What’s New for SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting in H2 2022

SAP has announced the latest updates and changes for SuccessFactors for the second half of 2022.

Preview release was on October 28 and production will be released December 9th. You can view the full set of documentation in the What’s New Viewer here . For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog.

For tips on how to manage a release, check out our blog here.

Update to the Expiration Duration of Reset Password Link

Link expiration duration for the Set Welcome Password and Reset Password link expiration (in days) option is now set to 1 day by default.

The Set Welcome Password and Reset Password link expiration (in days) option is now disabled for editing. This option is available in the Password and Login Policy Settings: Applied to External Candidates and Agencies page.

This update enhances the privacy of Agency user accounts and external candidate accounts.

Improved Special Character Support in Job Searches

Keyword and location searches in career sites enabled by Career Site Builder now recognize special characters and treat them as if they were regular characters, so that search results are the same whether the term you use includes special characters or not.

The following table shows an example of how search functionality now treats “Quebec”:

Term Used in Job Posting	Search Query	Search Result
Québec	Quebec	Returns job postings that list both Québec and Quebec.
Quebec	Québec	Returns job postings that list both Québec and Quebec.

The following special characters are recognized for both keyword and location searches, and are treated as if they were unaccented:

é – accent acute
è – accent grave
ë – umlaut
ê – circumflex
ç – cedilla
ñ – tilde
ø – streg
ð – eth (capital form Ð)
å – bolle
æ – ligature
œ – ligature
ē – macron
č – háček
ŭ – crescent

This enhancement to improve the search experience for the candidate, as well as to provide more flexibility for persons writing job requisitions.

New Recruiting Career Site Details for SSL Certificate Expiration Email Reminders

The SSL certificate expiration email reminders are improved with additional details that help administrators identify the specific Recruiting career site certificate that is set to expire.

The email reminders now include the following details:

RCM Company ID
Career Site Builder Site ID
Site Name
Career Site URL

This enhancement to make it easier for administrators to easily identify which career site is associated with the expiring SSL certificate email reminder.

Enhanced Search Functionality for Redesigned Applicant Workbench

The redesigned Recruiting Applicant Workbench now provides an improved user experience for searching, filtering, and displaying applicants who have applied for specific jobs.

You can now filter the applicants using:

Background elements configured in your candidate profile template. For example, previous employment, education, and so on.
Applicant first name and last name.
Fields defined in your application templates and candidate profile.
Keyword search in resume and cover letter.
Facet counts for picklist items, such as Country, where you can see the number of applicants.

For example, you can easily find the list of applicants:

Who currently live in New York and previously worked for the ABC organization.
Who have proficiency in speaking and writing in the French language.
Whose resume contains keywords, such as Java, Python, User Assistance, and so on.

Note:

The Latest Applicant Workbench is available only for customers who have joined the Early Adopter Care (EAC) Program for Recruiting. Find more details at the Customer Community link in the Related Information section: Early Adopter Care for Applicant Workbench Management – Registration is now open!

New Qualtrics Feedback Opportunity for Recruiting Application Status Change

You can use Intelligent Services events to send information to SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting.

Manage Qualtrics Integrations in the Admin Center now includes the Application Status Change option in the Event Name field’s dropdown list for Recruiting.

Here’s a screenshot of the enhanced feature.

A screenshot of the Edit Integration dialog in Manage Qualtrics Integration shows the fields with the values filled out for a Recruiting integration.

This enhancement was delivered so customers would have a way to get feedback from candidates when their application status changed. This, in turn, can help organizations make appropriate corrections or adjustments to the Recruiting process.

Replacement of Google Universal Analytics for Career Sites

Google is replacing Universal Analytics with Google Analytics 4. Career Site Builder administers should update their configuration settings by July 1, 2023, when all standard Universal Analytics properties stop processing new hits.

Key Dates

Future dates are subject to change.

Milestone	Date	Definition
End of Development	December 9, 2022	The deprecation milestone after which SAP stops enhancing a product or part of a product. You can continue to use the software, but you should begin planning for a time when it will no longer be available for use. We still fix high-priority bugs.
End of Maintenance	December 9, 2022	The deprecation milestone after which SAP does not fix bugs or deliver patches for the software. SAP continues to answer your how-to questions. We strongly encourage you to adopt an alternative method for your business scenario.
Deleted	July 1, 2023	The deprecation milestone when a feature is no longer available for productive use. You should now be using an alternative method for your business scenario.

Deprecation Details

Career Site Builder has a new Google Analytics 4 ID field, in Settings Site Configuration Site Information. After you configure your Google Analytics 4 account, you can enter this account’s identification number in the new field. Doing so ensures that new hits continue to be processed for your career site after Google retires Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023.

If you’ve been using Universal Analytics for your career site, the existing Google Analytics ID field will continue to be available in Career Site Builder during this transition period. To reduce confusion between the old and new fields, we’ve revised the label of the retiring field from Google Analytics ID to Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) ID.

In Conclusion

We have now covered the highlights of the Recruiting related updates for 2H 2022.

Do you need help managing your SuccessFactors Release cycles? Download our support services brochure or email info@worklogix.com to see how we can help.

What’s New for Recruiting in H2 2021

As of October 9, 2021, SAP has released their documentation for the H2 2020 release. In this article we take a quick look at the latest updates for SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting. Preview release is October 15 and production is November 19. You can view the full set of documentation in the W hat’s New Vie wer here. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. Let’s get started! We’ve categorized the enhancements below for you starting with what is deprecated with this release.

Deprecation of Data Privacy Consent Statement 1.0

Data Privacy Consent Statement 1.0 will reach End of Maintenance on November 19, 2021 and will be deleted on May 20, 2022.

You must replace the Data Privacy Consent Statement 1.0 with Data Privacy Consent Statement 2.0 to avoid confusion because of parallel or competing features.

To migrate to Data Privacy Consent Statement 2.0, see Migrating from DPCS 1.0 to DPCS 2.0.

Deprecation of Marketing Central in Recruiting

Marketing Central reached end of development and end of maintence on November 20, 2020 and will be deleted on November 19,2021.

