Diversity Surveys
Diversity Surveys let you collect voluntary demographic information from candidates, such as gender, ethnicity, veteran status, or disability status, so you can assess how representative your pipeline is at each stage of the hiring process. Teams use this data to track progress against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) goals, spot stages where underrepresented candidates drop off, and support EEO and self-identification reporting.
You can share a survey with candidates in three ways: on the job application form, as a one-off request from a candidate’s profile, or automatically when a candidate moves into a specific stage. Responses are stored separately from the application review process, so interviewers and hiring managers don’t see an individual candidate’s answers while making hiring decisions.
Permissions & access
Diversity Surveys are available on all plans:
Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Only Organization Admins can configure Diversity Surveys.
Organization Admins and Elevated Access users with the Can See Candidate Profiles and Can Email/Schedule Candidates permission stripes can send Diversity Surveys to candidates.
See Manage Access Roles for more information on user permissions.
Setting up your Diversity Surveys
You can set up diversity surveys in the Admin section of the app.
- Navigate to Admin > Jobs & Applications > Candidate Surveys > Diversity and click the + New button.
- You are prompted to give your new survey a title before you can add questions. Add a Title and click Submit.
- Click Add Question, then select a question type to build your survey.
You can select the following field types:
- Short Answer
- Long Unformatted Answer
- Phone
- Multiple Choice
- Checkboxes
- Date
- Yes/No
- Number
- Other Location
- URL
Each question in your survey has three icons for managing the question field:
- Eye icon: Sets conditions that determine when the question appears to the candidate. This is useful when you want a question to show only if a candidate answers a previous question in a specific way. Click the eye icon to configure your conditions, then click Save. Once saved, the eye icon turns purple to indicate the field is conditional. For full details on setting up conditions, see Conditional Form FieldsConditional Form Fields.
- Copy icon: Duplicates the question field.
- Trash icon: Deletes the question field.
Adding sections
To group related questions, you can add a section to your survey. Click Add Section, then give your section a title. You can also add a description to the section to provide context to the candidate before they answer the questions in that group by clicking the Add description button.
Reordering questions and sections
To change the order of questions or sections, click Reorder and drag them into position.
Copying and archiving surveys
Two additional options are available at the top of any existing survey:
- Copy: Creates a duplicate of the survey. Use this as the starting point for a new survey.
- Archive: Removes the survey from active use. Archived surveys cannot be sent to candidates but can be restored at any time.
Sharing your surveys
Diversity surveys can be shared in three different ways:
Collecting on the application tab of each job
Collect a diversity survey on your job postings by enabling the Collect alongside application on job postings? toggle within the survey Settings tab.
- Survey description: An internal description for this survey. This will not be shown to candidates.
- Collect alongside application on job postings?: Choose whether the survey questions should be added to your application.
- Filtering which job postings show the survey: If you leave the filter blank, the survey is collected on all job postings. To limit the survey to specific postings, click + Filter and set the criteria a job posting must meet for it to appear in the survey. Toggle Advanced to add more specific filters.
When enabled, the survey appears alongside the application form when a candidate applies on your jobs pages.
Directly requesting surveys
You can directly request a survey from the candidate profile:
- On the candidate profile, click the More dropdown.
- Select Create a Diversity Survey Request.
- Choose which survey to send and which application to associate it with.
- Click Create to create the survey request, or optionally click Create and Email to also schedule an email with a link to the survey.
Setting up automation rules
You can set up automation rules so that you don't need to directly request surveys from candidates manually. Instead, you can set up a series of conditions that trigger automatically sending a survey to a candidate.
Our article on Utilizing Stage Groups walks through the different fields you can select to customize the automation.
To set up automation for your diversity survey:
- Navigate to the Automation tab.
- Click Get Started to create a new draft configuration of automation rules.
- Click + Add Field to Match to specify your conditions, then choose fields and create filters based on those.
- Select an email template from the Email Template dropdown to use for sending out your survey.
The email template must include the Diversity Survey Link token to appear in this dropdown.
- Configure any email delay using the Delay dropdown.
- Specify a sender email address.
- Click Save & Publish.
- Toggle on Enable Survey Automation once the draft has been activated.
Ashby checks the conditions of each rule whenever a candidate changes stages. Ashby finds the first matching rule, creates a survey, and schedules an email with a link to the survey.
Report on your results
Custom Reports can be configured on the Legacy Plus, Plus, and Enterprise plans:
Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Organization Admins and Elevated Access users with both the Can see candidate profiles and Can see private fieldspermission stripes can view diversity data in reports
See Manage Access Roles for more information on permissions.
Who can create and edit DEI reports depends on the Restrict editing DEI reports setting, found in Admin > Data Management > Reporting Permissions.
If the Restrict editing DEI reports setting is disabled, any user who can view DEI data can also create and edit reports that use DEI fields.
If the Restrict editing DEI reports setting is enabled:
- Only users with the Can create and update DEI reports permission can create or edit reports that use DEI fields.
- Users without this permission can still view saved reports that include DEI fields, but they can’t edit them.
- The Organization Admin who enables the setting automatically receives this permission.
- Admins with this permission can give it to other users or remove it from the user’s profile on the Employees page.
See Limiting who can edit DEI reports for more information.
You can report on the questions in a diversity survey in our standard reports. The fields are available for grouping under Job Consideration > Diversity Survey.
Limiting who can edit DEI reports
To get started, switch on the Restrict editing DEI reports feature in Admin > Data Management > Reporting Permissions.
When the setting is enabled, users without edit or create access to DEI reports cannot select DEI fields as Fields to Show or Group By fields. Saved reports containing those fields are still visible, but the reports are not editable.
Once enabled, you can then also determine who can edit these reports in each user's profile on the Employees page.
In a user's profile, you see the option to allow them to create and update DEI reports on the Permissions tab.
Admins with the Can Create and Update DEI Reports permission can grant or revoke the permission for others.
The permission is automatically granted to the admin user who enables the Restrict Editing DEI Reports setting.
FAQ
How do I view pending surveys?
You can view any pending survey requests on the candidate profile under Current Activities. From here, you can email the survey again or delete the request.
What does the survey look like to the candidate?
When a candidate follows the link in a survey request email, they are taken to a page where they can complete the survey.
When are a survey's automation conditions evaluated?
Ashby evaluates the conditions in survey delivery automation settings during stage transition events. This means a candidate needs to move to the next stage or be archived for a survey to be sent.
Where can I access diversity survey responses?
You can only view diversity survey responses in aggregate through our reporting functionality. We put measures in place to prevent reporting from pinpointing a candidate (e.g., drill-downs are disabled). If a candidate completes a diversity survey, neither the activity nor their responses appear on their candidate profile.
Are surveys anonymous?
Yes; by default, diversity survey responses are anonymous.