Candidate Consent Management

To assist users in compliance with various consumer privacy and data security laws, rules, and regulations around the world, Bullhorn provides the Consent Management tool to track candidate consent data. Matador Jobs Pro will collect data on user consents from Matador Jobs forms and, when processing applications into Bullhorn, will sync that consent data into the Bullhorn Consent Management tool.

Why Manage Candidate Consents?

In 2018, with the pending implementation of the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation, all web site operators were put on notice that responsible handling and use of user data was now an obligation. Since then, hundreds of jurisdictions have implemented similar laws, meaning almost anywhere you’re running your business, you will need to manage your user data.

A key aspect of managing user data is how you use it, including what you can and cannot do with it and for what actions you must have explicit user consent. Data privacy laws generally require you to keep track of when and to what extent each user granted you permission to use their data, including whether you can evaluate their data (such as in determining fitness for the position for which they applied) and whether you can share their data with 3rd parties (such as submitting their data to a client hiring manager for interviews and on-boarding).

Of course, while one would assume that when a user visits your website and applies for a job, they implicitly agree to allow you to use that data; however, it is wise for you to keep specific track of when and how they provided that consent.

Matador Jobs Pro will collect candidate’s consent data from all submissions and sync that data to Bullhorn’s Consent Management tool. We do this important, and increasingly compulsory, task for you seamlessly and without complex setup or configuration.

How Matador Tracks & Syncs Candidate Consents

When a user applies for a position on a Matador Jobs Pro powered website, Matador saves information they provided during their interaction. Notably, if you have the “Require Applicant to Agree to Privacy Policy” setting turned on, which nearly all our users do, this is the default consent Matador tracks.

Developers can also add other consents. For example, you may want to ask users to agree to communication via text message or agree to receive your newsletter via email. Reach out to Matador support for advice on how to add these.

During application processing, Matador Jobs will create Bullhorn Consent Management records for each collected consent. Upon sync with Bullhorn, these records will be saved onto the Candidate’s record.

Each application will create a new consent. Capturing a new consent for each interaction protects you in the event the terms of the consent have been modified. This also means there is a potential for some candidates’ Consent Management tool to become cluttered! We believe it is better to collect the data more than once than to be missing the most relevant consent!

The best part is that all of this happens automatically provided the following is in place:

• Your Bullhorn ATS account has the Consent Management tool enabled
• Your Bullhorn API Credentials for Matador has permissions enabled to access and update the data on the Consent Management tool.

Finally, it is worth noting that if your site has the “Delete Local Applications After Sync” setting turned on, which is recommended as a best practice, once the application is synced, the consent data will exist only on Bullhorn. For this reason, it is critical you ensure Consent Management is accessible by your Matador Jobs Pro powered site.

While it is off-topic for this document, we strongly encourage you to learn more about how Bullhorn tracks user consent with the Consent Management tool. Visit Opt-In and Consent Management at Bullhorn Help for more.

What Happens When Matador Can’t Save Consents?

If either of the two conditions stated above are not in place, Matador Jobs Pro cannot save candidate consent data to the Bullhorn Consent Management tool. How Matador Jobs Pro behaves varies drastically depending on which one of the conditions fails.

What Happens When Matador Can’t Find the Consent Management Tool Enabled?

When Matador Jobs Pro cannot detect the Consent Management tool installed on your ATS, Matador Jobs Pro does… nothing. Some users do not want to track candidate consent, either because they do not feel they are currently subject to laws requiring it or because they have other methods in place to track this data. For this reason, Matador assumes the lack of the Consent Management tool means the user does not want Matador tracking this data.

For users of Bullhorn whose accounts are older than 2018 and who are not based in the European Union, it is also possible your account does not have Consent Management enabled because your company was created prior to its introduction.

There is no error message, admin notification, log message, or email produced by Matador when it fails to find a Consent Management object in your API.This is to ensure that Matador does not behave in an annoying way to users who choose to not use Consent Management (for example, if you use another tool to track consent.)

Again: There is no error message, admin notification, log message, or email produced by Matador when it fails to find a Consent Management object in your API.