Deprecation Details

The deprecation of Marketing Central includes the end of the ability to post jobs using eQuest, Solique, Broadbean, and a version of Recruiting Posting that was accessible from Marketing Central. The Market Job link that was available on the action menu of the selected job requisition is now called Campaign URL Builder.

Deprecation of Job Classification Data Usage from Foundation Objects

Recruiting will no longer refer to Job Classification data from Foundation Objects.

Deprecation Details

Recruiting will now utilize Job Classification data only from Generic Objects. This deprecation will only impact the customers who hadn’t migrated to Generic Objects in the previous releases. The following pages, which were used only for supporting Job Classification Foundation Objects are removed:

Job Code Export page in Admin Center.
Migrate Job Code Related Picklist page in Provisioning Company Settings Manage Recruiting.

Deprecation of Requisition Reports

The Requisition Reports will reach the end of maintenance on November 19, 2021, and will be deleted on May 20, 2022

Deprecation Details

To avoid identical or competing features, SAP SuccessFactors plan to delete Requisition Reports by consolidating reporting capabilities through the Table Reports or Stories in People Analytics. Unlike the Requisition Reports, which can report on job requisitions alone, the Table Reports or Stories in People Analytics allows you to report across job requisitions, applications, candidates, offers, and other recruiting data. Additionally, you can configure the field-level permissions using the Table Reports or Stories in People Analytics, thus making the reports more secure. Therefore, SAP SuccessFactors is deprecating the Reports tab from the View Reports page:

The Report tab will be removed from the View Reports section.

Support for Country/Region Generic Object in Recruiting

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting customers must now maintain country/region data in the Country/Region Generic Object. The country/region data is used in the backend processing of the two or three letter country codes in the ISO codes list. There is no UI impact for this feature.

For existing customers,
- If you haven’t maintained the country/region data in the Country/Region Generic Object, the data is auto-populated.
- If you’ve maintained some or all the country/region information, we aren’t going to add or update any entries. You have to manually add the missing country codes to your instance from the Manage Data page in Admin Center.
For new customers, the country/region data is auto-populated in the Country/Region Generic Object. The data is populated only when the Recruiting , Role-Based Permission, and Enable Generic Objects options are collectively enabled.

Addition of Time Zone Resilient Date Fields

A new version of some date fields (columns) for Table, Tile, Canvas, and Story reports is available, suffixed with either (Timestamp) or (Date).The suffix in the new fields indicates that the fields are resilient to time zone changes. The fields suffixed with (Timestamp) display a transaction date as per the tenant preferred timezone (or as per the logged in user’s timezone), whereas the fields suffixed with (Date) are independent of time zone and always display the same values. To know more about tenant preferred time zone, refer to the Tenant Preferred Time Zone Available in Admin Center topic.

SAP recommends that the older date columns in your Table, Tile, Canvas, and Story reports be replaced with their newer version, which are time zone resilient. Additionally, you must use only the newer version of the date fields in all your future reports.

Tenant Preferred Time Zone Available in Admin Center

Tenant preferred time zone is the server time zone before servers are migrated to the UTC time zone. You can access it in Admin Center Company Settings Platform Feature Settings.Different time zones are used in the system to present date and time information based on business scenarios, including logged in user time zone, browser time zone, tenant preferred time zone, and UTC time zone. In places where server time zone was used, tenant preferred time zone is now used to keep the date and time information unchanged after the server migrates to UTC. However, there are occurrences of date and time information in the system where the behavior changes after the tenant preferred time zone is introduced.

This enhancement is available in the following recruiting area:

Posting start and end date in Job Req Audit trail
Posted on date on career page
Posted date on job listing page
Status Date and Date Applied fields in the Jobs Applied page for External Career Site
Created date and Last modified date for job req status audit and Job requisition.

Career Site Builder Functions Viewer

The Functions Viewer in Career Site Builder lets you see existing functions that may be in your implementation, and delete them. The functions transform strings in SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting job posting data before they’re forwarded to your career site.

By transforming strings, functions address things such as misconfigurations or style changes. If the Functions Viewer page is blank, this means that your implementation partner didn’t create any functions for your career site in the legacy Command Center.

This enhancement now gives the ability to the Career Site Builder administrators access to view all functions for the career site.

A screen image of the Functions Viewer shows examples of functions that transform strings. One example shows an original string of "St. Paul" with a replacement string of "Saint Paul".

These functions continue to replace misconfigured strings. We created the Functions Viewer so that you could fix the original strings that are coming from the source in SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting.

Self-Service Support for Career Site SSL Certificates

Career Site Builder now has a new feature that lets organizations manage their SSL certificates for the public career sites on their production environments, without the need for Product Support assistance.

The SSL Certificates page in Career Site Builder lets organizations generate their own certificate signing requests, and upload and install both initial as well as renewal SSL certificates directly. Beginning on December 1, 2021, Product Support will recommend the use of the SSL Certificates page for organizations that file tickets for SSL certificate requests. Implementation partners can also use this tool to add or renew an SSL certificate for a customer career site through Career Site Builder.

If you use the role-based permissions available within Career Site Builder, you need to enable the “SSL Certificates” permission

This image is a screenshot of the SSL Certificates page in Career Site Builder.

Updates to Email Reminder for SSL Certificate Renewals

Career Site Builder administrators get email reminders automatically 90 days before a certificate expires. The content of the email also refers to the new SSL Certificates feature.

Related Information

Setting Up Email Reminders About Expiring SSL Certificates

New Job Boards in the Job Board Market Place

If you are currently using job board or planning to in the future. Here are additional job boards in the Job Board Market Place that you can link to the Recruiting Posting interfaces:

Careers.Vic – Australia
Get on board – Australia
Jobs and Skills Exchange – Australia
Aboriginal job board – Canada
Careermine – Canada
Jobsdb.hk – Hong Kong
OLX.pl – Poland
Jobfindah – United Sates of America
Direct Employers – United States of America

Related Information

Adding and Configuring Job Boards from the Job Board Market Place

See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.

