Vakanssi: Careers Page, Hiring & Applicant Tracking

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Does removing the plugin delete my candidate data?

No. Uninstalling removes roles, capabilities, and plugin settings, but your hiring data is kept
unless you explicitly enable Hiring → Settings → General → Delete all data on uninstall.
While another copy of Vakanssi is still installed (for example in a second plugin folder),
deleting a copy removes nothing, so the copy you keep runs with its settings and data.

Are uploaded CVs protected from direct download?

Yes, with defence in depth. Candidate files are stored in a protected vakanssi folder in
your uploads directory, under random 128-bit file names, with an Apache deny rule, index guards and a
generated Nginx rule. Vakanssi then verifies over HTTP that the folder is not directly reachable,
and shows an admin warning (with the exact Nginx rule to add) if it is. The plugin itself only serves
CVs through an authenticated, permission-checked download link.
To keep them outside your public site entirely, define VAKANSSI_STORAGE_DIR as an absolute path in wp-config.php; moving your existing CVs is covered at https://docs.vakanssi.com/admin/move-cv-storage/

Who on my team can see candidate applications and CVs?

Anyone you grant a hiring role to. Vakanssi ships three roles (Recruiter, Hiring Manager, and HR / Compliance)
plus Administrator, and any user with the “view applications” capability can see every candidate
and download every CV in the pipeline. In other words, Vakanssi does not restrict staff to only
the jobs or candidates assigned to them: it assumes your hiring team is trusted, which is the right
default for most small teams. Only grant these roles to people who should see all applicants.

How do I report a security issue?

Email security@vakanssi.com rather than posting in the support forum, so a fix can ship before
the details are public. Please include the Vakanssi version, your WordPress and PHP versions, and
steps to reproduce. You will get an acknowledgement within three business days and an initial
assessment within a week, and you will be credited in the changelog for the release that fixes it
unless you would rather not be. Only the most recent release receives security fixes, so updating
is always part of the answer.

What personal data is included in a GDPR data-export request?

When you run Tools → Export Personal Data for a candidate’s email, Vakanssi includes their
profile (name, email, phone, location), every application (position, stage, status, date, and whether
consent was given), the cover letter, their LinkedIn profile, each uploaded CV/attachment (the file itself, with its
filename and upload date), the submission context stored with the application (the page the application was sent from), the
recruiter notes and interview notes written about them, their interviews, and the emails Vakanssi
sent them. Other details stored with an application or the candidate are included too, under
“Additional application data”. The export deliberately does not name the staff member who wrote a note, gave a
rating, or conducted an interview. That is a third party’s personal data, not the candidate’s.

The matching Erase Personal Data tool removes all of it, including the CV files on disk. Export
and erasure share one list of the tables that hold notes, interviews and emails about a candidate,
so the two stay in step.

Does it work on WordPress multisite?

Yes, activated per site or network-wide. Each site keeps its own jobs, candidates, CVs and
settings (data is never shared between sites), and each site chooses independently whether
deleting the plugin also deletes its hiring data. There is no network-level configuration screen; settings are per site.

Network activation is the recommended setup: deleting a site then removes that site’s Vakanssi
data with it. With per-site activation, a site deleted where Vakanssi is not active keeps its
Vakanssi tables, and its CVs when they are in a custom storage folder, until you remove them by
hand. A single site turned into a network keeps finding the CVs it stored before, and Site Health
names the folder to move them from.

Does it work on Nginx?

Yes. Nginx ignores .htaccess, so add the generated location block to your server config. The
plugin’s screens show the rule, and Site Health flags the folder, when it is reachable.

Does it work with my theme and page builder?

Yes, and you do not have to fall back to a shortcode. The block editor gets a Job Listings
block. Elementor gets three native widgets (the listing, the application form, and the job
details) grouped under a Vakanssi section in the panel, and they work with the free Elementor; if
you run Elementor Pro, your Theme Builder archive and single templates for jobs are used instead of
ours. Divi gets a Jobs module. Shortcodes ([vakanssi_jobs], [vakanssi_job_apply],
[vakanssi_job_details]) still work anywhere else, including builders with no dedicated
integration.

Themes need nothing special. Block themes on WordPress 6.7 and later get editable “Jobs archive” (while the archive page is on)
and “Single job” templates in the Site Editor, built from your own header and footer; classic themes get the built-in archive. The
candidate-facing pages are styled so they survive a theme’s own CSS reset, so the listing and the
apply button look the same whichever theme you run.

Can I restyle the careers/job pages, and will custom CSS slow my site down?

Yes. Under Hiring → Settings → Jobs & Careers → Appearance you can turn off Vakanssi’s front-end stylesheet
entirely, if your theme styles the markup. For your own styling, use WordPress’s built-in editor at
Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS, which adds no extra request. Vakanssi keeps its own
selectors deliberately low-weight and its class names stable. Match their weight, such as
.vakanssi-apply-form .vakanssi-apply-button for the application form’s Submit button or
.vakanssi-apply .vakanssi-apply-button for a job’s Apply link, and style :hover, :focus and
:active as well, since Vakanssi sets those too. On most pages that is enough without !important.

The same vakanssi- class names are on the careers and job pages under block themes and classic
themes alike, so one rule covers both. On a block theme your theme keeps control of the page width
and spacing and Vakanssi adds no styling of its own to those wrappers, so your rules apply exactly
as you write them.

Do I need any special server setup for a production site?

Two things are worth doing on a live hiring site, and both are standard WordPress production
hygiene rather than Vakanssi requirements. First, switch WordPress to a real cron trigger:
out of the box, WordPress runs scheduled tasks only when someone visits your site, so on a
quiet careers site scheduled work can run late. Vakanssi relies on it to purge candidate data once
its retention period is up. Add define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true ); to wp-config.php and trigger
wp-cron.php every few minutes; most managed hosts offer this as a checkbox. Second, if your
host offers a persistent object cache (Redis or Memcached), enable it: Vakanssi uses
transients for its dashboard counters, and an object cache keeps those out of the database
under heavy traffic. Apply-form rate limits always use the database, so they hold either way. Nothing breaks without either step.

Can I disable the /jobs/ archive page?

Yes: Hiring → Settings → Jobs & Careers → Job URLs → “Archive page”. Single job pages stay
live under your job URL base (e.g. /jobs/job-title/); the archive URL becomes available for your own
page, such as a Careers page using the [vakanssi_jobs] shortcode.

What stops two recruiters overwriting each other on the board?

Every save carries the state the screen was showing when you started editing. If someone else
changed that candidate first, the save is refused and you are shown what changed instead of
quietly losing one of the two edits. This runs over ordinary REST requests, so it needs nothing
special on your server and works on any host that runs WordPress normally.

Is there a Pro version?

Yes. Vakanssi Pro is a separate plugin, coming soon, for teams that need more. Everything in this plugin stays free and fully working. Get notified when it launches at https://vakanssi.com/#notify