Contingent Hiring

Contingent hiring is used to hire people when needed and for a limited period of time from a third party agency specialized in submitting pre-qualified workers. Contingent hiring may include part-time, temporary and contractor work.

The Contingent Hiring solution is meant to support the first sourcing part of the typical contingent process, where specific requisitions are created and invitations to refer candidates are performed. Once the candidate submitted by an agent is selected for a limited term, there is usually a time sheet and billing process involved, not done within the Recruiting Center.

When the Contingent Hiring feature is activated and configured by the system administrator, users can start acquiring contingent workers. When creating a requisition, users can choose a Contingent requisition type which offers specific contingent functionalities like a candidate selection workflow built for contingent hiring, a Contingent Terms section, supplier invitation to submit candidates using the agency portal, confirmation of availability and specific candidate ownership rules, different from the rules associated with other agent submitted candidates. Once the candidate is hired, the system does not provide additional support like time sheet and billing. To feed such systems, integration with worker information, billing rate and suppliers (agents) can be done upon hiring.

Contingent Hiring Configuration

The configuration of Contingent Hiring by a system administrator is an extensive task and numerous aspects have to be taken into consideration.

The following describes the tasks to be done in a logical order. The order can slightly be changed, but it needs to respect some logic, like, for example, creating the agent portal before associating the agent to the portal.

Activation of the Contingent Hiring Feature

Once the Contingent Hiring feature has been purchased, the module must be activated by Oracle Support. This is done by setting the Contingent Functionality Activation setting to Yes.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Location
Contingent Functionality Activation	Activates Contingent functionalities.	No	Configuration > [Recruiting] Settings

For a list of impacts on features when enabling or not the Contingent Functionality Activation setting, see Impacts on Features when Enabling the Contingent Hiring Feature.

Configuration of User Type Permissions

The system administrator must grant the contingent staffing type to the users who will do contingent hiring.

User Type Permission	Location
Allow access to contingent requisitions	Configuration > [SmartOrg] Administration > User Types > Recruiting > Requisitions

The permission allowing the creation of contingent requisitions using a template must also be granted.

User Type Permission	Location
Create requisitions - Only from a requisition template (contingent recruitment)	Configuration > [SmartOrg] Administration > User Types > Recruiting > Requisitions

Configuration of Settings

The system administrator also enables the following settings.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Location
Contingent Staffing Agent Ownership Delay	Period during which contingent staffing agents own rights over referrals.	0	Configuration > [Recruiting] Settings
Offer Default Start Date Hour	Default employee start time on the start date.	8 a.m.	Configuration > [Recruiting] Settings
Calculator Default Hourly	In the salary calculator, assumes that employees work X hours per day.	8 hours	Configuration > [Central Configuration] Settings
Calculator Default Daily	In the salary calculator, assume that employees work X days per week.	5 days	Configuration > [Central Configuration] Settings

Activation of the Contingent Requisition Type

A contingent requisition type is available. The system administrator must activate it. Once activated, the contingent requisition type becomes available when users are creating a requisition or requisition template in Recruiting.

For details, see Activating a Requisition Type.

Configuration of Requisition Field Visibility

All requisition standard fields and user-defined fields are available for contingent usage, but they are not all suitable.

The system administrator can decide which fields are made available for contingent hiring by using the field exception feature. It is possible for the system administrator to remove a field from the contingent view, or make it optional while being mandatory for another staffing type. For example, the Description - Internal field can be configured in the file, but cannot be displayed to agents since the agency portal is by definition an external site. We recommend to deactivate such field via a contingent staffing type exception.

For details, see Creating a Field Exception.

A table presents requisition fields meant to be used for contingent purposes and that should be activated by the system administrator. While they are meant to serve the purpose of contingent hiring, these fields can be activated for any staffing type. See Requisition Fields to be Used for Contingent.

Configuration of Requisition and Requisition Template Files

Requisition templates are important for the contingent hiring process. While it is not required to create a contingent requisition using a template, this is definitely the recommended practice.

The requisition should contain the Contingent Terms block where contingent specific standard fields are located. Two important fields should contain default values:

Maximum Hourly Rate: Defines the maximum hourly rate allowed for the current requisition. It limits the requested hourly rate amount and also controls the maximum rate an agent can ask while submitting a candidate.
Requested Hourly Rate: This is the requested hourly rate used to inform the agent about what should be submitted.