Contact info@worklogix.com for any assistance supporting and implementing your SAP SuccessFactors Modules, or download our support services brochure.

What’s New for Recruiting in 1H 2021

As of April 9, 2021, SAP has released the documentation for the H1 2021 release. The preview release will be April 16 and the move to production will be May 21^st. You can view the full set of documentation in the W hat’s New Vie wer here. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. New to the release process? For tips on how to manage a release, check out our blog here.

For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of 2 legacy items that will require your attention if there are still used in your current SAP SuccessFactors implementation and 6 features for 2021 Recruiting.

Migration of Legacy Quickcard to Latest Quickcard

If you are using this feature for recruiting. You will need to move to the latest quickcard, the legacy Quickcard will be retired/deleted as of May 21st. Transition to the latest quick card will help to maintain consistency with the SAP SuccessFactors Quickcard. Additionally, the latest Quickcard improves user experience with the updated user experience.

Deprecation of Legacy Picklists Management

The legacy Picklist Management tool reached end of maintenance on December 31, 2018 and will be retired/deleted on November 18, 2021.

Support for Posting Jobs to Twitter and Jobvite from Job Postings is Deleted

The ability for posting jobs to Twitter and Jobvite from Job Postings is deleted as of May 21, 2021.

SSL Certificate Renewal Reminders for Career Sites

After a nice long and relaxing weekend. You come back to the office Monday morning and your career site is down because the SSL certificate has expired and now as you struggle to get the career site back up and running again your stress level is at it’s peak again. Well hopefully you will never experience these feelings again with this new feature.

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting now proactively reminds organizations when their career site’s SSL certificate needs to be renewed.

To avoid career sites from becoming unreachable due to an expired SSL certificate, Career Site Builder offers two reminder methods: A pop-up dialog that appears when logging in to Career Site Builder, as well as the ability to enable email reminders for admin users.

Content Security Policy for Career Sites

Career Site Builder has introduced the Content Security Policy setting, which enables an HTTP header to automatically disallow external domains and only allow the browser to render resources from your domain. This will protect your career site against cross-site scripting attacks.

The content security policy is designed to guard against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks through the use of a Content-Security-Policy HTTP response header that lets you control the resources allowed to load for a web page. The headers are used in career site pages owned by the organization.

Enhanced External Password Policy Configuration

The enhancement includes increasing the minimum password length and limiting the lock-out threshold. The enhanced external password policy impacts:

External candidates creating an account for the first time.
Existing external candidates trying to change their passwords. For example, password reset and forgot password.
Agency users trying to change their passwords.

Ability to Edit Existing Category Page Names in Career Site Builder

Career Site Builder administrators can now edit category names directly, without having to contact Professional Services, an implementation partner, or SAP Support.

In the previous version, the Name field became readonly after the category page was created and saved. Changing a category name was performed in the backend Command Center tool by Professional Services, an implementation partner, or SAP Support.

New Job Status Available in Job Postings Table

You can now see a new job status, Invalid Fields, in the job postings table when the job board’s system sends back error messages because of one or more incorrectly populated fields while posting a job.

See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.

Contact info@worklogix.com for any assistance supporting and implementing your SAP SuccessFactors Modules, or download our support services brochure.

Creating a Safe and Efficient Recruiting Process using Technology during COVID-19

Companies are hiring! A recent LinkedIn article shows that individual companies are now hiring 10,000s of new employees. This is great news for the economy. We at Worklogix have also seen customers gearing up their recruiting systems. But all this renewed activity in the “New Normal” raises the question “How do we keep everyone safe during the process without sacrificing the candidate experience?” In this blog we share how we’ve helped customers expand their recruiting capabilities with SAP SuccessFactors technology to keep candidates and current employees safe.

Engagement

Just because there are more people looking for jobs doesn’t mean engagement needs to go down. Quite the opposite–it means now is your chance to engage the most people to get the best talent! If your company isn’t hiring yet, it makes the challenge even more important because without any postings, you’ll need to come up with creative ways to keep people checking back in with your career site. We’ve helped companies integrate with tools like chatbots that interact with candidates to document their interests and create talent profiles that can be used to trigger email updates. If you are wondering how to create talent pools and target them with email campaigns within SAP SuccessFactors, checkout our other blog article “Actively Engage Prospective Candidates with SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting CRM Features“. Email campaign content can range from virtual career fair announcements and updates on postings, to videos featuring real managers describing why they like working for the company and what they are looking for in a good candidate.

Automated Assessments

Assessment Status and Scores showing within Candidate Overview Screen in SuccessFactors

Even prior to COVID-19, we’ve been helping customers sift through 1,000s of candidates with automated assessments. With more unemployed people seeking jobs, there is increasing pressure to comb through even more candidates per posting. Automated assessments can take the form of surveys or even Artificial Intelligence. For example, we’ve help customers automatically send out 3rd party survey assessments immediately upon applying or at other stages in the recruiting process. From there, the candidate can either be automatically disqualified or be sorted into different statuses and/or given a rating to easily compare against others. Assessment status and scores can also be integrated directly into the SuccessFactors user interfac as shown in the screenshot above and even sorted in descending order for maximum visual efficiency for recruiters. We’ve also worked with cutting edge vendors to give candidate similar ratings based on resume and candidate profile content using AI technology.

One-Way Interviewing / Virtual Interviewing

As in-person interviewing takes on new risk, many are turning to one-way interviewing and/or virtual interviewing. We’ve helped customers setup their SAP SuccessFactors systems to automatically trigger 3rd party video interviewing systems when placed in an interview status. Typically, after the status trigger, the candidate gets an email with instructions, perhaps to download an app on their phone. In a one-way interview scenario, candidates are prompted with specific questions and are allowed to record an audio or audio/video segment answering each question. The recruiter then receives the segments in the vendor system and can even get automated system feedback on how the candidate answered. The advantage here in addition to not having to meet in person is there’s no need to work out scheduling issues and the candidate can often re-record until they are satisfied with the answer they have provided. Two-way interview automations often take the form of automated scheduling systems ending in a virtual conference call.