If Matador does not find the Consent Management Tool, Matador will discard candidate consent data along with the application data upon successful sync.

What Happens When Matador Lacks Permissions to Access the Consent Management Tool?

That said, if Matador can detect the Consent Management tool installed on your ATS, Matador Jobs will automatically try to save candidate consents data. Sometimes, however, it will be unable to because the logged in user lacks permission to modify the Consent Management tool data.

We will be aware of this because, upon submission, a candidate’s create or update call to the API will generate an error back from the Bullhorn API with the text errors.entitlements.customObjectFieldPermission. If we encounter this, we know the logged in user is unable to edit the Consent Management object.

In this case, contrary to what happens when the Consent Management tool is not detected, Matador will be annoying! Every 24 hours, Matador will email the administrator notifying them of the issue. There will be log items repeated over and over in your logs, and we will be adding even more notifications in the future. We do this because we believe if the Consent Management object is found, you want Matador to save candidate consents data.

Matador Jobs Pro email notifications may not be delivered if your email provider’s security settings are not optimized to allow mail from your website. For best results, the administrator email should be directed to an address outside your domain.

That said, when Matador lacks the permissions to write to the Consent Management tool, this completely interrupts the processing of candidate applications. Since it could take days for an Administrator to fix this issue, this can be very disruptive for your company. When Matador Jobs Pro encounters a permissions error, it puts a 24-hour hold on processing candidate consents data. During the 24 hours, Matador will allow applications to process without candidate consents data so the rest of the important data will sync in a timely manner. At the end of the 24-hour period, Matador will retry accessing the Consent Management tool, resulting in either another 24-hour hold or a resumption of processing candidate consents data.

Enabling/Fixing User Consent Access

If your site is not saving user consent data and/or it is reporting issues with managing user consent data, you may need to do some troubleshooting. When there is a problem, it is likely that Matador Jobs has encountered one of two issues when attempting to save user consent data to Bullhorn. They are:

1. The Bullhorn Consent Management does not exist on your account.
2. Matador is connected to Bullhorn via the “cookie bug” with a user who lacks permission to modify the Candidate Consent object.
3. Matador is connected to Bullhorn with an API “user” that lacks the permissions to interact with the Candidate Consent object.

Have the Consent Management Tool Added to Your ATS

If you don’t have the Consent Management tool on your account, a quick Bullhorn Support ticket can get it added. If you’d like, copy and paste this support ticket draft and fill in the appropriate blanks:

Take note that the above email needs to have your Bullhorn API credentials for Matador Jobs. This will ensure that once enabled, your website will have full access to the Consent Management object!

Double Check for the “Cookie Bug”

If you begin to receive permissions errors that you weren’t seeing previously, double check that you or someone on your team has not inadvertently enabled the “cookie bug.” If after doing a “Reset Connection Assistant” routine, Matador has Consent Object permissions, you were likely affected by the “Cookie Bug.”

Learn more about the “Cookie Bug”.

Requesting Consent Management Permissions Update

If you’ve verified the permissions error is not caused by the “cookie bug”, the only way to fix the permissions error is to request help of Bullhorn support. Submit a ticket and ask them to grant the Matador Jobs designated API user full access to the Consent Management “custom object.” To simplify the process, you can copy and paste the text below. Be sure to fill in the blanks with data from your installation:

Resetting the 24-Hour “Break”

As stated above, when Matador Jobs encounters a permissions error, it enables a 24-hour “break” from attempting to sync candidate consents.

If you know you have made a change that could fix the permissions and don’t want to wait to test it, you will need to delete the transient.

The following process is tedious. We are aware of this, and a future update is planned that will make it easier to interrupt the 24-hour “break.” In the meantime, do the following:

• Go to Plugins > Add New
• Search for “Transients Manager” by Pippin Williamson and/or Awesome Motive. Install it on your WordPress site and activate it.
• Go to Tools > Transients (you may need to refresh your WordPress admin)
• Find the transient named bullhorn_consent_object_skip and delete it.

That’s it! On the next candidate submission, Matador will try to (and hopefully succeed) at saving candidate consents data to the Consent Management tool at Bullhorn!