These two other fields are also important:

Estimated Labor Cost: Hourly rate paid to the agency multiplied by the estimated number of hours per days, times the number of estimated days. This is only an estimation based on a fix number of hours per day and a fix number of days per week.
Estimated Labor Cost and Expenses: Total estimated cost by adding the expenses to the estimated labor cost, when the expenses are reimbursable.

When one of the above two fields is present in the requisition, the Calculate option is displayed. When the Calculate button is pressed, the system calculates the value of those fields. This is based on the number of days the worker is hired based on the start date and end date, using the number of days per week (Calculator Default Daily setting), multiplied by the number of hours per day (Calculator Default Hourly setting). This number of hours is then multiplied by the requested hourly rate for the Estimated Labor Cost and will add the expense to this into the field Estimated Labor Cost and Expenses if the Expenses Reimbursable field is checked.

User-defined fields can be added into the form used within the Contingent Terms block, or anywhere else within the file. Ideally, the system administrator will also need to configure the system such that the Internal Description field is removed from the Contingent requisition file, since it is not displayed to the agent who is viewing requisitions through an external agency portal.

Association of the Requisition User-defined File to the Contingent Staffing Type

Once the user-defined file is created, the system administrator associates it to the Contingent Staffing type, where needed. Since there are other variations between contingent and other staffing type file format, it is recommended to have a file created specifically for contingent staffing type. This is also true for requisition templates.

For details, see Associating a Requisition File to a Staffing Type.

Configuration of Candidate Field Visibility

All candidate standard fields and user-defined fields are available for contingent usage, but they are not all suitable.

The system administrator can decide which fields are made available for contingent hiring by using the field exception feature. It is possible for the system administrator to remove a field from the contingent view, or make it optional while being mandatory for another staffing type.

Note: While it is possible to do field level configuration for contingent fields, this is not recommended. We recommended instead to use the candidate file creation feature and to create a specific file to be used for contingent hiring using the Requisition File Setup feature available in the Recruiting Administration menu.

For details, see Creating a Field Exception.

A table presents candidate fields meant to be used for contingent purposes and that should be activated by the system administrator. While they are meant to serve the purpose of contingent hiring, these fields can be activated for any staffing type. These fields are only available within the submission context and cannot be placed within the general profile. See Candidate Fields to be Used for Contingent.

Note: Contingent specific fields do not have their counterpart in the offer module. The offer module can be used for contingent purpose, but contingent fields listed under the requisition specific Contingent Terms block are not available into the offer module.

Association of the Candidate User-defined File to the Contingent Staffing Type

It is possible to configure a candidate file for contingent using the same approach as for requisition files. Unlike requisition files, the system administrator can only specify one candidate file for each configuration profile. But these files can have exceptions defined. In this case, it is possible to define the exception file used for contingent staffing type submissions.

For details, see Associating a Candidate File to a Staffing Type.

Creation of the Candidate Selection Workflow

This step is important because some of the candidate selection workflow steps are in theory managed directly by the supplier. The system will not require the system administrator to configure a Contingent Candidate Selection Workflow, but it is recommended to use a specific one to be aligned with realistic scenarios.

In a Contingent Candidate Selection Workflow, there is less prescreening, interview, or background check done for contingent workers when they are prequalified by the agent who will submit them. A scenario of how a customer would use the contingent solution may include a step to allow the online confirmation from the agent and one to automatically move the candidate to the next step. In order for this scenario to occur, the customer must configure such confirmation request, based on the step and status triggering the confirmation link to display in the Agency Portal. To inform the agent to come back and use the confirmation page, a message template must be associated to the Contingent Candidate Selection Workflow and the triggering step and status.

When building the candidate selection workflow, try to keep the contingent flow as simple as possible and note where in the selection process you want to invite the agent to confirm price and availability of the worker you want to select. The offer step can be used in a Contingent Candidate Selection Workflow, but the contingent specific fields are not available, so it is not convenient. An enhancement request is being considered to better support contingent specific fields into the offer module. In the meantime, user-defined fields can be used but when doing so, the field is also visible under other staffing types.

When creating the Contingent Candidate Selection Workflow, it is a good practice to create a CSW for contingent not associated to any OLF, to serve as the default CSW for contingent.

