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Mercury Recruit uses role-based access control to ensure every member of your hiring team sees exactly what they need — and nothing they shouldn’t. An interviewer doesn’t need access to salary negotiation data; an external staffing partner doesn’t need visibility into your entire candidate database. This guide explains how to invite teammates, what each role can and cannot do, how to structure departments and team ownership, and how to remove or reassign access as your team evolves.
Only workspace Admins can invite new members, assign or change roles, manage department hierarchy, and revoke access. Hiring Managers can view the team roster for their department but cannot modify it.

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Invite teammates

1

Open Team Settings

Click your workspace avatar in the top-right corner and select Workspace Settings. Then click the Team tab. You’ll see a list of all current workspace members, their roles, and their invitation status.
2

Send an invitation

Click Invite Member. In the invite modal:
  1. Enter the invitee’s work email address. You can add multiple addresses at once by separating them with commas.
  2. Select a Role from the dropdown (see the Available roles section below for a full breakdown).
  3. Optionally assign a Department so the member’s default job visibility is scoped to that team from day one.
  4. Add a personal Message (optional) that appears in the invitation email — useful for letting the invitee know what they’re joining and what to expect.
  5. Click Send Invite.
The invitee receives an email from Mercury Recruit with a link to create their password and join the workspace. Invitations expire after 72 hours; if an invite lapses, return to the Team tab, find the member under Pending Invites, and click Resend.
If your company uses a shared email domain (e.g. everyone is @acme.com), you can enable Trusted Domain Invites in Workspace Settings → Security Policy. This lets anyone with your domain auto-join as a Recruiter without requiring an explicit invite — ideal for fast-growing teams.
3

Confirm the member has joined

Once the invitee accepts, their status on the Team tab changes from Pending to Active and they appear in the assignee dropdowns across jobs, candidates, and interviews.

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Available roles

Mercury Recruit includes five roles. Each is designed for a specific function in the hiring workflow — assign the most restrictive role that still allows the member to do their job effectively.

Admin

Full workspace control. Admins manage billing, all workspace settings, team membership, roles, department structure, integrations, and audit logs. Assign this role only to people who need to configure the system — typically HR leadership or IT.

Hiring Manager

Owns job requisitions within their assigned department(s). Can create and publish jobs, move candidates through the pipeline, request assessments, and view analytics for their own jobs. Cannot access jobs or candidates outside their departments.

Recruiter

Handles day-to-day sourcing and candidate management across all jobs they are assigned to. Can review applications, update ATS scores, schedule interviews, send candidate communications, and add candidates to the talent pool. Cannot change job settings or manage team members.

Interviewer

Scoped read access to candidates assigned to them for interviews. Can view the candidate profile and resume, submit a structured scorecard, and leave internal notes on assigned candidates. Cannot view salary data, other candidates’ profiles, or pipeline-wide analytics.

External Recruiter (Enterprise only)

Provides access through the External Recruiter Access Portal — a separate, permission-limited view designed for staffing agencies and contract recruiters. External Recruiters can submit candidate profiles for designated jobs and track submission status, but they cannot see your internal candidate database, ATS scores, salary data, or any jobs they were not explicitly granted access to. All External Recruiter activity is logged in the audit trail.

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Role permissions at a glance

PermissionAdminHiring ManagerRecruiterInterviewerExternal Recruiter
Create and publish jobs✅✅ (own dept.)❌❌❌
Edit job settings and pipeline stages✅✅ (own dept.)❌❌❌
Review and score candidates✅✅✅❌❌
Move candidates between stages✅✅✅❌❌
Submit interview scorecards✅✅✅✅❌
Send candidate communications✅✅✅❌❌
Manage assessments✅✅✅❌❌
Export candidate data✅✅ (own dept.)❌❌❌
View analytics and reports✅✅ (own dept.)Limited❌❌
Submit candidates (external portal)❌❌❌❌✅
Manage team members and roles✅❌❌❌❌
Access billing and plan settings✅❌❌❌❌
View audit logs✅❌❌❌❌
System-wide admin visibility✅ (Enterprise)❌❌❌❌
System-Wide Admin Visibility is an Enterprise-exclusive feature that gives designated Admins a unified view of all hiring activity across every department, location, and team — including headcount plans, cross-department candidate movement, and system health metrics. Contact your account manager to enable it.

