2249476 - External to Internal Candidate Profile Conversion

Symptom

This article covers the Candidate Conversion functionality: how the process works, how to configure and list some common issues.

Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.

Environment

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management

Resolution

When an external candidate is hired and is processed as a new BizX user, the system creates an Employee Profile and, depending on the Careers tab permissions and data privacy consent statement permissions, may also automatically create an Internal Candidate Profile. In this case, the External Candidate Profile remains intact, and the new Internal Candidate Profile usually contains relatively little data. You can consider this as a duplicate – that is, one person has two candidate profile records, one external and one internal. This is an evidence the candidate conversion has not happened yet.

When Candidate to Employee Conversion is configured, a process runs to delete the empty new Internal Candidate Profile and associate the Employee Profile to the existing External Candidate Profile, while adjusting the profile so it becomes Internal instead of External. The sm-mapped data from the Candidate Profile will sync into the Employee Profile.

Process

The candidate conversion will convert the external candidate profile to an internal candidate profile. This process happens in a few interactions. Here are the steps for the conversion to happen:

External candidate is hired;
Internal User (employee profile) and Internal candidate Profile are created; (This action may happen thru an integration, Manage Pending Hires, manual user creation, user import, etc.)
Match criteria is filled in External candidate profile and Employee profile;
Candidate Conversion job starts and picks the recently hired external candidates;
The conversion job finds a match between hired external candidate and Employee profile;
The internal candidate profile created with Employee profile is deleted, and the External Candidate profile is converted to internal and linked to this Employee Profile;
Conversion process finishes. Only one internal candidate profile remains in the system.

Note: The steps described here provide a high-level overview of the conversion process. It is intended to exemplify the overall process. Some steps may vary or change order based on the hiring process and configuration. For example, for customers using manage pending hires, the moment when the match criteria are inserted in candidate profile and employee profile is automatic and performed at the moment manage pending hires is finalized.

Configuration

Enabling this feature is not straightforward and requires some steps to be performed by an implementation partner. Missing or misconfigurations may cause the feature to not work properly, and conversions will not happen. The most common symptom of the conversion not working well is a high number of duplicated candidate profiles, one internal and one external profile for the same candidate. If you do not understand the whole functionality or do not feel comfortable with some parts of the configuration, engage an implementation partner to ensure the conversions will run smoothly.

Set hireable options for the application status.

Go to Admin Center > Edit Applicant Status Configuration
Choose a status which will indicate that the applicant is hired on the job requisition
Change the Hireable Option for this status to "Hired" (only one application status should be set as "Hired"):

Note: The Hireable Options are also used for the Recruiting - Employee Central integration - do not change the options without consulting a Partner or Cloud Product Support if you have RCM-EC or RCM-ONB-EC Integration!

Adding "postConvExtContactEmail" to the Candidate Profile template for dynamic groups.

This change can be accomplish using manage templates or directly in Candidate Profile XML from Provisioning. Contact your implementation partner, and request configuration change in your Candidate Profile template - adding standard field definition "postConvExtContactEmail".
Setting up a rule (Match Criteria) for the conversion job

Go to Admin Center > Manage Recruiting Settings
Set up the "External To Internal Candidate Profile Conversion Settings" section.

Note: If the option "Consider candidates marked as hired in last []weeks only." is empty, the first job execution will only process candidates hired in the day of the first execution. After this, the job will process candidates hired after the last job execution date. If a number of weeks is configured, the job will always consider candidates hired in "Today's date - Number of weeks".

Please note that the choice of the fields might depend on the Integration type:

With Employee Central

When the RCM to EC integration runs successfully, EC issues a unique Employee ID number for the new employee, and this number is automatically added to the external Candidate Profile. No manual process is required, making it an ideal unique ID for the Candidate to Employee Conversion process. To use this field in the Candidate to Employee Conversion, employeeId standard field must be configured on the Candidate Profile XML. The empId field must be configured on the succession data model and contain the Employee Id issued by EC.