Will I have to work on site once I get the Job?

Depending on the position, this is probably a question on many candidates’ minds when applying to a new position, and one that recruiters should be prepared to answer with confidence. At Worklogix, we’ve helped companies flagging their positions to denote how critical being “in-person” is to the role and even denote what kind of proximity to other people or exposure risk the role may require. By expanding position objects in the SuccessFactors MDF and linking the field to the requisition, recruiters can post positions and communicate with candidates clearly about the on-site expectations of the role are.

Automated Drug Screening and Background Checks

While some companies may choose to forego drug screenings, others like those subject to DOT regulations have no choice. A recent SHRM article talks about the pros and cons and realities of drug testing during COVID. The question seems to be, are we doing more harm by not conducting screenings designed to provide a safe work environment for employees? Giving candidates options might help here. We’ve helped many customers setup automations with a variety of background check & drug screening vendors. Some of these vendors allow candidates to choose from a variety of facilities that may have different safety options candidates can choose from and feel more comfortable. In a typical automation scenario, the candidate is moved to a background screening status in SuccessFactors which triggers a call to the vendor, which in turn sends an email to the candidate to provide needed information and choose a drug screening facility. Results can also be shown directly in the SuccessFactors UI similar to assessment results.

Delaying I-9 Verification

Once a candidate is ready to hire, companies can also delay unneeded on-site attendance by delaying I-9 verification. As you may be aware, the Department of Homeland Security has delayed the need to verify employee work authorization documents. You can read the updates from DHS here. To comply for this, SAP has made updates to the existing Onboarding 1.0 process. You can read the full SAP note on the COVID-19 onboarding process here. For Onboarding 2.0, the US forms will be out as part of the H2 2020 release.

Wrapping up

Online engagement using chatbots and email campaigns, automated assessments, virtual interviewing, flagging positions for work conditions, automated background checks, and I-9 updates are just a few examples of how company recruiting initiatives are working to make the recruiting and onboarding process both safe and efficient during COVID-19.

For more information about recruiting integrations, check out our book here!

Are you working on any similar recruiting initiatives and need help? Email us at info@worklogix.com!

What’s New for Recruiting (RCM/RMK) in H2 2020

As of October 9, 2020, SAP has released their documentation for the H2 2020 release. You can view the full set of documentation in the What’s New Viewer here. As a reminder, preview release will be October 16 and production will be released November 20^th. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. For tips on how to manage a release, check out or blog here. For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 2020 within Recruiting (RCM/RMK) below!

Email Verification with One-Time Password for New Candidate Account

This new functionality will request the candidate to enter a one-time password sent via email (provided by candidate). Once candidate enter the one-time password on the Create account page then candidate will be able to continue with account creation process. This new feature also prevents the exposure of existing candidates’ email addresses to attackers and keeps your candidate accounts secure. It also provides an improved email verification experience for the candidate.

** Please note that this is an opt-out feature meaning that you will need to disable this functionality if you or your client do not want to use this feature.

If your company enables the “Use email as external applicant user ID” functionality, the following will occur:

External candidate provides an email address when creating an account.
SAP SuccessFactors generates and sends a one-time password (OTP) to the provided email address.
External candidate inputs the one-time password to continue the account creation process.

OData Support for Position Generic Object on Job Requisition and Job Offer

You can now create and update a job requisition for multiple positions using the Job Requisition OData API. You can also create and update a job offer for a position using the Job Offer OData API.

The Job Requisition and Job Offer OData APIs now support business rules with Position.

Filter by Brand in Recruiting Advanced Analytics

Using Advance Analytics, you can filter and drill down by specific brand.

Add to Talent Pool from Inline Resume Viewer

Recruiters can now add candidates to talent pools via the Inline Resume Viewer in SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, where recruiters could see details about the candidates’ background and interests.

Logo Component for Career Site Custom Headers

There is now a way to add a logo to a custom header for your career site pages in its own logo component rather than the Image component, so that you can specify logos that are optimized to display in desktop and mobile display settings.

There are two ways to add a logo into a header: Using the regular logo tab for headers, and the new method of adding a logo component in a custom header. This allows the use of different sizes logos for custom headers for different display settings, such as desktop and mobile.

Career Site Meta Images for Social Media Posts

Meta images can now be added using Career Site Builder to associate them with your career site in social media posts.

Third-party sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Microsoft Teams, allow you to associate an image when you post a link and information for your career site. Meta Image setting is located in Appearance Styles -> Global Styles -> (Brand) -> Main, this will allow to specify one image per brand. Each available brand can have separate meta image; otherwise Career Site Builder uses the meta image specified on default brand.

Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics in All Career Site Pages

Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics IDs can now be used in all career site pages, including those that are administered in SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, such as the Job Application, Candidate Profile, Login, and Create an Account pages.

To enable the settings, navigate to Settings -> Site Configuration in Career Site Builder.

SEO Settings in Career Site Builder

By default, Career Site Builder generates a Top Jobs page that lists links to search results pages based on the most frequently searched terms. You can now refine your search-engine optimization settings and have better control over how you present jobs in your career site. In addition, you can demote specific terms to display at the end of the result set, or prevent search engines from indexing the auto-generated pages created by the Top Jobs page as well as the Top Jobs page itself. These settings now can be controlled by Career Site Builder administrators

Terms to Demote – terms you include in this field are automatically demoted to the end of the result set.
Terms to Avoid – when you add terms in this field, Career Site Builder adds a noindex value to prevent search engines from indexing them, and also suppresses them from being part of the Top Jobs results.
Noindex Top Jobs – Career Site Builder adds a noindex value to these auto-generated pages, as well as to the Top Jobs page itself.

See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.

Contact info@worklogix.com for any assistance supporting and implementing your SAP SuccessFactors Modules, or download our support services brochure.

It is time to review your OFCCP Voluntary Self Identification Forms

Photo by **Cytonn Photography** from **Pexels**

With discrimination coming to the forefront of world news lately, many organizations are asking themselves: What can we do to actively prevent discrimination in our organization? I’ve seen a variety of options out there ranging from internal audits by 3^rd party anti-discrimination consulting firms to pro-active succession planning that tracks minority status. While organizations I’ve worked with differ in these types of approaches, one solution at minimum in the United States has been clear for my entire lifetime: federal contractors must comply with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) guidelines.

