Understanding Profile Information in Job Applications

Profile Architecture

Profiles describe the attributes of jobs or individuals. In PeopleSoft Human Resources, you use the Manage Profiles business process to set up content types for a profile. Content types are categories of person or job attributes. For example, Oracle delivers content types for competencies, degrees, licenses & certifications, and many other attributes that are relevant to recruiting.

Content items are the specific attributes that the person or job has—that is, the specific competencies, degrees, and so forth.

Optional Instance Qualifiers provide logical groupings for content items. For example, competency ratings use the evaluation type as an instance qualifier. This enables the system to differentiate between self-evaluations, manager evaluations, peer evaluations, and so forth. Profile settings determine which types of evaluations are visible to employees and which types can be updated by employees.

The content types that are available for use in PeopleSoft Talent Acquisition Manager are those that belong to the primary person profile type as defined on the Assign Profile Type Defaults Page. Only unsecured content types (those that everyone is allowed to see) are used for recruiting.

Profile Data for Internal Applicants

Talent Acquisition Manager uses applicant profile information to capture the applicant's qualifications and skills and to match those to job openings, which also include profile information. The applicant's profile information is contained in the job application.

Because your employees already have profiles, the system copies employee profile data into the job applications that an internal applicant creates. The internal applicant can optionally modify the profile data in the application before submitting it.

An employee can have multiple person profiles, but only data from the primary person profile type is copied into applications.

When copying employee profile data into an application:

• The system imports only content items that are visible to employees.

• For content items that have instance qualifiers (such as the rating type for a competency rating), the system imports only those content items that have an instance qualifier that is visible to employees (for example, self-evaluations, but not peer evaluations).

• Only content items that have the employee default instance qualifier (for example, self-evaluation) are available for editing.

If the employee subsequently creates an additional application, the system pulls the employee data into the new application, and also adds any data from the most recently submitted application. This ensures that any new profile content that gets added to a job application gets carried through to the subsequent job applications. Note, however, that profile content that is manually removed from an application continues to appear in each new application as long as it is part of the employee's profile.

Changes to applications never get copied to the employee profile data. And after the system initially populates the profile data in a job application, changes to profile data in one application (or in the employee profile) do not affect any other applications.

Instance Qualifiers for Profile Data

Profile architecture uses the concept of an Instance Qualifier to organize content types according to specified data. In the case of competencies, the evaluation type (self-evaluation, manager evaluation, and so forth) is the instance qualifier. The instance qualifier setup for competencies not only lists the evaluation types, it indicates which ones employees can view (for example, employees can view manager evaluations, but not peer evaluations), and which one is the default value for employees (for competencies, Self is the employee default).

Job applications handle content items with instance qualifiers according to these rules:

• When an internal applicant applies, only contents items that are visible to employees are copied from the employee's primary person profile into the job application, and only content items with the employee default instance qualifier are editable.

  For example, an employee creates an application, and the system copies the employee's manager evaluations and self evaluations into the application. It does not copy peer evaluations. The employee can see both the manager evaluations and self-evaluations, but can only edit or add self-evaluations.

  Note: If the applicant later submits an additional application, the content items are again copied from the primary person profile, and any additional content items that were added in the previous application are also carried over to the next application. The applicant's ability to add additional content items depends on the settings on the Content Section Configuration page.

• When an external applicant applies, instance qualifiers are not shown, but the employee default instance qualifier is assigned to any content items that the employee adds.

  For example, an external applicant who adds a competency and rating to the application does not see that the rating is associated with the Self evaluation type.

  Recruiting users can add content items with other instance qualifiers (for example, a competency rating with an Executive Committee evaluation type), but these content items are not visible to the applicant.