If a hired External Candidate profile Employee ID matches Employee profile Employee ID, then merge these profiles into a single profile.
With SAP HCM and the pre-built New Hire Integration

If an SAP client chooses to use all the features provided in the SAP-provided pre-built integration packs, SAP HCM updates the Employee ID field on the external Candidate Profile upon successful processing of a new hire external candidate. No manual process is required, making it an ideal unique ID for the Candidate to Employee Conversion process. To use this field in the Candidate to Employee Conversion, employeeId standard field must be configured on the Candidate Profile XML. The userId field must be configured on the succession data model and contain the userSysId.

If a hired External Candidate profile Employee ID matches Employee profile userId, then merge these profiles into a single profile. Check more details about this integration on our official guides.
With a third party HRIS

The external candidate’s username is guaranteed to be unique, making this the ideal unique ID recommendation. This field can be explicitly declared in the XML as the standard primaryEmail field. It can contain either an email address or a candidate-invented unique alphanumeric string, depending on the client’s Provisioning settings. If the client is willing, it is a best practice to include primaryEmail in the new hire export file, capture this data in the HRIS, and include the data as part of the user import file from the HRIS to the SuccessFactors BizX suite. The primaryEmail would be present on both the external Candidate Profile and the Employee Profile and can be used as the unique ID for the Candidate to Employee Conversion process.

If the client wants to use the HRIS-issued Employee ID, the client must design processes to ensure the HRIS Employee ID is added to the Candidate Profile after the new hire is processed in the HRIS. This may be a manual process or some clients may choose to build a custom web-services based integration and insert this data into either the extCandUserId database column (appears as the standard employeeId field on the XML) or a custom field on the Candidate Profile. Maintaining this data using manual processes is prone to human error in the accuracy and timing of the data maintenance, and is not best practice.

Final Consideration

Contact e-mail or Phone number: While these fields can be used, they are not best practice because SuccessFactors does not verify for the uniqueness of the content in these fields. It would be possible for this selected field to be non-unique during the match process.

Regardless of which of the three conversion methods mentioned above is being used, the internal candidate profile to be created will not share the same candidate ID as its external version. Each candidate profile will always have its unique ID.

Scheduled Job Setup

Scheduled Job Setup
The implementation partner will create a new scheduled (quartz) job in Provisioning (Manage Scheduled Job) with the type: "External to Internal Candidate Profile Conversion):

The conversion will process as per settings and re-occurrence specified in the scheduled job.
Note: Select an admin user as Job Owner. If the user is made inactive, the job will start failing and present an error.

Set up conversion success e-mail notification

Note: This notification has to be enabled, otherwise the scheduled job will fail!

Go to Admin Center > E-Mail Notification Template Settings
Enable the template: "External To Internal Candidate Profile Conversion Success Notification":

After the scheduled job runs, the relevant e-mail recipients will get an e-mail with the list of converted candidates and potential fails.

How does the conversion job work and how to interpret the conversion report?

The scheduled job will first search for external candidates in the application status marked with Hireable option "Hired". Then it will search for an Employee Profile with a matching criterion. If there is a unique match, the scheduled job will proceed with the conversion and print a log as part of the job detail. If the conversion fails, the job will also log the failed conversion and the cause.

The job log will present the match criteria configured in Manage Recruiting Settings and three sections:

Sucessful Conversions - List of all candidates converted as part of this job execution.
Failed Conversions - List of all candidates where the conversion failed. The log will also have a detailed explanation of the failure.
Run Details - Log for each successful execution.

After job execution, an email is also sent to job owner with the same logs.

Check this article for more details on possible conversion failures: KB Article 2245497 - External to Internal candidate conversion Job - Possible Logs and Errors - Recruiting Management

conversion job logs.jpg

FAQ - Additional Information

Q) Can You use below Hris sync mapping?

A) This mapping should not be used if you use sm-mapping in candidate template for the same and External to Internal Candidate Conversion job is schedule. More information can be found on KB Article 3033802.

<hris-element-ref refid="personInfo">
<hris-mapping>
<hris-field-ref refid="person-id-external"/>
<standard-element-ref refid="empId"/>
</hris-mapping>

Keywords

person-id-external, id, empId, employeeid, error, hris, ec, employee, central, onboarding, personinfo, integration, sync , KBA , LOD-SF-RCM-CAN , General Candidate Issues (not Offers, not Profiles) , LOD-SF-EC-HRS , HRIS Sync , How To

Product

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting all versions

2249476 - External to Internal Candidate Profile Conversion - Recruiting Management