For details, see Building a Candidate Selection Workflow.

Creation of an Agency Portal

The creation of the Agency Portal is done via the Career Section Administration module. When the system administrator creates the career section, the Agency Portal type must be selected. For details, refer to the Career Section Configuration Guide.

There is no rule preventing the sharing of a portal with contingent agents and other agents. However, it is recommended to use a contingent-specific agency portals for the following reasons:

The job specific application flow might differ between contingent candidates and other candidates submitted by other agencies. As for candidate selection workflows, the focus is usually different and contingent candidates will be prescreened by the agencies, thus the pages related to background check or prescreening might not be part of the flow at all.
The flow should also contain the contingent specific block, where the agent will be able to provide the agency bill rate and even the internal worker ID or requisition number, in order to use those unique IDs later during integration processes.
Tier 2 and tier 3 agencies might be supported by delayed default posting. Since default posting duration, start and end, are defined at the portal level, creating few portals with different default values will help posting to tier1 agencies first, tier2 with a small delay and potentially tier3 with a longer delay. Such configuration has been requested few times in the past.
Use the same portal for all agents of the same agency, in order to have a unique default posting duration value while selecting an agency.

The forgot username process, although an available option in the career section properties, should not be used since users are forced to log using their email address. Because it is activated by default, we recommended to deactivate it. (Configuration [Career Section] Administration > Career Sections > Security Settings).

Creation of the Agency Providing Contingent Services

The creation of a contingent agency is similar to the creation of professional agencies. Only agencies with the contingent staffing type will be available while inviting agents to submit candidates to contingent requisitions. The system administrator creates an agency, select the contingent type and decide whether or not this agency is MWBE, which means Minority Women Business Owned. This is a flag available when exporting the agency information to an external system where billing occurs. It has no functional impact in the recruiting application but might be required while exporting supplier information to an external system.

For details, see Creating an Agency.

Association of Agents to the Agency

The system administrator needs to add agents to the agency and associate each agent to a portal in order to be able to invite agents to submit candidates. Each agent requires a valid email address. This address will define where the invitations to refer will be sent. It is also used as the agent's username. This is why we recommended to deactivate the forgot username setting in the career section properties.

When the recruiter will invite agencies to submit candidates, to avoid notifying too many agents at once, two options are available:

Create agencies with a small number of agents.
Define specific OLF for each agent.Such OLF contextualization will drive which agents are invited for each selected agency.

For details, see Staffing Agencies and Agents.

Configuration of the Agent Confirmation Request

The system administrator can configure the Agent Confirmation Request to send a request to the agent to confirm a candidate's availability.

The Agent Confirmation Request is an important step of the contingent hiring process. It is optional, but highly recommended. At some point in the candidate selection process, the system administrator may want to allow the agent who submitted a candidate to confirm the candidate's availability. This is how the agent can interact with the candidate selection process and move the candidate forward automatically. The Agent Confirmation Request can be added to any status of a step of a candidate selection workflow. The system administrator can also decide the status the candidate automatically reaches based on the answer sent by the agent. Yes the candidate is available, or no the candidate is not available. The email sent to the agent requesting a confirmation contains the text included in the Agent Confirmation Question (multilingual).

The Agent Confirmation Request is configured in the Career Section Administration module. For details, refer to the Career Section Configuration Guide.

Configuration of the Agent Confirmation Email

The system administrator may decide to send an email message to agents asking them to confirm the candidate's presence. The system administrator may duplicate the Contribution Request, Agent message template as a starting point. The message should be configured as follows:

Recipient: Agent.
Delivery Type: Automatic.
Triggering Event: Candidate Selection Workflow Context.
Variable of interest: {CareerSection.AgentReferralUrl}.
Workflow, Step, Status: The Workflow, Step and Status must be aligned with the Agent Confirmation Request configured earlier so the agent is invited at the same time the link appears in the agency portal.

Contingent Requisition Ownership Rules

For contingent requisitions, the ownership between a submitted candidate and the submitting agent differs from employee or agent referral rules on all other requisition types.

First, there is a contingent specific ownership period used only for contingent submissions.

