Internal Job Offers: How They're Processed

An internal job offer refers to the offer extended to a worker who has a current work relationship with the organization. When the internal job application is moved to the HR phase, the offer is listed in the Job Offers page, available using the Manage Job Offers quick action.

When recruiters originally draft each job offer, they need to select the Human Resources (HR) action that will be appropriate to use for processing this assignment, based on the offer's information and the candidate's existing work relationship if any. This HR action is preselected based on the information available in the job offer and the candidate's existing work relationship. Now in the HR phase the appropriate records need to be created to give this candidate their promised new assignment. Creating these records can be done manually by an HR specialist, or automatically if auto-process is enabled. The type of the internal job offer, whether it's a global change, a local change, a change worker type, determines how it must be processed. For details, see Actions Available Based on Employment Scenarios.

Note: When you're selecting the action to process the assignment, make sure you click through each of the sections before submitting the action to ensure the latest data is processed successfully.

Note: You need the appropriate privileges to perform the HR actions for each type of internal job offer.

Job Offer Processing Methods

As an HR specialist, you might have different ways to process internal candidates who aren't in complex situations.

Automatically Process Internal Candidates in the HR Phase (if your administrator enabled the feature): Internal candidates who accepted their job offer and were moved to the HR phase can be automatically processed into their new roles in the HR system as their proposed start date approaches.

When the automated processing capabilities are enabled, most internal candidates reach the HR phase in the state Pending Automated Processing. When their proposed start date approaches, the new assignment is automatically created from their offer. Each candidate’s state becomes Processing in Progress when the assignment is successfully created, and becomes Processed when the assignment is approved and committed as the candidate’s new job.

Every internal candidate will be automatically processed when their assignment’s proposed start date is 7 days or fewer from today, by default. Administrators can configure the desired number of days in advance of the start date.

If some problem arises while automatically processing the offer into the new assignment, the candidate’s job application will automatically move from the state Pending Automated Processing into the state Error During Processing. These errors can occur for the usual reasons, such as the offer’s intended position suddenly has a hiring status of Frozen, or the offer’s promised location has been inactivated. If the situation causing the error can be resolved, you can try processing the candidate again, using either the manual process or the Quick Process Offer action. However this offer won't get automatically processed again, regardless of its approaching start date.

Note: If your organization is using Payroll-based Salary Basis in their offers, or has salary element eligibility defined on Payroll, the Payroll section should be populated during the offer creation to avoid any errors when the job application of the internal candidate is moved to HR phase.

For internal candidates in a complex hiring situation, they still go into the state Pending Manual Processing and you'll still need to manually process them. Any candidates in complex hiring situations usually arrive in the HR phase in the state Pending Manual Processing, even if the automated processing feature is enabled. These offers won't be automatically processed; they need to be manually processed as usual. For details, see Complex Job Offers: How They're Processed.

Quickly Process Internal Candidates in the HR Phase (if your administrator enabled the feature): As an HR specialist, you can use the Quick Process Offer action in the Manager Job Offers page to process most internal candidates into their new assignment with a single click after they're moved to the final HR phase of the recruiting life cycle. You can process candidates as early as you want, as you don’t have to wait for the automatic processing date to arrive for each candidate.

When you use the Quick Process Offer action, you don't review all the offer information while creating the new assignment and you can’t change any values. This ensures consistent information from each accepted offer is copied identically into each new assignment and salary.

You can use the Quick Process Offer action for most internal candidates in the following states of the HR phase:

HR - Pending Automated Processing
HR - Pending Manual Processing
HR - Error During Processing

The Quick Process Offer action isn’t available for candidates in complex hiring situations, even if this feature is enabled. These offers need to be manually processed as usual. For details, see Complex Job Offers: How They're Processed.

Manually Process Internal Candidates in the HR Phase: As an HR specialist, you can manually process any internal job offers shown on the Manager Job Offers page into their new assignment. Regardless of whether the automated process and quick process are enabled, you can go into the selected HR action's flow, go through all its sections, review, and even change the original values from the offer while creating the worker's new assignment.

