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Are you completing your own implementation or data migration through our self-service offering? For more information on this type of data migration, refer to our help article on migrating your data through self-service tools. |
Migrating your historical data to Lever from another Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can be very straightforward with the appropriate planning and resourcing. Please note, the information in this article pertains to data migrations being performed with the assistance of a Lever Implementation Specialist.
Data migration overview
A data migration is a one-time import of historical recruiting data into a customer’s configured Lever instance. An assigned Implementation Specialist will work with you to transform and import your legacy data into Lever, if applicable. Lever’s data migration tools are only meant to create content in a customer’s Lever, it does not allow for deletions of or updates to existing applications.
As part of the process, the dedicated Implementation Specialist will work with you to assess legacy candidate, job, application, and activity data, understand usage goals for historical information, and develop a data migration agreement for review and sign-off by you and your team. Some of the activities may include:
- Advising your team on the best practices for preparing your legacy data.
- Preparing a plan for active candidate transitions from your legacy ATS into Lever.
- Preparing mapping rules to ready your legacy ATS data for import into Lever.
- Loading a data sample into your Lever account for review, validation, and acceptance before importing the full legacy data set.
Process and expectations
What tasks are we responsible for during the data migration?
Lever will do everything we can to make the migration process as seamless as possible. As long as we’re provided with consistently formatted exports that contain all of the information that you want to migrate, our team can ensure a smooth data transformation process.
Beyond pulling the initial set of exports from your old system, you shouldn’t need to devote any technical resources to the project. However, we will need your input on how best to map your historical jobs, sources, and statuses to what you have configured in Lever. Therefore, the data migrations point-of-contact on your end should be someone who is familiar with both the source data and with your Lever implementation.
Before the export, what can we do to prepare?
- Close out any jobs that no longer open.
- Disposition of any stale candidates.
- Clean-up any unwanted sources and tags.
- Close out any in-flight interviews, offers, and/or tests.
What happens after the career site launch?
- Request or manually export a copy of your historical data. See below for an overview of the expected export format from common Applicant Tracking Systems. To avoid delays with your legacy data export, you may also wish put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Confirm with your legacy ATS provider that you have all the data you need.
- Share a copy of your historical data with your Lever Implementation Specialist. We also recommend you download a copy for recording keeping.
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Your Implementation Specialist will then transform the data in order to build a mapping sheet, and this process typically takes 48 hours to complete. This allows us to map your legacy stages, rejection reasons, sources, etc. to the corresponding place in Lever when historical candidates and jobs are imported.
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Please note, if you are proceeding with a historical data migration and expect to lose access to your legacy ATS prior to your Lever career site launch, then be sure to obtain a copy of your historical data before losing access. |
What do we do after data is imported?
- Validate that the data was imported correctly with guidance from your Implementation Specialist. Your candidates will be tagged accordingly for easy review.
Legacy ATS export format
The method for export (requesting an export of) your legacy ATS data can differ slightly depending on the ATS from which you are migrating. Select an Applicant Tracking System listed below to reveal instructions for that specific system.
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The method of export outlined below may be subject to change. Export method and file format are at the discretion of the legacy provider who may update their process at any time. |
Bullhorn
Bullhorn’s extraction process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date.
Bullhorn will then provide your team access to an encrypted SQL database They will make the database available for download. You can provide us with the credentials and we can download it onto our servers.
Greenhouse
Greenhouse migration require a Harvest API key which can be generated from the Greenhouse admin console. Please make sure all the endpoints are selected so we can harvest as much data as possible. Once you provide the Harvest API key to your Lever Implementation Specialist, it will generally take our team 48 hours to extract all the data. The data will include the following:
- Candidate applications
- Notes/feedback
- Resumes
- Job postings
If you need a copy of the data for future audit purposes, you can use the same Harvest API to extract it on your own or request a copy of the extraction from Lever. You can also put in a request with Greenhouse to have your whole database extracted, but this process can take 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data you have.
iCIMS
iCIMS’s extraction process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A ZIP file with all the candidate application/job posting data
- A ZIP file with all the resumes
- A ZIP file with any additional documents
They will make these files available for download. You can then send us the zip files through the cloud-sharing service of your choice.
JazzHR
JazzHR’s extraction process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A ZIP file with all the candidate application/job posting data
- A ZIP file with all the resumes
They will make these files available for download. You can then send us the zip files through the cloud-sharing service of your choice.
Jobscore
Jobscore’s custom extraction process can take up to 1-2 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. They do charge a small fee for this (around $50). To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A CSV file with all your candidate applications.
- A CSV file containing all your candidate notes.
- A CSV file that maps candidate emails and names to their associated resumes.
- A TAR.GZ file containing all of the candidate resumes.
Once you have downloaded all the content, you can share it with us through your cloud-sharing service of choice.
Jobvite
Once your Lever-powered careers page has been launched, you will need to request for your data extract in XML format from your Jobvite contact. Jobvite’s extraction process can take up to 3-4 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
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- An XML file containing all job postings
- An XML file containing all candidates with resumes
Jobvite will make these files available on an FTP site and will send you the credentials to access them. You can then send your Implementation Specialist the credentials and our Jobvite migration tool will take care of the content extraction, this process can take up to 48 hours.
