Job-feed quality checklist before recruitment advertising

A job-feed quality check should confirm that each advertised vacancy has a stable identity, accurate candidate information and a working application destination. Test changes as well as the first import: a clean opening snapshot does not prove that later updates reach the campaign correctly.

Key facts

• Validate the record that actually reaches advertising, not only the vacancy shown inside your ATS.
• Separate missing information from deliberately withheld information.
• Keep technical validity and hiring approval as different checks.
• Use invented test records so the exercise does not expose real applicant information.

What should a usable vacancy record contain?

Start with the decisions the campaign must make. It needs to identify the vacancy, describe the opportunity, choose an approved destination and determine whether advertising is allowed. A feed can contain valid XML or JSON while failing all four business tests. Parsing the file proves that software can read it; it does not prove that a candidate will see the right job.

Ask the ATS owner for the exported field names, then map each one to its purpose. Preserve the original identifier rather than generating identity from the title. Titles change, and several locations can legitimately recruit for the same role. Record the organisation and vacancy identifier together if different business units reuse internal numbers.

For candidate-facing information, check the location, working arrangement, contract, shift expectations and application link against the approved vacancy. Do not silently substitute headquarters for a missing workplace. Likewise, an empty salary field is not permission to invent a range. Decide whether the omission blocks the campaign or calls for an explicitly approved version of the creative.

Keep an owner beside every required field. Otherwise, a failed check becomes a discussion between marketing, HR systems and recruiters without anyone able to correct the source.

How do you build a useful acceptance sheet?

Use a small sheet that links each check to a consequence. The following is a suggested operating standard, not a claim that every advertising product supports these controls automatically.

Field or behaviour	Test	Suggested response to failure
Vacancy identifier	Reimport an unchanged record	Hold unexpected duplicate campaigns
Workplace	Compare source, creative and destination	Correct the source before launch
Application URL	Follow the complete mobile journey	Hold a broken or unrelated destination
Approval status	Submit an unapproved test vacancy	Confirm it cannot enter the launch set
Updated timestamp	Change one approved field	Investigate stale campaign information
Closure status	Close a test vacancy	Verify the separate stopping workflow

Add columns for expected result, observed result, evidence and responsible owner. An entry saying “integration works” is too broad to retest. An entry saying “vacancy TEST-17 reached the preview with the approved workplace and application URL” tells the next reviewer exactly what passed.

Agree which failures block launch. A broken destination should not be treated like a missing optional internal category. This distinction prevents harmless formatting issues from obscuring problems that affect candidates.

Which changes should you test before launch?

Create a baseline record, import it, and save the resulting preview. Next change one field at a time. Test a title correction, a location correction, an application-link change and a status transition. After each change, compare the source record with the advertising representation and the final destination.

Check what happens when a field becomes empty. Some systems retain the previous value; others remove it. Either behaviour can surprise the recruiting team if nobody has specified the intended result. Include unusual but legitimate characters in a test title and confirm that they display correctly rather than appearing as encoded punctuation.

Test a temporary feed failure separately from an empty successful feed. They describe different situations. An unavailable export does not establish that all vacancies have closed. Your team needs an agreed holding rule and an alert owner, especially if existing campaigns continue while the data source is unavailable.

Finally, test the next refresh after a failure. Recovery should not create a second campaign for the same vacancy or reintroduce an old application link. The closed-vacancy control guide develops the stopping and reopening tests in more detail.

What would a small test set look like?

Consider a hypothetical employer preparing five records: a normal opening, a vacancy with a missing workplace, a closed role, a duplicate export and an approved title correction. These are invented examples, not Adway customer results.

The normal opening should reach the approved preview. The missing workplace should enter the agreed exception queue. The closed role should remain outside the launch set. The duplicate should resolve to the existing vacancy identity. The title correction should update the appropriate record without changing its identity.

Now add a sixth record whose application URL resolves successfully but lands on the wrong vacancy. This catches a weakness that status-code checks miss. A page returning successfully is not enough: the candidate must arrive at the opportunity promised in the ad.

Save the test input and expected results as a reusable fixture. After a feed configuration change, run the same cases again and append new cases for any incident discovered in production. That turns an initial implementation exercise into a practical regression check.

Who should sign off the feed?

Give the HR systems owner responsibility for the export and field definitions. Give the recruitment owner responsibility for the vacancy facts and launch permission. Give the campaign operator responsibility for the rendered ad, destination and exception handling. A supplier can demonstrate the connection, but those three responsibilities still need named owners inside the working process.

Ask for evidence at the boundaries. Seeing a correct ATS screen is evidence about the source. Seeing a correct feed is evidence about the export. Seeing a correct preview is evidence about campaign preparation. None alone establishes the whole journey.

Adway describes Always-On Job Ads as turning vacancy information into social recruitment campaigns. Use the acceptance sheet to inspect the proposed configuration rather than assuming the product description answers every question about your feed. For applicant delivery after the click, use the separate ATS handoff acceptance test.

What should happen after the first successful import?

Keep a dated record of the approved mapping and identify changes that require another test: a new ATS export, a renamed status, a new business unit or a different application domain. Check a small sample of live vacancies against their source after launch, including an updated role and a recently closed one.

Track exceptions by reason and time unresolved. A list of rejected records is useful only if someone fixes them or explicitly decides they should not advertise. Review repeated errors at the source instead of adding endless downstream substitutions. For a walkthrough using your own vacancy flow, Book a demo.

Sources

• Adway Always-On Job Ads, product description checked 2 November 2026.
• The acceptance sheet and hypothetical test records are an original operational framework, not a published performance benchmark.

Reliable campaigns begin with reliable vacancy information.