Per an announcement on the Department of Labor website, a new Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability Form CC-305 was approved in May. As of today, Federal contractors must post the comply by updating the form by August 4, 2020. An example new form can be found here. I warn against simply using a search engine to look for updated forms as these may lead you to the expired form (check the expiration date at the top of the form first).

Also, while you are on the Department of Labor website and making updates to your system in response, you might want to check out the updates to the Federal Contract Compliance Manual. Specifically, the guidance around the Invitation to Self-Identify as a Protected Veteran. Additionally, the “How to Comply” postings and notices guide is of great help. I’ve found customers making updates to all of their voluntary identification forms based on these updates.

For SAP SuccessFactors customers, this typically means:

Updating your job application template to include the new form(s)
Updating your Onboarding forms to include the new forms(s)

I recommend referencing the Department of Labor website to understand the updated requirements and then working with your IT department, SAP Partner, and/or SAP to make updates to the recruiting application template and/or Onboarding forms to ensure compliance.

Hopefully this brief update has been helpful! While many people are out there working hard to come up with a variety of solutions for today’s social issues, one thing is for certain: EEO is the law.

Do you need help implementing these forms in your Sap SuccessFactors system? Contact mwellens@worklogix.com.

Manage High-Volume Recruiting with SAP SuccessFactors Evergreen Requisitions

A tree in a forest

Description automatically generated

Up until now, customers have been using round-about methods of adapting SuccessFactors recruiting to handle their high-volume requisitions that are always posted – commonly known as “Evergreen Requisitions”. Recently, with the Q4 2019 release a beta version of Evergreen Requisition functionality was released. I had the opportunity recently to work with a customer to implement this new functionality and take it for a test drive! This article gives an overview of the functionality, its business need, key advantages to implementing the functionality, and some helpful hints in rolling it out to your instance.

Why do companies need Evergreen Requisitions?

Not every company needs Evergreen Requisitions. Unique to some industries are so-called “high-volume” jobs where the demand for the job constantly out-weights the supply. For example, merchandiser positions in the consumer products industry or pilots in the airline industry. For these positions, the company is always hiring. For recruiting systems, this often creates a problem because typically one requisition and one posting equals one position in the HRIS system. Having multiple requisitions and postings for a multitude of positions that are all basically the same would be confusing to people looking for jobs – not to mention for recruiters to manage. For example, one candidate could apply to essentially the same job multiple times. To avoid this, companies use evergreen requisitions to have one long-standing posting to represent a single channel for job seekers and recruiters for several open seats of the same position in the company.

How were companies handling this situation prior to the functionality?

Prior to the release of this functionality, there was no officially agreed-upon method for creating evergreen requisitions. In my experience a custom Evergreen Requisition solution looked like this:

Requisitions would be launch for each open seat (e.g. unique position number) – typically a custom field would be used to record this position number on each requisition
One requisition would be chosen to be the Evergreen and only that one requisition would be posted for candidates to apply
As candidates applied to the requisition, finalized candidates (usually those reaching a finalized offer) would be moved from the Evergreen requisition to the requisition using the late-stage application functionality

While this solution “worked” in a happy path scenario, there were still many shortfalls here.

There was no clear relationship between the Evergreen Requisition and the child requisitions – so often recruiters may get confused as to which requisition to transfer the candidates
From a compliance and reporting standpoint, it looked as if the candidates were dispositioned off of the Evergreen Requisition even though they were qualified and furthermore did not go through all of the preliminary steps a candidate normally would on the child requisition. This left many compliance officers feeling a uneasy about how to explain the situation in the event of an audit.
With no clear guidance on an official way to take care of this situation, many companies may take alternate approaches, leaving SAP and partners at a loss for how to continue to implement and support long term

How does the new functionality work?

The process flow for the new functionality is as follows.

Requisitions can be marked as “evergreen” using a new standard field that recruiters/others can see on the requisition detail screen. The Job Requisition Type field also shows if the requisition is standard, evergreen, or child:

Once an Evergreen Requisition is marked as such, child requisitions can be associated to it on the requisition details screen as well:

A screenshot of a cell phone

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These associations can also be seen from the requisition overview screen with the new fields shown below:

The functionality allows for a new action from the action menu when selecting candidates called “Forward as Applicant”.

What are the key advantages with the new functionality?

There are many advantages with this new functionality!

The new functionality release gives an agreed standard way to handle Evergreen Requisitions that partners and customers can more universally follow and support going forward.
Previously there was no way to identify what was an evergreen, what was a child, and what was just a standard requisition. Now there is a field dedicated to identifying this which can help recruiters as well as those creating reports to sort out what is what.
Similarly, now that child requisitions are hard linked in the system with their parent Evergreen Requisition, recruiters can keep tabs on which requisitions they should move candidates to in the event one has accepted an offer.
The new “Forward As Applicant” has many advantages over the other forward or late-stage application action functionality.
1. Forward as applicant copies the entire application and only runs field checks as if the person just applied.
1. It also copies the current application data selected whereas other methods copy whatever the latest application is (which can get very frustrating).
1. Furthermore, candidates and recruiters can view the jobs applied in candidate profile when they use this action – the other actions do not do this.
1. Forward as applicant also now gets its own unique email trigger
1. Forward as applicant retains the source data (e.g. google or some career site) as well as agency ownership

Are there any helpful hints or “gotcha’s” out there I should look for?

In our implementation, we ran into a couple of common snags listed below.

For implementation partners, permissions are always the culprit – make sure the right permissions are assigned to these new fields in the requisition templates for everyone!
Change management: Make sure the recruiters are using the new “Forward as Applicant” action! It is often confusing for recruiters to understand the difference in the 3 different ways to forward and also late-stage applications.

What’s ahead?