Trakstar
Trakstar's extraction process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A JSON file with all your candidate data
- A ZIP file with all the resumes
They will make these files available for download. You can then send us the files through the cloud-sharing service of your choice.
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters’ extraction process can take up to 3-4 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A CSV file with all your candidate application date
- A ZIP file with all the resumes
They will make these files available for download. You can then send us the files through the cloud-sharing service of your choice.
Taleo
Taleo’s extraction process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- Several CSVs with all your candidate and application data
- A CSV with all your job data
- A ZIP file with all your resumes
They will make these files available for download. You can then send us the files through the cloud-sharing service of your choice.
Workable
Workable’s extraction process can take up to 1-2 weeks depending on the amount of data that you have. To secure a spot in their technical support queue, you can also put in a request ahead of time to have your data extracted and sent to you on your designated launch date. Here are the files that come with that export:
- A ZIP folder with all the candidate, application, and job posting data in CSV format.
- A ZIP folder with all the resumes.
Once you have downloaded all the content, you can share it with us through your cloud-sharing service of choice.
Frequently Asked Questions
If your historical data is being tracked manually, or you are migrating from a legacy ATS which is not listed above, then please request to have your legacy data (candidate data and/or job posting data) in CSV format. For more information on the resume file types we support, refer to our help article on understanding resume parsing.
You can export (or request an export of) your legacy ATS data so it aligns with the day you launch your Lever-hosted career page. This will ensure no applications are lost in the transition, and you are not operating between two systems. A legacy ATS can require up to 30 days of notice to the legacy ATS vendor for a data extract. After you provide us with the data extract, it’s best to plan for the process to take approximately 2-3 weeks (depending on the amount of data) to complete.
Lever can usually migrate the following candidate/application data points as long as it exists in your legacy data.
- Candidates/applications
- Candidate information (name, company, location)
- Contact Details (phone, email, links)
- Application status (stage, rejection reason, job)
- Application information (application date, rejection date)
- Sources
- Tags
- Notes
- Resume
- Consent status
- Candidate ownership
*Additional documents like cover letters, offer letters, NDAs etc. cannot be migrated into Lever.
We recommend that your team manually create new jobs during implementation, but we can bulk-create historical jobs. We can usually bring over the following fields as long as it exists in your legacy data.
- Job title
- Date created
- Status
- Department/Team
- Location
- Work-type
- Recruiter
- Hiring Manager
- Followers
- Opening statement
- Lists
- Closing statement
Your legacy ATS may not always provide all your data in a format that can be imported. We will attempt to salvage as much data as possible, but we cannot promise it will be perfect. So as long as your feedback, emails, and notes are structured in a standard way within your legacy ATS, all of this content will come over in the form of a Lever note within the candidate’s opportunity in Lever. You can also use Lever’s manual email sync feature to bring over emails for a specific candidate. This feature will only bring over the email chains between you and the candidate. For more information, refer to our help articles on:
If there are other fields (i.e. feedback, test results, etc.) in the exports from your old system that you want us to migrate, we can usually bring them over as candidate activity feed notes (which are full-text searchable), or as tags. Depending on the scope, this may require you to purchase a custom Lever migration package.
Starting out with a clean slate on Lever will always allow you to have the most accurate reporting within Lever. Ultimately, it’s up to you whether or not you choose to migrate your historical data. It is not necessary to finish a migration in order to start using Lever. The most common reasons that customers choose to migrate their data are:
- To keep records on all the candidates they’ve interacted with.
- To maintain all historical and recent recruiting data in a single system of record.
- To source from an existing candidate database for any new opportunities.
Most companies will choose a cutoff point for how much of the historical data they want to bring in (i.e. only go back 2 years) and keep a copy of all the data saved offline for audit/compliance purposes. Even if your old data isn’t as consistent and clean as the information you’ll be collecting from Lever moving forward, importing it shouldn’t interfere with your effective use of the system. Importing any and all historical data will have no impact with your live data as the historical applications will be added to a candidate’s profile based on an exact match of their email address.
Follow the instructions in our bulk candidate import help article. For assistance adding information to existing candidate profiles, follow the support-assisted import method.
The fidelity of the reports you build will depend on the data integrity from your source system. You will still be able to run reports off of the migrated data and get a true sum of applications and the breakdown of the population of the applications. However, since we don’t migrate interview events and stage progressions, you won’t be able to truly utilize the Conversion Rates, Interviews, and Interview Calibration reports for the migrated data.
EEO data collected through your Lever careers page will be automatically anonymized and not surfaced anywhere on a candidate’s profile. We recommend that you retain a final set of EEO reports from your old system and collect this information for new candidates in Lever going forward.
This is not part of our standard deliverable, but it is possible if this is provided by your source system. In addition to the actual consent status, we can also import the date the consent expires and/or was updated.