Check and Merge Duplicates After Job Offer

Checking for Duplicates During the Move to HR

When external candidates are moved into the HR phase, each candidate can be checked for possible duplicates against all workers, ex-workers, contingent workers, ex-contingent workers, and even against contacts and beneficiaries who have information in the database. This check is automated and can be configured to occur only as part of the Move to HR action, regardless of whether this move is done manually or automatically. This final check complements any previous checks in this candidate's lifecycle that searched for duplicates among all other candidates, which can be done manually or automatically before the Offer phase.

If any potential duplicate records are found while the external candidate gets moved to the HR phase, their job application will go into the HR - Error During Processing status. They won't go into the usual HR - Processing in Progress status with a pending worker record created for them. A message banner notifies you of the candidate's duplicate-related situation, and an email notification can also be sent.

For candidates in the HR - Error During Processing status due to a possible duplicate, the menu can display the View Duplicates action (replacing the Check Duplicates action that usually compares a candidate against other candidates). A View Duplicates button can also appear in the message banner. It's visible by default to the recruiting team looking at the job application on the requisition, and possibly to the HR specialist looking at the candidate's page in the Job Offers area. This View Duplicates action is available to any user with the privilege Perform Candidate Duplicate Check and Merge (IRC_PERFORM_CANDIDATE_DUPLICATE_CHECK_AND_MERGE) and duty role Perform Candidate Duplicate Check and Merge (IRC_PERFORM_CANDIDATE_DUPLICATE_CHECK_AND_MERGE_PRIV_OBI).

When you click the View Duplicates action, a list displays all people who are potential duplicates of this candidate, with identifying information such as person name, person type (even if there's no work relationship), business title, business unit. You can also see if the potential duplicates have the same date of birth and national ID as the candidate. If that info isn't available, it means that the candidate, or the potential duplicate, or both have null values for the national identifier or date of birth respectively. Also, if the candidate or potential duplicate has a national identifier of a different type, the National ID Match field displays Not Available. For example, the candidate has a Social Security Number issued in the United States, and the potential duplicate has a Matrícula Consular de Alta Seguridad issued in Mexico. When you view the list, you have to decide whether any of these people is truly a duplicate of the current candidate, or only shares some similar information. The definition of a duplicate is configured by your administrator, based on matching or null values in some or all the following fields: last name, first name or first initial, date of birth, gender, and national identifier and its type and country.

Note: To view sensitive information match indicators, you need these privileges:

Perform Candidate Duplicate Check and Merge (IRC_PERFORM_CANDIDATE_DUPLICATE_CHECK_AND_MERGE)
Manage Person National Identifier Data (PER_MANAGE_PERSON_NATIONAL_IDENTIFIER_DATA)
Display Recruiting Duplicate Check with Sensitive Info Match (IRC_DISPLAY_RECRUITING_DUPLICATE_CHECK_WITH_SENSITIVE_INFO_MATCH)

Merging the Candidate with the Correct Person

You might decide that none of the potential duplicates of the candidate are truly the same person. In this case, the HR specialist should process the candidate's job application by performing the action that was originally selected when their offer was drafted, such as Add Pending Worker. However, if this candidate turns out to have the same national identifier as an existing person, it might not be possible to complete their pending worker record successfully, depending on whether the application has been configured to require these IDs to be unique.

If you decide that one of the duplicates really is the same person as the candidate, you can merge the two records together. The candidate's new up-to-date information gets added to the existing person's profile as follows:

Person-related info is merged: The candidate's email addresses, phone numbers, and attachments are all added to the person's record, if these weren't already known. The person's name and address are only updated if the candidate's info is more recent, and only if the person is an ex-worker, not a current worker.

Note: When merging candidate records, the ex-employee home address is updated only if the external candidate is more recent than the one on file. That's because external candidate's records shouldn't have any other address type. Any other address type or with previous date will remain the same. Same type of address will be updated in the ex-employee record if a later date exists in the external candidate record.
Recruiting-related info is merged: The candidate's interviews, assessments, and any talent communities, pools, and campaign memberships are moved to the person's record. All the candidate's past job applications are also moved to the person's record, including the current one which moves to the person in the Offer - Draft status.

After the merge is complete, this candidate is no longer visible in searches or other areas of Oracle Fusion Cloud Recruiting. The duplication has been removed and the person is retained. Merge reports are attached to the person's record for further reference and traceability.