Per the latest SAP SuccessFactors roadmap, Evergreen Requisition functionality will be available for general availability in the upcoming 1H 2020 release. While detailed documentation is still not available, you can be sure to check out the SuccessFactors Community product update blog for the documentation release.

Worklogix partners with clients to plan, configure, develop and integrate HR products and custom applications. We have assembled a global team with years of experience implementing HCM solutions. Our team is dedicated to understanding your business challenges, helping you leverage your technology and implement solutions that deliver results.

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting: Question Library – Why Bother?

SAP SuccessFactors has a Question Library feature which can be useful for recruiting.

SuccessFactors has a section on requisitions to add screening questions. This is separate from the questions or fields the candidates complete on the application. The application fields are purely informational and do not automatically cause an action on the candidate. But screening questions can be used to perform actions on candidates or provide information to help the recruiter quickly assess and/or eliminate candidates. Screening questions are added by the recruiter on each requisition and can be used as “knock out” questions to automatically disqualify candidates, score candidates, and weight answers. If you use screening questions on requisitions, consider having a requisition Question Library.

Recruiters can add questions to requisitions manually by creating questions within the requisition ad hoc.

The recruiters can also create the questions in Preferences => My Saved Questions to have access to use as needed. This is by recruiter and the questions cannot be shared with other recruiters. Each recruiter creates their own saved set of questions.

Recruiter saved questions – only accessible by the recruiter

Question Library – Why bother?

The Question Library is a shared library and contains questions which recruiters can choose to add to requisitions. Questions from the Question Library can also be used to disqualify, score and weight candidates. But why bother setting up a Questions Library when recruiters can create their own personal set of questions?

A few reasons for setting up a Question Library for recruiting:

Company policy on questions
Consistency
Category grouping
Cascading questions
Turnover
Maintenance

COMPANY POLICY ON QUESTIONS

Make sure the questions do not put the company at a risk. Having recruiters only use questions from a Question Library gives control to the administrator as to the content of the questions. The questions can be reviewed by the company’s legal team before being added to the library to ensure the company is comfortable with what is being asked of a candidate.

CONSISTENCY

The same style of phrasing and wording leads to consistency. Some items to consider include:

How the company name is worded – is a shortened version/nickname allowed?
The way the questions are asked – length, wording, style, etc.
Answers to questions – do they all need to be multiple choice, is free text allowed?
Abbreviations – make sure they are meaningful and not confusing to the candidates.
The candidate experience when answering questions

CATEGORY GROUPING

This is a good feature that breaks down the questions by type of role, especially if you use only one requisition template but have a variety of roles within the company. Categorize the questions by type of role to easily add specific questions to the requisition depending on what is needed for the position.

For example, having separate categories for sales positions, accounting, driver, warehouse, manufacturing, finance, etc. Whatever the role, a category can be created. A “General” category can be used across roles.

The Question Library “Requisition” is located after “My Saved Questions” in the requisition’s Question section

The Question Library “Requisition” has numerous categories under it

CASCADING QUESTIONS

Cascading Questions are questions that can lead to other questions depending on the answer to the original question. Cascading questions help eliminate the number of questions that are seen by every candidate. The cascaded question(s) only appear depending on the candidate’s answer to the original question.

Original question:

“Do you have a Pilot’s license?” Answers available: Yes/No

Only if the candidate answers “Yes”, will a new question will appear:

“How many hours have you flown?”

Opening the Category “Delivery Driver Helper”, the question “Have you previously been in a role where you were required to lift up to 50 lbs on a repetitive basis?” has the icon indicating it is a Cascading Question

When added to the requisition, the cascade icon is to the right of the question. Clicking the arrow to the left of the question reveals the cascaded questions:

The cascaded question(s) appear below the main question.

Cascading questions need to be added through a question library file and imported to the question library by the business partner or support team. Recruiters cannot create ad-hoc cascading questions.

TURNOVER OF RECRUITERS

If a recruiter leaves the role and a new recruiter takes over any outstanding requisitions, the new recruiter will have access to the Question Library. If the questions were stored in the personal preferences of the original recruiter, then the new recruiter would not have access to the questions in order to update the req or add the same questions to new requisitions for similar roles. The new recruiter would have to create their own My Saved Questions library and add the questions. This can lead to the similar questions being worded differently or not being created and added to the requisition. See “Consistency” above.

MAINTENANCE

If a new question is needed, add it once to the Question Library and all recruiters have access. If a question needs to be updated, update it in the Question Library. Any requisitions currently using the question will not automatically get updated, saving the integrity of the question the candidate originally answered. But recruiters adding the question going forward will have the updated version.

If you decide to start using the Question Library, work with your business partner or support team to create the Question Library.

Question Library for Requisitions – Take Note:

The questions will appear in alphabetical order by Category then alphabetically under each Category no matter how they are input to the Question Library.

Questions will appear on the application for both internal and external candidates.

For the applicant, screening questions appear at the very end of the application and cannot be moved from that position.

For the recruiter view of the candidate application, the questions will appear in SCREENING DETAILS section after the application information and before the candidate profile information.

Recruiter view of Screening Details section on the candidate’s
application

Any questions in this section are not reportable.

The Screening Details does not move with the candidate application if the application is forwarded to another requisition, even if the same questions are on the other requisition. The candidate will need to be invited to apply to answer the questions on the forwarded to requisition. The same is true for Late Stage Application candidates.

Same questions added to two requisitions

Candidate applies to one requisition and answers the questions

FORWARD screen 2019-03-08_09-07-48 — *Candidate Forwarded to another requisition to New Application (Default) status*

Candidate has been forwarded but not applied to the requisition.

The application data is intact but not the Screening Details questions

Conclusions

We hope you enjoyed this quick overview of the recruiting questions library functionality. For more information on integrating and automating this question library, check out our book here!

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Candidate Display Options Tips

In recruiting, finding ways to quickly scan through qualified candidates is always a plus. From using requisition knock out questions as the candidate applies to virtual screening, eliminating non-qualified applicants up front helps in narrowing the field of candidates.

And for the candidates who answer knockout questions correctly and make it to the applicant pool in a requisition – is there a way to distinguish between them or at least review in an order that works for the recruiter?

