Migrate from Rival to Zoho Recruit

Rival employee records used in the recruiting or onboarding module map to Zoho Recruit Candidates. Core fields (name, email, phone, address, hire date) migrate with direct field mapping. Zoho Recruit requires Last Name on every Candidate import; records without a Last Name value must be pre-processed to 'Not Provided' or a similar placeholder, or the record will be silently ignored during import. We validate this requirement against the source extract before writing.

Rival job postings or open positions map to Zoho Recruit Job Opening records. The job title, description, department assignment, and opening date transfer directly. Zoho Recruit's plan tier limits active job openings (1 on Free, 10 on Standard, 20 on Enterprise per recruiter), so we validate the destination plan tier before migration and flag any excess openings requiring plan upgrade or archival.

Rival department records map to Zoho Recruit Department records. Department name and any parent-child hierarchy transfer as a flat or nested structure depending on the source export format. Zoho Recruit's Department object is a standard module available across all paid tiers.

Rival stores org hierarchy as a related set of department and reporting-line relationships. We map these as Department records first, then re-attach employee-to-manager relationships as a custom lookup field or as Candidate fields referencing the manager's Candidate record. The exact structure depends on how Rival exports the hierarchy export file.

Rival allows organizations to define custom fields on employee records, and these vary by customer with no public schema registry. We discover the live schema during scoping by coordinating with the customer's Rival administrator, then build a per-migration field-mapping table before executing any writes. Each custom field is mapped to an equivalent Zoho Recruit custom field (created pre-import per the edition's field limits: 50 on Standard, 300 on Enterprise). This discovery step adds time to the project timeline that is not required on platforms with published schemas.

Rival stores salary and compensation records with effective dates. We extract the effective_date sequence and map each row to Zoho Recruit candidate custom fields or as a structured notes block. Complex multi-row compensation histories that span multiple effective dates are mapped as a text block or series of custom fields depending on the customer's reporting needs post-migration.

PTO balances in Rival are current-state values extracted at migration time. We write the balance snapshot as an opening balance in Zoho Recruit custom fields or leave as a documented opening-balance reference for the customer's HR admin to configure in Zoho People or a third-party PTO management tool if Zoho Recruit is used solely for recruiting.

Benefits data including plan names, coverage tiers, and enrollment dates migrate as structured custom field records per Candidate. Carrier-specific plan IDs may not map 1:1 across platforms, so we preserve plan names and tier labels rather than attempting to reconcile carrier IDs that have no Zoho Recruit equivalent.

Rival user accounts (admin, manager, employee roles) map to Zoho Recruit User records. We resolve by email match. Zoho Recruit requires at least two Users in the account before CSV migration will process; accounts with only one provisioned User must add a second User manually or via CSV before migration begins. Users who already have a separate Zoho Recruit account cannot be imported; they must close their separate account first.

Rival candidate application records with stage or status values map to Zoho Recruit Candidate status fields and pipeline stages. We extract the original stage name from Rival and map it to a Zoho Recruit pipeline stage value during transformation. Pipeline configurations in Zoho Recruit (Record Types, Sales Processes) are pre-built before candidate import.

Rival employee documents such as offer letters, contracts, and ID scans are stored as binary blobs within Rival's document management module with no documented export API. We cannot guarantee document fidelity in a self-serve migration. We flag all document-heavy migrations during scoping and recommend either a platform-assisted document export from Rival's support team or manual re-upload post-migration. We map document filenames and associated employee IDs to facilitate manual re-association where needed.

Rival onboarding workflows and automation sequences (task staggering, reminder triggers, new-hire engagement sequences) do not migrate to Zoho Recruit Workflow Rules or Blueprints as code. The two platforms use different automation models with different triggers, conditions, and actions. We deliver a written inventory of every active Rival workflow with its trigger, conditions, and sequence of actions for the customer's admin to rebuild in Zoho Recruit's Workflow Rules and Blueprint builders post-migration.