Migrate from Bullhorn ATS & CRM to Zoho Recruit

Bullhorn Candidate records map directly to Zoho Recruit Candidates. The Candidate's parsed resume data—contact information, employment history, skills, education—migrates as typed Zoho Recruit fields. Bullhorn's candidate status (Active, Passive, Interviewing, etc.) maps to Zoho Recruit's Candidate Status picklist. We flag records with missing Last Name because Zoho Recruit requires this field; for records without a last name in Bullhorn, we populate Last Name as 'Not Provided' per Zoho's migration guide before import. If the Bullhorn instance is on ATS Growth edition with no API access, Candidates export via CSV and we supplement resume files using Bullhorn's file-reference API endpoints.

Bullhorn Client records map to Zoho Recruit Client Corporations. Company name, address, industry, revenue, and website fields migrate directly. The primary business contact within the Client record migrates as a linked Contact entity in Zoho. We deduplicate by Client name during import to avoid creating duplicate company records when multiple Bullhorn Contacts share the same Client.

Bullhorn Contact records—representing both client-side business contacts and candidate references—map to Zoho Recruit Contacts. We separate Contacts by their Bullhorn entity type to avoid contaminating the candidate contact list with client contacts. Contact name, email, phone, title, and client association migrate as standard fields. One Reddit thread noted Zoho Recruit's inability to distinguish candidates from clients as a pain point; we address this by ensuring the module-to-module mapping is explicit and the customer understands the Zoho module separation before cutover.

Bullhorn JobOrder records map to Zoho Recruit Jobs. Job title, requirements, status, location, salary range, and owner assignment migrate as standard fields. Bullhorn's JobOrder requirements (formatted text) migrate to Zoho's Job Description field. We map Bullhorn job status (Open, On Hold, Closed Won, Closed Lost) to Zoho's Job Status picklist, with a custom field preserving the original Bullhorn status value for audit.

Bullhorn CandidateList records represent a Candidate's submission to a specific JobOrder, storing the submission status within the recruitment pipeline (e.g., New Submission, Interview, Shortlisted, Rejected). Zoho Recruit manages candidate submissions within the Job record's Candidates tab. We migrate submission status as a custom field on the Job record (e.g., cand_list_status__c) linked back to the Candidate, preserving the per-job pipeline position for each candidate. This requires a join table migration: Candidate ID, Job ID, and submission status migrated together.

Bullhorn Placements are the transactional hire records linking Candidate, JobOrder, and Client with pay rate, charge rate, start date, end date, and overtime rules. Zoho Recruit does not have a native placement object with the same billing depth. We migrate Placement records as Candidate records enhanced with custom fields: placement_start_date__c, placement_end_date__c, pay_rate__c, charge_rate__c, overtime_rate__c, and placement_status__c. Split-billing configurations are stored as text in a custom field for admin reference. Contract placement overtime rules are documented separately for manual configuration in Zoho Recruit's billing module post-migration.

Bullhorn Opportunities represent CRM-level pipeline deals tied to Clients with recruiting-specific stages. Zoho Recruit's Job module handles the recruitment pipeline; however, Bullhorn Opportunities used for business development (non-placement CRM deals) map to a custom Zoho Recruit module we create during schema setup, preserving opportunity name, amount, stage, probability, and close date. We document the customer's Bullhorn opportunity stage names and build a stage remapping table before import, as Bullhorn stages (Interview, Offer, Extended) differ from Zoho's standard ATS pipeline stages.

Bullhorn User records (recruiters, sales staff, administrators) map to Zoho Recruit Staff. We match by email address during import. Any Bullhorn User without a matching Zoho Staff account is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. Role and department assignments from Bullhorn migrate as Zoho Staff role assignments. Bullhorn ATS Growth edition caps API subscriptions at 50, which may truncate User list retrieval on large deployments; we chunk and paginate to handle this.

Bullhorn Task records map directly to Zoho Recruit Tasks. Task type, subject, due date, status, and owner assignment migrate as standard fields. Tasks are migrated after Users are provisioned in Zoho Recruit to ensure OwnerId references resolve correctly. ATS Growth edition API subscription limits may affect bulk Task retrieval; we paginate and chunk requests accordingly.

Bullhorn resume files, parsed documents, and uploaded communications are stored as separate Attachment entity objects. Bullhorn's standard CSV bulk export does not include attachment references. We retrieve all resume file references via Bullhorn's REST API file endpoints and upload them to Zoho Recruit's document management layer, associating each file with the corresponding Candidate record. If the source Bullhorn instance is on ATS Growth edition with no API access, attachment migration is not possible through automated means; we flag this gap during scoping and provide a manual retrieval checklist for the customer.

Bullhorn Custom Objects extend core entities with up to 55 fields each. ATS editions are limited to 2 searchable custom objects per entity; Front Office Growth and Enterprise allow 10. We audit custom object usage during scoping and rationalize field-heavy custom objects before migration. Bullhorn custom object data migrates to Zoho Recruit custom fields (Standard and Professional tiers support up to 100 custom fields per module) or Zoho Recruit custom modules (Enterprise). Each custom object field is type-mapped to the nearest Zoho field type (text, date, picklist, number, etc.) before import.

Bullhorn's resume parser extracts contact details, work history, and skills into structured Candidate fields. Parse quality varies by resume format—non-standard layouts, scanned PDFs, and non-English documents frequently produce incomplete or mis-assigned fields. We run post-migration validation against the parsed fields, flag records with low field-completion rates, and restore data from the original resume file reference where parse data is missing. The original parsed field values are preserved alongside the source resume file so that incomplete parses can be corrected manually.

Bullhorn's split-billing model natively supports multi-party pay and charge rate configurations for contract staffing. Zoho Recruit's standard placement model does not include native split-billing. We migrate split-billing configuration as a structured text block in a custom field (split_billing_config__c) on the Candidate record, and separately document the split-party names, rates, and percentage allocations for admin-side manual entry into Zoho's billing or invoicing module. This documentation is delivered as part of the post-migration handoff.