Second, there is a set of rules that differ from how ownership behaves on all other requisition types:

Contrary to all other requisition types, ownership can change over time from agent to agent once expired.
The original ownership is kept at the submission level even after it is expired at candidate level or replaced at candidate level by another agent, to maintain the relationship with the same agent for a specific job. This means users can see a different ownership from requisition to requisition.
Ownership at the submission level can be modified by the end user. For all other staffing types, ownership is modifiable centrally and impacts all submissions, since there is only one ownership by candidate.

Attention:

Ownership can exist at the candidate submission level for contingent workers. Once the general ownership is expired, another agent can submit the same candidate again on a new requisition. But while manually changing the agent in the candidate or submission file in the Recruiting Center, the referring agent is changed everywhere, impacting existing requisitions where another agent submitted the same candidate originally. Customer should not change the agent for candidates being active on at least one requisition with another agent.

Since the same agent can be used on both contingent and other staffing types agency referral scenarios, it is not the agent that will determine the ownership but rather the type of candidate submission in play. If the candidate submission that initiates the ownership is a contingent requisition, the contingent setting applies; if the candidate submission initiating the ownership is not contingent, then the standard setting applies. Contingent ownership periods are typically smaller.

Contingent Hiring - Exceptions to Standard Behavior

Important information regarding the behavior of specific features if used with contingent hiring.

Feature	Exception
Sourcing and posting	For contingent requisitions, sourcing is achieved exclusively through invitations sent to agents. There is no direct posting to career sections. This is because contingent hiring process relies on the association between a worker and an agent, and such association is requested at all time to correctly support contingent. To be able to invite an agent, the agent must be associated to an agency portal.
Matching candidates	Although matching candidates is allowed, matching a non-contingent candidate to a contingent requisition will generate a worker without an associated agent. This situation, which is probably an exception, can be corrected by adding the agent once the candidate is matched. Matching a contingent worker to a non-contingent requisition is also allowed, but can generate surprises to those workers since they might start to receive direct correspondences if they have an email in their candidate file (for example, invitations to complete their file and overwrite values entered originally by the agent). This should be considered carefully to avoid generating surprises to candidates. This might also look as an attempt to bypass the agent if this was not discussed previously.
Number of positions	For a contingent requisition, the start date and end date are managed within the requisition. As such, all positions of a single requisition will always have the same rate boundaries and start and end dates. If different boundaries are needed, different requisitions must be created.
Resume parsing	Resume parsing can be used within the agency portal. It can also be used by sending attachments through emails. However, if the agent sending the email is associated to a portal without a general profile flow, the system will not be able to parse the attachment. This is because all email based parsing is profile based and never for a specific job. This is why there is a standard message template that informs agents associated to a portal without a profile flow that if they ever send a resume to the zonename@resumeparsing.taleo.net address, the email parsing is not supported for them. If a profile flow is active, then all standard parsing responses might be triggered. The message template is named Resume Parsing Service Unavailable to Agents. This message is triggered when the profile flow is not activated in the agency portal associated with the agent.
Offer module	The offer module can be used with contingent hiring, although conceptually, the interaction between the organization and the candidate is done by the agent, thus the offer module, meant to serve as a contractual agreement between the candidate and the organization, is not the natural path. While most standard fields and user-defined fields can be made available for contingent specific offers, the contingent-specific fields such as Start Date, End Date, Start Time, End Time and Staffing Agency Hourly Rate are not available in the offer module. This aligns to the original design of contingent and is the current expected behavior.
Agency with both Staffing and Contingent Staffing services	When both the Staffing and Contingent Staffing services are selected for a specific agency, the system will act as contingent or not based on the requisition where the candidate is submitted. But if the agents associated to such agencies are submitting new candidates as general profiles - through either a profile flow or resume parsing by email - then the system will consider those candidates as non-contingent candidates. It is recommended to have only job-specific application flows when agencies serving both contingent and non contingent are required. If an agent associated to a contingent only agency is submitting a candidate profile, then the ownership delay of the contingent definition will be applied.
Hiring contingent candidates	In order to hire a candidate on a contingent requisition, the candidate must be associated to an agent. All candidates submitted through the agency portal will get such association. However, candidates created manually, matched to a contingent requisition or imported might not have such agent association at first and it must be added before being able to hire the candidate on any contingent requisition.