Here’s where the Candidate Display Options can be used to quickly scan through candidates. The recruiter can easily choose available display fields to sort by what is most meaningful for the position. And when dealing with high volume openings, every little thing helps. Work with your implementation partner or support team to take full advantage of the Candidate Display Options.

When viewing candidates in the requisition, the Display Options is next to Action. Click on Display Options and the pop-up shows the available fields to display on the screen.

In the requisition candidate view, DISPLAY OPTIONS is next to ACTION.

The recruiter checks which fields to display – with the options checked above, the original display changes to show only the checked fields:

The fields are sortable – just click on the title of the field.

Fields in the Candidate Display Options

SuccessFactors Recruiting has the ability to add fields to the Candidate Display Options. This can be through a change in the Candidate Profile and Application XML or through the Management Template Feature in Recruit Management. Work with your partner to update the Candidate Display Options to meet your needs.

Please note per SAP: “the Management Template Feature is extremely powerful and should only be done by qualified individuals familiar with your configuration.” Further information can be found at: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2644550

“Considerations When Choosing Candidate Display Fields” listed below will help in deciding the fields you should consider.

First, some examples of different Candidate Display Options. In the Candidate Display Options screen, the first column is always the Standard Fields column which contains information such as Rating, Source, Last Updated. But what about the application fields the recruiter checks before deciding who to contact, the order to contact, or not at all?

In the example below, the Display Options contains the basic candidate information in the second column. But this is not very useful when trying choose which candidates to pursue.

Candidate Summary Display Options –
1st column is Standard Fields – this does not change.
The recruiter checks which fields to show on the screen – the order in the columns is the order fields appear on the screen

Did the candidate answer questions on the application, fill out past employment information, education? Did the candidate take surveys or tests when they applied? If they are part of the application, then the results can be displayed. You don’t have to open each application to see the fields. They can be part of the Candidate Display Options.

With the Candidate Display Options fields checked and then sorting on the header of the column, a recruiter can view the candidates in the way that works best to determine which candidates to contact, wait to contact or to eliminate.

Recruiter has chosen the source, city and grade of pre-test.

Recruiter has sorted on Grade to see the top scoring candidates.

Considerations When Choosing Candidate Display Fields

Below are a few considerations when deciding on the Candidate Display Options application fields:

Which application fields do recruiters review first – which are the most useful
How many columns
Order of the columns
Order of the items within the columns
Length of field name
Required application field or optional field
External vs Internal application questions
When the candidates are required to answer the question

Which fields do recruiters review first?

Recruiters will know which application fields they look at first to find the most qualified candidates. Compile a list and narrow down to the top 5 or 10. These fields should be on the Candidate Display Options list to quickly identify which candidates to advance.

How many columns?

The Candidate Display Option columns should have grouped fields. For example, a column each for:

Contact information
Application answers
Test scores
Screening data

How many columns depends on how you want to see and sort the information.

Order of the columns

Order the columns in a way the recruiters use it. The Standard Fields column is always first but then you can order the following columns the way it makes sense to the recruiters. The order they are placed in the xml is how they will appear to the recruiter.

Order of the items within each column

You can also choose the order the items are listed under each column. The order in the list is the order the items will appear in the display. Top to bottom in the list – left to right in the display screen.

Length of the Field Name Label

The length of the field name is very important. There is no way to shorten the name of the label to appear differently in the column. So if you want to show the answer to the question on the application that has the label “Have you ever applied to our company or any subsidiaries within the last two years?”, the entire wording will appear as the column name and it does not wrap. To solve this, you can have the question on the application, and then a different field for the answer be with shorter verbiage: “Company answer y/n”. But please note this will add more information for the candidate to read and respond.

Another way to handle the length of the name is to have the lengthy questions in one column. Since the Candidate Display Option fields are chosen by the recruiters, they can easily choose the fields they want to see at the time they want to use them. Therefore, if they want to see all New Applications that answered NO to the question “Have you ever applied to our company or any subsidiaries within the last two years?” before reviewing any other applications, they can click on that display field, work with those candidates, then un-click the display field.

Required application field or optional field.

Is the application field Required or Optional? If it is optional and the candidate has not answered, then it will be blank for that candidate. If it is required and shows blank, the candidate is a forwarded candidate who has not yet applied.

External vs Internal application questions

If the field is specific to only internal candidates, then only internal applications will have data in the field. Same for external.

When are the candidates required to answer the question?

If it is a multi-stage application and candidates are not required to answer certain questions or enter certain fields until a few steps into the Talent Pipeline, then the information will not appear in the Candidate Display Options column until the candidate enters the information on the application.

Conclusion

The Candidate Display Options can easily be a forgotten asset – set it up once to see what you want and forget about it. But taking a little time up front to configure the display fields to help sort through candidates quickly can save a lot of time and effort in the long run. And it is easy to use, quickly checking and un-checking the fields to display.

Work with your implementation or support team to take full advantage of the Candidate Display Options.

For more information about integrating and automating SAP SuccessFactors recruiting, check out our book here!

Need some in-person help? Contact us at info@worklogix.com!

Actively Engage Prospective Candidates with SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting CRM Features

Are you having trouble achieving your recruiting metrics? Specifically – are you having a hard time getting enough candidates to fill out a full application on your recruiting site? Are candidates dropping mid application or just not bothering at all? Do you feel like people are interested in applying to jobs at your company but just don’t see the positions they want so they don’t bother? Are you looking to keep a growing number of potential candidates warm for when those positions are available? If you answered yes to any of these, you might try taking a look at SAP SuccessFactors’ new Recruiting Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) features!

The best news is that these features have been delivered free to all existing SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Customers as of the Q2 2018 release.

What’s included?

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Candidate Relationship Management consist of these primary features:

Data Capture Forms
Talent Pools
Email Campaigns

Data Capture Forms

The idea behind data capture forms is to gather information about prospective candidates without them actually applying for a specific position. It is a great way to see who is out there that may be interested in your company and positions you typically hire (but may not have available now). It could also be used for events like college recruiting or career fairs where prospective candidates are met that sound promising but aren’t quite a fit for a specific position or may not be able to fill out a full application at the moment. Directing them to a landing page on your recruiting website later, or even having them fill out the form on a table or mobile phone at the event would be a great way to capture their information for later follow-up.