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Set up department and team hierarchy

Organizing your workspace into departments lets you scope job ownership, candidate visibility, and reporting to the right people. It also allows Hiring Managers to operate autonomously within their area without requiring Admin involvement for every action.
1

Create your departments

Go to Workspace Settings → Departments and click + Add Department. Enter the department name (e.g., Engineering, Go-to-Market, People & Culture) and click Save. Repeat for each department in your organization.
2

Build a team hierarchy (optional)

If your organization has nested teams within departments (e.g., Front-End Engineering and Infrastructure under Engineering), click the department name and select Add Sub-Team. Sub-teams inherit the parent department’s Hiring Managers unless you assign a separate manager at the sub-team level.
For organizations with fewer than five departments, a flat structure is usually simpler to manage. Hierarchy is most valuable when different managers own hiring across separate cost centers or when you need per-department reporting.
3

Assign members to departments

On the Team tab, click a member’s name to open their profile. Under Department Assignment, select one or more departments. Members can belong to multiple departments — for example, a Recruiter who supports both Engineering and Design hiring.
4

Assign a Hiring Manager to each department

On the Departments page, click a department and use the Hiring Manager dropdown to assign the owner. This person receives notifications for all jobs in the department and appears as the hiring contact on internal records. A department can have more than one Hiring Manager if multiple people share ownership.
5

Set job ownership when creating jobs

When creating a new job, the Department field determines which Hiring Manager owns it and which Recruiters can be assigned. You can override the default assignment on any individual job by editing the Job Ownership field in the job’s settings.

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Change a member’s role

Roles evolve as your team grows. Promote a Recruiter to Hiring Manager when they take on a new department, or restrict an External Recruiter’s access after a project ends — all without disrupting active hiring workflows.
1

Find the member

Go to Workspace Settings → Team and locate the member whose role you want to change. You can search by name or filter by current role.
2

Edit their role

Click the member’s name to open their profile, then click Edit Role. Select the new role from the dropdown and click Save Changes.The role change takes effect immediately — the member will see updated permissions on their next page load or action, without needing to log out and back in.
Downgrading an Admin to any other role is irreversible through the UI if they are the last Admin in the workspace. Mercury Recruit prevents workspaces from having zero Admins. If you need to remove the last Admin, first promote another member to Admin, then change the original Admin’s role.

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Revoke access

When a team member leaves the organization or a contractor’s engagement ends, revoke their access promptly to protect candidate data and maintain GDPR compliance.
1

Locate the member on the Team tab

Go to Workspace Settings → Team and find the member. You can filter by Active or Pending to narrow the list.
2

Remove the member

Click the member’s name to open their profile. Scroll to the bottom and click Remove from Workspace, then confirm in the dialog by clicking Yes, Remove Access.Removal is immediate:
  • The member is signed out of all active sessions on the next request.
  • They lose access to all jobs, candidates, and workspace data.
  • Their historical activity (notes, scorecards, status changes) is retained for record-keeping and appears attributed to their name with a (Deactivated) label.
  • Any interviews they were scheduled to conduct are flagged as Unassigned so another team member can take over.
3

Reassign their open tasks

After removal, Mercury Recruit shows a prompt listing any open candidate assignments, scheduled interviews, or active job ownerships tied to the removed member. Use this prompt to reassign each item — or you can do it later from the individual job and candidate records.
Candidate data submitted by External Recruiters through the External Recruiter Access Portal remains in your workspace after you revoke their access. External Recruiter submissions are treated as your organization’s data — only your Admins can delete them.

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Need help?

If you have questions about role configuration or need help setting up a complex department structure, contact the Mercury Recruit support team:
Last modified on June 9, 2026