Migrate from Candidate Management System to Bullhorn ATS & CRM

Candidate Manager Jobs export with title, status, department, location, and posting dates. We map these directly to Bullhorn Job records via the Bullhorn REST API, preserving the original internal job ID as a custom reference field. Job Order status (open, filled, closed) maps to Bullhorn's jobStatus field. Any posting-date history is preserved in custom date fields since Bullhorn tracks a single publishedDate by default.

Candidate Manager Candidate records (name, contact details, work history, education, skills) map 1:1 to Bullhorn Candidate records. We deduplicate by email address during scoping and flag duplicate candidates for customer review before insert. Bullhorn's Candidate ATS v2 component tracks candidate progress across all applied Jobs in a single workspace, which is a richer view than Candidate Manager's per-Application status.

Candidate Manager Applications link a Candidate to a Job and carry status, source, and submission timestamp. We preserve this as Bullhorn Job Submission records under the relevant Job. Bullhorn ATS v2 tracks submissions through ordered pipeline stages using color-coded chevrons, which replaces Candidate Manager's simple application status field. Active applications in stages with no Bullhorn equivalent are flagged for explicit stage mapping decisions during discovery.

Candidate Manager's configurable pipeline stages per Job map to Bullhorn Job Stages, which are defined at the Job Order level or as a global pipeline template. We enumerate the source stage sequence explicitly, map each to the nearest Bullhorn stage equivalent, and flag any stages that carry candidate-specific data (e.g., scoring, interview feedback) that should migrate as separate custom fields rather than stage names.

Tenant-specific custom fields on Candidate and Application records in Candidate Manager require explicit enumeration during discovery because each organization configures its own schema. We map named custom fields to Bullhorn Custom Fields via Admin > Field Mappings for standard types. Fields that exceed Bullhorn's custom field limits (55 fields per entity) or that represent structured sub-records map to Bullhorn Custom Objects, available up to 10 on Bullhorn Front Office Growth and Enterprise editions, limited to 2 on Bullhorn ATS.

Ranking scores and pre-profiling data stored as numeric properties on Application or Candidate records migrate directly as Bullhorn custom fields of the corresponding type. Textual scoring rubrics and free-text evaluation criteria flag as candidates for Bullhorn Custom Objects with dropdown or multi-select fields if the rubric is repeatable, or as Note attachments if the evaluation format varies too much to map structurally.

Recruiter notes attached to Candidates or Applications in Candidate Manager export as free-text blobs with authorship and timestamp. We preserve note content and authorship in Bullhorn Note records linked via ContentDocumentLink to the parent Candidate or Job record. Bullhorn's Note object supports rich text, so formatting present in Candidate Manager exports is preserved where possible.

Resume files, cover letters, and portfolio documents export from Candidate Manager as binary blobs. We extract text content where parsable, re-upload original file types to Bullhorn's document storage as ContentDocument records linked via ContentDocumentLink to the parent Candidate, and attach the parsed resume text as a Note for searchability. File size and type are preserved in the ContentVersion metadata. Large binary blobs are chunked for re-upload to handle Bullhorn's document size limits.

Candidate Manager's hiring manager self-service portal (letting managers review candidates, leave scorecards, move pipeline stages) has no direct Bullhorn equivalent without configuration. We document the portal's functional scope as a written requirements list for Bullhorn Client Portal setup or the Candidately integration (a Bullhorn Marketplace partner) to preserve the self-service workflow post-migration.

Candidate Manager's staffing agency portal lets client companies log in to view pipeline status. In Bullhorn, this maps to Client Corporations (the company-level record) with Contact records for each client user, configured with portal access permissions. Bullhorn's native portal requires configuration through the Admin interface; we document the target portal access scope and permissions matrix as part of the migration deliverables.

Candidate Manager tracks application source (job board, referral, direct, agency portal) as a property on the Application record. We map this to Bullhorn's standard source field on the Candidate or Job Submission record. Boolean search queries run against the Candidate Manager talent database do not carry forward as saved searches; we document the query logic so the customer's Bullhorn admin can recreate searches using Bullhorn's Advanced Search with custom object filter support.

Recruiter assignment on Candidate Manager records maps to Bullhorn User records by email match. Owners without a matching Bullhorn User are held in a reconciliation queue. Bullhorn's user permissions model (Admin, Standard, Limited) and department-level field access require separate configuration outside the migration scope; we document the required permission matrix as a pre-migration configuration task.