Note: The candidate can have potential duplicates of many different person types, but not all types can be merged. Candidate records can be merged with workers or ex-workers, but not with contacts, nonworkers, or pending workers. For a potential duplicate who's a pending worker, the record can be converted to a worker and then the merge with the candidate will succeed.

Recreating the Offer for the Correct Person

It's possible that everything in the candidate's job offer will remain appropriate for the retained person after the merge is done, but you need to verify the info. A message banner and an alert can inform you that the merge happened, and that the new person's job application is now in the Offer - Draft status. Recruiting users such as hiring managers with only the privilege Initiate Job Offer (IRC_INITIATE_JOB_OFFER_PRIV) will be unable to review the draft offer after it has been recreated for the retained person. But recruiters with the privilege Update Job Offer (ORA_IRC_UPDATE_JOB_OFFER) can do so.

After the merge is complete, you immediately arrive at the recreated offer page. Here you'll revisit every section of the offer that's now being drafted for the retained person. All the previous values from the candidate's original offer are prefilled in every section of this page. You must continue through every section before saving or submitting this offer for the first time, to ensure that the original values get recopied into the assignment, payroll, salary, and other compensation sections. You can make any changes to the offer values while in the Draft state, as usual.

Note: When you access the job offer the first time, the start date and legal employer aren't editable. However, if you save and close the offer and go back in, you'll be able to edit these two fields.

If this offer was originally based on a position, any fields that are configured to be sync will be updated into the new offer from the position and will be read-only, as usual. Fields that aren't sync retain the values of the original offer and can be edited.

Occasionally some candidate's original values aren't valid for the retained person. For instance, new hires are eligible for certain bonuses whereas current employees or rehires aren't eligible based on your configurations. Any information that's no longer allowed in the person's offer will be identified or removed, to ensure that the recreated offer follows all your organization's business rules. In case the original or adjusted offer letter had been based on a template that's only available to external candidates, this too will need to be revisited.

Completing the Offer Phase for the Correct Person

When you're done drafting the recreated offer for the retained person, you have a choice to proceed through the rest of the recruiting states, or to bypass the process and go directly to the HR phase. Upon clicking Submit, you can choose one of these paths:

Bypass the Process: Because the original candidate's offer had already been approved, accepted, and reached the point of moving to the HR phase, you can decide to bypass all these states for the retained person's job application and return it immediately to the HR phase. The new offer will bypass any approval, it will be accepted on behalf of the person by the user who made this decision, and it will skip any custom phases that have been configured between the Offer and HR phases.
Follow the Process: If you decide that a new approval or new offer letter is desirable, you can decide to move this job application through each state in the recruiting lifecycle as usual. It's possible that offer approval rules have been configured to treat merged person offers differently than original offers. If this original offer had been extended to the candidate, this new offer will also need to be extended again, for another light e-signature from the retained person or for a user to accept it on their behalf. It's possible that additional rules were configured to move merged person offers into the HR phase automatically after acceptance, or after any intervening custom phases that have been configured between the Offer and HR phases.

Finally the recreated offer in the retained person's new job application arrives in the HR phase, ready to be processed into a new assignment. As usual, the job application will land in the HR - Pending Manual Processing status for an internal candidate, or in the HR - Processing in Progress status for a rehire who will be getting a new pending work relationship, or possibly in HR - Error During Processing if there's another problem.

HR Specialist vs Recruiter Privileges

Users who have the equivalent of the HR Specialist role can see candidate job applications in the HR - Error During Processing status, can read the message banner explaining that they might be a duplicate, and can reach the list of possible duplicates. To perform the merge with a selected existing person record, these users need to be granted the following:

Functional privilege Perform Candidate Duplicate Check and Merge (IRC_PERFORM_CANDIDATE_DUPLICATE_CHECK_AND_MERGE)
Role for tracking purposes Perform Candidate Duplicate Check and Merge (IRC_PERFORM_CANDIDATE_DUPLICATE_CHECK_AND_MERGE_PRIV_OBI)

After performing a merge, these HR specialists will rely on Recruiting users to recreate the job offer for the merged person, because by default HR specialists don't have the necessary additional privileges such as Update Job Offer. HR users will return to the main list of job offers in the Manage Job Offers work area after they perform a candidate merge. An alert can be sent automatically to inform the recruiter that a draft offer is waiting to be reviewed.