weights
Set how much each category counts toward the score:
Competencies — How well the competencies on a talent record align with the competencies the job requires. If specific skills and experience matter most for your roles, increase this weight relative to the others.
Customize signals — Fine-tune how the 7 competency signals inside Competencies are weighted.
Work availability — When talent is available to work. This is tied to the availability the applicant entered as part of the application process, compared to the shift added to the job Opening. If no shift is present for the Opening, this category is ignored. Learn more about Fountain Hire shift functionality in this article.
Job Interest — How recently the person applied to this kind of work. The signal fades gradually as the application ages.
By default, the weights are Competencies 75%, Work availability 5%, Proximity 15%, and Job Interest 5%.Proximity — How close talent lives to the job location. Increase this weight when travel distance is a strong predictor of whether someone will accept and stay.
Unlock a category to change its weight, or unlock several at once to adjust them together. The weights must total 100% before you can click Save. The Match score threshold section ("Only show matches with a score at or above:") has its own Save, and the badge beside its name shows the threshold currently in effect.
Reminder:
The Match Score is an intelligent scoring system that ranks how well a given person, via their Talent Profile, matches a specific job’s criteria, based on the alignment of the person’s skills, availability, and the job requirements. The match score uses aggregated information from the Talent Profile, job title, plus job description, then compares those datasets against industry-standard occupation databases, like O*NET, to estimate the skills a talent contact may have, as well as those required by a job.
The Competencies category scores talent as a higher match for jobs where the competencies on their record align more closely with those the job requires. For how the score is built, see How Match Score Works.
Fountain is continually investing in improving the match score algorithm, so methodologies may change.
Pool in Hire
Configure the filters used to match talent to openings in Fountain Hire. These filters produce the Available Talent count on the Openings page in Hire. Changes may take up to 1 hour to take effect. The page has three sections:
Job match — Match talent based on how well their skills align with the job. Choose Opening to match talent to the job at a specific location, or Position to match on the job only, not location. The Match score threshold inside this section only includes talent whose match score is at or above the value you set; a lower threshold returns more results and a higher one fewer. To stop using a threshold, click Remove threshold.
Proximity — Only recommend talent within this distance from the job location, set in miles or km.
Conditions — Narrow the match by adding conditions based on talent attributes, including any custom attributes defined in your Fountain account. Click + Add condition to add a condition, or Add condition group to add a group of conditions.
By default, talent are matched to an Opening when Proximity is less than 15 miles and Positions applied to matches the Opening.
To open these settings, click Pool in Hire under Integrations in the settings menu. To set a distance, click + Add proximity. The settings can't be saved without at least one condition, such as a job match, a proximity or another condition.
Changing these settings requires the Can update pool settings permission. Click Save to apply your changes. When you save, Pool confirms with "Settings saved. Changes may take up to 1 hours to take effect." For how the count appears in Hire, see Available Talent from Pool in Hire.
Messaging Rules
Messaging Rules prevent inbox spam and recipient fatigue by limiting how often a campaign can message the same person. The tile on the Pool Settings page shows the rule currently in effect.
The limit applies per campaign rather than across campaigns, so a contact who is in three campaigns can receive a message from each of them on the same day. Check for audience overlap before running campaigns concurrently.
Talent Eligibility
To change which talent can be included in your pool, click Talent eligibility under Talent data in the settings menu. The Total talent, Eligible talent and Ineligible talent counts sit at the top of the page, so you can see the effect of your rules at a glance.
Rules are grouped into four sections, and every rule shows how many contacts it currently excludes.
General rules
Opt-outs — Pool automatically excludes any talent who have opted out of messaging. This setting cannot be changed.
Applicant rules
Exclude applicants by stage — Type to search and select the stages you want to exclude. A common choice is rejected applicants. Click Save when finished.
Exclude applicants by rejection reason — Exclude talent who were rejected as applicants for specific reasons. These reasons carry over from your Fountain Hire application settings. Learn more about rejection reasons in this article. Use Force sync if a recently changed reason has not appeared yet.
Exclude applicants by custom conditions — Build exclusion rules on your own data keys. Those keys have to be mapped to Fountain's concepts before they can be used here, so talk to your account team first and use the Map your data keys link to start that process. Click Add custom condition to create one.
Worker rules
Exclude workers by segment — Use Worker Segments to define which workers to exclude from Pool audiences and messaging. A common segment to exclude is workers whose status is active, meaning they currently work at your company.
Create the segment first — learn how to set up segments in this article — then type in the box to select the segments to exclude and click Save.
Data retention
GDPR eligibility window — Talent with no activity within this period are automatically marked ineligible and removed from outreach. A new application, worker record update, prospect upload, or campaign engagement will reset the window and restore their eligibility. Set the number and the unit, then click Save.
This window is why a Talent Profile shows an Expires on date. That date moves forward whenever the contact does something.
Read the Excluded Counts Before Changing a Rule
Each rule displays how many contacts it currently excludes and what percentage of your pool that represents. Widening a rule can add a large group to every active campaign at once, so check the figure before saving.
On the main Pool Settings page, the counts at the top of the page show how your rules affect your pool. Click Refresh counts to update them.
Lead Capture
Lead capture forms are public forms anyone can submit to add themselves to your talent pool as a prospect. To manage them, click Lead capture under Talent data in the settings menu. For setup steps, see Capture Leads with Lead Capture Forms.
Find Ineligible Talent
The Total talent, Eligible talent and Ineligible talent counts sit at the top of the Talent eligibility page. To see who is excluded and why, go to the Talent page and switch on Show ineligible talent. The Exclusion reason column names the rule that removed each person. See Pool Talent Page & Talent Profiles.
The Fastest Answer to "Why Isn't This Person Getting Messages?"
On the Talent page, switch on Show ineligible talent and search for the contact. The Exclusion reason column names the rule responsible.
Jobs Page
The Jobs page is accessed by clicking Pool in the left side panel and then Jobs. Here you’ll see a list of jobs available for matching your talent against, with the name and the date each was last updated. These jobs will automatically flow over from Fountain Hire if your company is using Hire.
To find a specific job, use Search jobs at the top of the page, and Columns to change what the table shows.