You can manually process internal candidates in the following states of the HR phase:

HR - Pending Automated Processing
HR - Pending Manual Processing
HR - Error During Processing

You first select the HR action that was chosen while the offer was drafted. When you confirm your intention to process the candidate, their job application status reflects this by changing automatically from HR - Pending Manual Processing to HR - Processing in Progress. This new status is visible on your Job Offers list and also in the job application in the Hiring work area.

You then arrive at the appropriate HR guided process, which has field values populated from the job offer. For example:

If you selected and confirmed the Global Transfer action, you can view the Local and Global Transfer guided process with the offer title, assignment, salary, and all other values populated from the offer.
If you selected an action of type Promote, Transfer, or Change Assignment, you can view the Change Assignment flow with all the values populated from the offer.

You need to visit every section to ensure that these values get copied into the new assignment. At this stage, you might change the populated values and add information in other fields. However, be careful when considering changes to any information that was already viewed and understood by the candidate or offer approvers.

Job Offer Process Completion

After the internal candidate’s new assignment is submitted, using any of the available methods, they remain visible on the list in the status HR – Processing in Progress. Their assignments might be awaiting approvals if configured for their transaction, and no further action is required.

When the transaction is approved, the offer status will soon automatically change to HR - Processed based on the scheduled process Complete the Recruiting Process.

Internal candidates who reach the status HR - Processed remain on your Job Offers list, but no further action is required. This is the final successful status in the entire recruiting process.

The new status HR - Processed is also reflected in the job application in the Hiring work area, indicating to Recruiting users that the overall candidate lifecycle is complete.

Exceptions During Job Offer Processing

An exception to the above series of step to process internal candidates is for current workers who already have two or more job assignments. For more information about processing offers in these complex situations, see Complex Job Offers: How They're Processed.

Interruptions in Job Offer Processing

When you process job offers, you might have to handle unforeseen changes. For example, you plan to process a candidate and you're working on the appropriate HR guided process, when you unexpectedly need to cancel out the flow without submitting. This might occur due to some mismatch with the data, or simply due to lack of time to finish reviewing all the fields. In such cases, the job application is now in status HR - Processing in Progress on the Job Offers list, and your processing has stopped for now.

To start processing it again, after the mismatched data has been fixed or when time allows, you'll still want to enter the HR guided process with the offer values filled in advance. To restart from this point, you first need to use the Return to Manual Processing action, which changes the status from HR - Processing in Progress back to HR - Pending Manual Processing. Or you or another HR specialist can choose the Quick Process Offer action (if enabled) to perform the processing of this internal candidate immediately without stepping through the flow again.

Changing the Proposed Start Date

As an HR specialist, you might be able to change the proposed start date for internal candidates after they've accepted their job offer, in case the intended date in their offer now needs to be adjusted before their new assignment is processed.

If your administrator enabled this feature, you use the Change Start Date action to fix the agreed-upon start date that was in the job offer. This new date will be used when transforming the offer into the new assignment either by using the automatic processing option, or the Quick Process Offer action, or by using the method where you click through the guided process to review all the values from the offer. This changed date won't affect the candidate's job offer letter which was already accepted.

Here’s some more information to consider if you change the proposed start date for candidates:

The candidate's offer letter and Document Records won't contain this new date. If you need the candidate to see the new date in their offer letter, you need to move the job application to the Rejected by Employer or Withdrawn by Candidate state, redraft the offer to add the new date, get an approval for the new offer if needed, then extend the offer again to the candidate. Then, the candidate needs to accept the offer again.
You can select a new proposed start date anytime in the future or anytime in the past. However, you can't select a date earlier than when the original offer was drafted nor select a date that will change the worker's employment or salary.
- Changes to the employment could be for example if the worker already had an upcoming termination date, and you tried to change the date to a time after the worker left the company. Or, the worker was already planning to take on a second job by the time of the proposed change.
- Changes to the salary could be for example if the new job would start so far in the future that a future-dated grade change or grade ladder change would calculate a difference in salary for the worker by that time.

Resulting Actions

When the new records have been created successfully, the new assignment is ready to begin on the projected start date. By the start date:

You can view the person's resume from this job application in the Talent Profile.
You can view this job offer letter in the person's Document Records.
You can view this job application's cover letter and social media attachments in the person's Document Records.