What is Adaptive Job Alert Frequency?
Adaptive Job Alert Frequency is a feature that automatically adjusts how often a candidate receives job alert emails, based on whether they engage with the alerts they get.
Instead of sending alerts at one fixed interval forever, the system continually increases or decreases the frequency depending on candidate behavior. This matters for a few concrete reasons:
- Keeps interested candidates from being under-served: A candidate who's actively clicking into jobs is a candidate worth reaching more often. A fixed, one-size-fits-all schedule can't tell the difference between someone who wants daily updates and someone who hasn't opened an email in months — adaptive frequency can.
- Protects email deliverability: Mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook track how recipients react to emails from a sender. If a large share of candidates ignore alerts for months, that drags down the sender reputation for the whole domain, which can cause even engaged candidates' emails to land in spam. Decreasing (or stopping) alerts to inactive candidates helps keep that reputation healthy.
- Reduces unsubscribes and spam complaints: Candidates are far more likely to hit "unsubscribe" or mark an email as spam when they keep receiving alerts they no longer care about. Tapering the frequency for inactive candidates removes that friction before it happens.
No. Adaptive Frequency is off by default. To enable it, please reach out to our CSM team.
How frequency changes over time?
Every job alert has a fixed sending interval: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Never. When a job alert is created, the interval is automatically set to Daily. When Adaptive Frequency is turned on for a job board, the system will move the alert up or down a "frequency ladder" based on engagement.
Behind the scenes, each job alert has its own inactivity counter. This counter tracks how long it's been since the candidate last engaged with that specific alert, and it's what drives the interval changes below.
Here's the logic:
| Trigger | What happens |
|---|---|
| Alert is created | Frequency starts at Daily, and the inactivity counter starts at 0 |
| 30 days with no engagement | Frequency drops to Weekly (same day each week) |
| 4 more weeks with no engagement | Frequency drops to Monthly (same day each month) |
| 12 more months with no engagement | Frequency is set to Never, no more emails are sent for this alert |
| Candidate engages again | Inactivity counter resets, and frequency jumps back to Daily |
What happens to the job alert once it reaches "Never"?
It depends on whether the candidate has a registered account:
- Registered candidates: the job alert stays in the system but stops sending emails. It is not deleted, and it will start sending again if the candidate re-engages or manually changes the frequency.
- Non-registered candidates: the job alert is automatically deleted once it reaches the "Never" stage.
What counts as "engagement"?
Engagement means the candidate clicks through from the alert email and lands on a job details page or the job board. This includes:
- Clicking on a specific job link inside the alert email.
- Clicking "View all jobs" inside the alert email.
Either action resets the inactivity counter and brings the alert's frequency back to Daily — as long as the candidate hasn't manually set a fixed frequency for that alert.
What happens when the feature is turned OFF after a while?
If Adaptive Frequency has been running for a while and it is then turned off, each of those job alerts stays at whatever frequency it was at the moment the feature was disabled — the system does not reset alerts back to Daily or any other default.
For example, if an alert had already dropped to Monthly before the feature was turned off, it will keep sending Monthly emails going forward, unless the candidate or admin changes it manually.
What site-admins need to do?
- Adaptive Frequency is not enabled automatically, nothing changes on a job board unless it's turned on.
- No action is needed from candidates; once enabled, the logic runs automatically for every job alert on the job board except alerts where the candidate has manually chosen a frequency.
- If you later decide to turn the feature off, remember that alert frequencies will stay exactly as they were at that moment, they won't reset automatically.