To create a data capture form, you will need access to the Career Site Builder (the “Manage Career Site Builder” permission). Once the feature is active it will appear in the “Global” menu of the Career Site Builder as shown in the screenshot below.

Once your click the menu item and create a new data capture form you will come to the below screen that allows you to choose what fields to capture. As users enter information they are really creating a recruiting candidate profile. At a minimum you will need first and last name as well as email to create a profile. You can add other fields by clicking the “+ Add” button as shown below.

Clicking “+ Add” will bring up a popup like the one below with just a few more fields out-of-the-boz. Most likely you will need to add more fields than what is available in this popup (for example, a drop down that asks what types of positions interest you, or another that asks how you heard about the company).

To add more fields to this popup so you can add them to the data capture form, you will need to have access to manage object definitions. If you are not familiar with the Metadata Framework (MDF) you might want someone familiar with this technology perform this part (I plan on writing another blog post on this, so check back soon!). In a nutshell, you will want to add whatever fields you need to the “Candidate Profile Extension” object definition. They will then show up in the popup above for you to add to your data capture form. As fields are added to the object definition and filled out by your candidates, they will show up on the candidate profile as shown in the screenshot below:

Clicking the “+” button will show all the fields you have added to the “Candidate Profile Extension” object definition (and any values your candidates have filled in) as shown below:

Once you have finished editing your “Candidate Profile Extension” object definition and have added any needed fields to your data capture form, you can design a landing page that includes your form. To create a landing page, click on the “Landing” menu item under “Pages” in the Career Site Builder.

You can create a landing page and add components to determine the page’s layout. Unlike other pages, you can add a special “Date Capture Form” component to the page and select the data capture form you have created. By adding the data capture form to a landing page you can now create a visually pleasing page that includes any branding, images, text, etc. you desire!

Once you have finished your page layout you can preview and/or publish your new page using the links at the top of the screen as shown below:

Talent Pools

The Talent Pools feature allows you to organize any candidates in your recruiting database such as those who have applied to positions or those who have filled out a data capture form. This can be a very powerful tool to help you strategize how to use the pool of people in. For example, you could create a pool of people you met at a particular event, or a group of alumni of a certain University, or people you think all have similar traits that make them qualified for a particular type of position.

Once the Talent Pools functionality is activated and permissions have been granted to use it, a “Talent Pools” menu item shows up in the navigation hierarchy under Recruiting -> Candidates -> Talent Pools as shown below:

You can create a new talent pool by clicking the “Create Talent Pool” link on the right-hand side of the screen. You will get a popup like the one below:

Here you can see many of the features of the Talent Pools functionality. For example, you can create a Talent Pipeline status and set a default candidate status. These statuses can allow you to track where you are in the process of attracting each of the candidates within the pool. You can also set the pool to be private only for your eyes or for a select group of people you choose, or make it visible to anyone with the Talent Pools permission. Finally, you can also set the talent pool to auto-populate overnight based on saved searches you have already created (note that you will need to have created the saved search prior to creating / editing the talent pool). To create a saved search, navigate to “Keyword and Item Search”, construct a search, and then click the “Save Search” button as shown below. For example, in the below search we are gathering all candidates who listed French as a language skill.

If you don’t want the system to auto-populate the talent pool for you overnight, you can also directly edit the pool and add candidates as you see fit in the candidate search area as shown below.

Email Campaigns

Now that you’ve captured a good collection of potential candidates and have them organized into pools of candidates, it is time to engage them! Email campaigns enable you to send mass emails out to select candidates from your candidate database.

You will need to start with creating an email layout. The layouts screen is found within the Career Site Builder as shown in the screenshot below:

The layout consists of a header, footer, and the main content area where you will compose your email. In creating the layout, you would not add any content to the “Configurable Text Area” – this is simply a placeholder for the content you will create later for a specific campaign. Typically, you would just create the header and footer content within the layout. You can add rich text and images from your Career Site Builder image library within the header and footer. Brands and multi-language are also supported.

Once you have your layout complete, you can begin to create your first email campaign! The email campaign screen can be found by navigating to Recruiting -> Marketing -> Email Campaigns. Just click on the “New Email Campaign” link in the upper right to get started.

The “Create Email Campaign” screen is shown below. From here you can choose basic info like the name of the campaign and a description as well as the brand and language. You can alo fill in the details of what the email will look like to individuals receiving it including the title, “Reply-To” the layout, and the content of the email. There are also a limited number of tokens you can use by clicking on the “Recipient Field” link. You can pick and choose individual candidates to send the email to or send to entire talent pools. You can combine multiple talent pools and individual picks all in one campaign as well.

Congratulations! You have now captured new talent, organized them, and engaged them for new opportunities! J

How Do I Activate These Features?

SAP SuccessFactors customer administrators can easily turn on the Talent Pools and Email Campaigns via the Upgrade Center. You will find the Upgrade Center in your “Admin Center” as show in the screenshot below:

You can filter by “Recruiting” and see the items show up in the options below. Click the “Learn More & Upgrade Now” link and follow the instructions to turn these on.

Please note that once you activate each of these options, you will receive a screen indicating next steps to take such as assigning specific role-based permissions. Please make sure you follow these instructions or you will not be able to get to the needed screens.

To activate Data Capture forms and email campaigns, you need to make sure you are using the Career Site Builder (CSB) first. As shown in the preceding instructions, all of the forms you will create have to be designed in the CSB and surfaced through landing pages in the CSB. You can either request a partner turn on the data capture forms feature for you in Command Center, or open a support ticket with SAP to have them turn it on for you.

Where Can I Find Out More?

To find out more, visit the SuccessFactors Community Quarterly Release Page for Q2 2018 here (SAP login required):

https://community.successfactors.com/t5/Product-Updates-Blog/Q2-2018/ba-p/202735