2220688 - Candidate Country/Region field behavior and Known Issues - Recruiting Management

The candidate country/region field has some special behaviors, and it follows a specific configuration in order to work properly. This configuration is required in order to allow the system to run smoothly since some features rely on this field to work, features such as candidate field permissions, data privacy statement, and the candidate search.

This article will explain the behaviors and necessary configuration along with known issues. If you want to better understand the whole candidate profile configuration, please refer to Candidate Profile in SAP SuccessFactors section in RCM implementation guide.

Index:

• Initial Candidate Profile Value
• Basic Behavior
• Required Configuration
• Country/Region Picklist Configuration
• How to Edit the Country/Region Picklist
• Common Issues
• RCM Official Country/Region List

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SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management

Creating Candidate Profile

The Candidate country/region field is populated using two functionalities:

• When a recruiting is adding a Candidate:

1. Go to Recruiting and click on the ‘Candidates’ sub-tab.
2. Click on ‘Add Candidate’.
3. Country/Region field is displayed as a mandatory field.

• When the candidate is creating their candidate profile:

1. Go to the external career site.
2. Hit Create Profile.
3. Country/Region field is displayed as a mandatory field.

Please Note: The country/region selections from the above examples can be updated later by a candidate or recruiter considering the relevant permissions are provided.

Basic Behavior

The country/region field in the candidate profile has an important job. The value selected by the candidate will be used by the system to validate things like:

• which Data Privacy statement to display to the candidate when the candidate is creating the profile (if DPCS is configured 2341235);
• when a candidate is applying to a Job Requisition. The system will validate the write/read field Permission and which fields to be displayed to this candidate based on country/region selection;
• if the Candidate Visibility Option is enabled, the Recruiter country/region is validated against the country/region selected by the candidate to return this candidate in the search. (More details in 2213656.)

 

Required Configuration

Since the country/region field is validated by different features in the system, it needs to follow one specific configuration. When defining the field in the candidate profile, it MUST use the standard id "country", type "picklist", and link to the standard picklist "country".

Here is an example of the standard configuration:

<field-definition id="country" type="picklist" required="false" custom="false" anonymize="false" sensitive="false">
<field-label mime-type="text-plain"><![CDATA[Country of Residence]]></field-label>
<field-label mime-type="text-plain" lang="en_US"><![CDATA[Country of Residence]]></field-label>
<field-description><![CDATA[country]]></field-description>
<field-description lang="en_US"><![CDATA[country]]></field-description>
<picklist-id>country</picklist-id>
</field-definition>

 

Country/Region Picklist Configuration

When configuring the country/region picklist, it is also necessary to follow a specific configuration. You need to follow a specific label convention in English. This is necessary due to the system architecture. Behind the scenes, there is a hardcoded table with a list containing all the countries. The system uses the candidate country/region selection, extracts the English US label linked to that option and validate it against this hardcoded table. If the EN_US label does not follow the correct standards the system may generate an error and some countries may be missing from the list or after a candidate selects an invalid option (if displayed) the UI may not show any field in candidate view.

Most of the EN_US follows the ISO standard. However, there are some exceptions, and the system will only accept the value that matches the hardcoded table.

Note: You can find the complete list of countries and correct English labels on the SAP Help Portal: Country/Region List to Add a Country Name in US English Locale.

 

How to Edit the Country/Region Picklist

The Picklist functionality is a platform feature, and Recruiting Module uses it to populate the country/region information. You can check below articles to see necessary steps to edit the country/region picklist:

• 2088658 - Picklists: Working with Legacy Picklists (Importing, Editing and Creating) - Platform
• 2463527 - How to edit MDF Picklist

 

Common Issues

• Issue: When creating a candidate profile (Add candidate feature or Career portal), the country/region list is empty.
• Cause: The field "country" is not defined in the candidate profile template.
  
  
• Issue: When creating or editing a candidate profile, the desired country/region is not displayed in the list.
• Cause: The desired country/region is either not defined in the standard picklist "country" or has the wrong English (EN_US) label. If the English label does not follow the correct configuration, the system will no display it in the country list. Check the end of this KBA for the complete country list.
  
  
• Issue: Additional values like "Others" are not displayed in the country/region list.
• Cause: This has the same cause as the previous issue. The naming convention MUST be followed.
  
  
• Issue: Trying to save the country/region selection on the Candidate Profile, but the value from the dropdown doesn't save and changes to "No Selection" instead.
• Cause: This has the same cause as the previous issue. The naming convention MUST be followed.
  
  
• Issue: I configured the standard field "country" to use the picklist "ISOCountryList", and the values are not being saved after a candidate selects its country.
• Cause: This is a misconfiguration. The candidate profile configuration only accepts the standard picklist "country". The picklist "ISOCountryList" is used by other modules.

RCM Official Country/Region List

Here is the official list of country/region labels to be used for the standard picklist "country". When declaring a new country/region, the English label MUST follow this convention:

See Implementation guide - Country/Region List to Add a Country Name in U.S English Locale

Note: 

• The system does not understand the countries in the list as case sensitive (i.e., United States and UNITED STATES would be understood the same way by the system). However, we recommend using mixed case (e.g., United States).
• If there is any country/region that is missing from the list, open a ticket with SAP Cloud Support and request this to be added. The request will be evaluated by Recruiting Product Management team, and the next steps will be provided on the support ticket.

candidate profile, ISOCountryList, missing country, Venezuela, Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Saint Martin, Vietnam, Viet Nam, Saint Helena Ascension, China Country, Ivory Coast, Eswatini

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