In an ongoing effort to be the very best recruiting service in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD, we’re happy to announce two new features that are all about customization: Custom Subdomains and Canned Questions.

Use your own custom subdomain for a fully-branded applicant experience.

Our hosted careers websites were meant to help businesses quickly build a branded, professional online job board in seconds. But it turns out sending an applicant to xxxx.theresumator.com isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of  “branded”. Many of you were asking for the ability to use your own subdomain from the start, and sadly we finally got around to it. But going forward, every customer now has the ability, when customizing their hosted jobs page, to use their own custom domain for the hosted jobs page.

To use a custom subdomain, you’ll need access to your domain DNS records to configure a CNAME record for your job board (jobs.wepay.com, for example). If the previous sentence made no sense to you, reach out to whomever manages your website or your email. You will need to configure a CNAME record to point to your assigned careers website URL.

Once your CNAME record is in place, visit the Settings section of The Resumator (Admins only). From the “Jobs” tab, enter your subdomain in the corresponding field and save the changes. Visit your custom subdomain. When done correctly, there will be no evidence in the URL that your job board is being hosted by us. How cool is that? Ok…not that cool…but still worth a smile!

Optional questions are now Canned questions—and they don’t need to be optional.

This is perhaps the #2 requested feature we have ever had. Many of you said some of our optional questions were very important in your filtering of candidates, and not being able to make those questions required meant additional phone screen questions and wasted time. Therefore we’ve renamed the Optional Questions “Canned Questions”. Like before, these questions can be added to a job application by simply checking a box. And to make that question question required to submit an application, you simply need to check another box.

When we were building The Resumator we thought that giving customers the ability to add optional questions, to the form for applicants when they apply, would make a lot of sense. However, what we didn’t realize at the time, and have heard from A LOT of customers, is that it would be great if we could give users the ability to make optional questions mandatory. Now you can require answers to the questions you want to know most like Salary Requirement, What Makes You Unique?, Cover Letter, etc.

Now you might be wondering what the #1 requested feature is. Well, it’s the ability to add 100% custom questions. Stay tuned for this feature really, really soon.

Admins can now see the applicants that others are watching

When we created the Dashboard Watch List, we thought people would want their own, private lists and no desire to share it. In hindsight, this makes no sense. Hiring is collaborative, and if someone finds good candidates, they should be able to share those candidates with others. There was no easy way to share your watch list of your favorite applicants.

We’ve just added the “Show Watch List” feature to the Dashboard. Now, when Admins login, they have the ability to choose a user’s watch list , or everyone’s watch lists. We’re also going to be rolling Watch List information into the Job Details section very soon.

Inbox keeps you on top of your applicant conversations

There was a disconnect with your ability to sign in to The Resumator and see all the latest messages from applicants. The Inbox feature stores all new, incoming messages from applicants so you can quickly read and reply to each one. We’re going to be focusing on our communication tools in 2011 to make it easier for you to use The Resumator to communicate with applicants. We think this aspect our service needs to most work. We’re on it!

Your inbox does not include cover letters that are sent but rather active communications that are occurring between you and candidates, so it won’t get cluttered with messages that are not top priority.

Someone you know knows the next person you’re going to hire.

When we created The Resumator, we made a bet that the future of recruiting was tied to social networks. That is why we built our service from the ground up to be focused around social networking.  But we recently realized that our original buttons to share with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter were effective only at a very high level. We wanted our social network integration to be as deep as the actual connections you have with people (hokey, but our goal!).

With this in mind we went ahead and built our Share a Job feature. Essentially, this button serves as a drill down into your social networks, extrapolating all of your friends and contacts, and instantly gives you the ability to send direct personal messages about the position you are hiring for. Instead of just broadcasting your jobs through an ever more crowded social stream, Share a Job lets you target the right people on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that can refer the right applicants your way. We’ve always found—and it’s widely believed—that referral hires are the best hires. Share a Job helps you grow your job referrals.

Share a Job can be used not only for job referrals, but to recruit people directly from within your network. Request referrals from trusted friends and colleagues, and then ask other connections if they’re interested in applying for your position. In either case, Share a Job tracks the number of views, forwards and resume submissions from each invitee. It’s a great tool for extending your referral program beyond your office walls.

Share a Job is currently in Beta.