Impacts on Features when Enabling the Contingent Hiring Feature

Feature	Contingent Functionality Activation setting is enabled	Contingent Functionality Activation setting is not enabled
List Formats	No impact.	No impact.
Fields	Contingent staffing type is available.	Contingent staffing type is not available.
Selection Lists	No impact.	No impact.
Candidate User-defined Files	Contingent staffing block is available.	Contingent staffing block is available, but not displayed in the Recruiting Center.
Requisition and Requisition Template User-defined Files	Contingent Terms block is available	Contingent Terms block is available, but not displayed in the Recruiting Center.
Candidate File Setup	Contingent staffing type is available.	Contingent staffing type is not available.
Requisition File Setup	Contingent staffing type is available.	Contingent staffing type is not available.
Requisition User-defined Forms	Contingent Terms form is available.	Contingent Terms form is available.
Candidate Search Page	No impact.	No impact.
Candidate Selection Workflow	Contingent option is available under Context Display tab.	Contingent option is not available under Context Display tab.
Matching Configuration	No impact.	No impact.
Message Templates	No impact.	No impact.
Agencies	Contingent option is available	Contingent option is not available.
Department List	No impact.	No impact.
Position List	No impact.	No impact.
Merge Forms	No impact.	No impact.
Notifications	No impact.	No impact.
Regional Settings	No impact.	No impact.
Requisition Types	Contingent Type available.	Contingent Type is not available.
Center Stage	No impact.	No impact.
Source Tracking	No impact.	No impact.
Integration (Job Board Accounts and Screening Services)	No impact.	No impact.
Automated Tasks	No impact.	No impact.
Product Resources	No impact.	No impact.
Career Section > Application Flows > Job Specific Agency flow	Contingent Staffing block is available.	Contingent Staffing block is available.
Career Section Setup	No impact.	No impact.
Career Section > Statements	No impact.	No impact.

Requisition Fields to be Used for Contingent

Field	Block/Form Where Available	Rules
Start Date	Profile	Mandatory by default, but it can be made optional.
Start Time	Profile	The Recruiting setting Offer Default Start Date Hour defines the value of this field. Default is 8 a.m.
Target End Date	Profile	Mandatory by default, but it can be made optional.
End Time	Profile	The Recruiting settings Offer Default Start Date Hour and Calculator Default Hourly define the value of this field. Default is 8 a.m and 8 hours per day.
Estimated Expenses	Contingent Terms	Represents expenses that can be added in order to calculate the total estimated cost.
Estimated Labor Cost	Contingent Terms	This is a read-only calculated field and it cannot be configured as an input field. The cost is a result of the number of hours per day (Calculator Default Hourly setting) and the number of days the requisition is open, based on the difference between the end date and the start date and the number of days per week, defined in the setting Calculator Default Daily, with 5 days a week being the default. Since it is a calculated field, this field cannot be configured by the system administrator.
Estimated Labor Cost and Expenses	Contingent Terms	This is a calculated field, and will include the Estimated Labor Cost plus the Estimated Expenses, if the Expenses Reimbursable field is checked. Since it is a calculated field, this field cannot be configured by the system administrator.
Expenses Reimbursable	Contingent Terms	This check box field is used to decide whether or not the expenses are included in the Estimated Labor Cost and Expenses field upon clicking the calculation option or saving the requisition.
Maximum Hourly Rate	Contingent Terms	Configure the field such that it is read only for managers – do not allow editing of this field by managers. Defines the maximum hourly rate allowed for the current requisition. This value should in theory come from the template if possible, since it serves to limit the requested hourly rate amount. It also controls the maximum rate an agent can ask while submitting a candidate.
Requested Hourly Rate	Contingent Terms	This is the requested hourly rate used to inform the agent about what should be submitted.

Candidates Fields to be Used for Contingent

Field	Default Field Visibility
Staffing Agency Hourly Rate	Career Section (not relevant to recruiters, for integration purpose only).
Sales Tax must be charged	Career Section, Taleo Recruiting.
Hourly Rate Paid to the Worker	Career Section (not relevant to recruiters, for integration purpose only).
Agency Requisition Number	Career Section (not relevant to recruiters, for integration purpose only).
Worker ID	Career Section (not relevant to recruiters, for integration purpose only).
Worker Type	Career Section, Taleo Recruiting.