Bullhorn Data and Entity Relationships

The Big Picture

Bullhorn organizes your data into six record types: candidates, contacts, companies, jobs, placements, and internal users. These records connect to each other to support your team's daily workflow. For example, a candidate applies to a job, that job belongs to a company, the company has a contact your team works with, and a placement ties everything together once someone's hired.

Understanding how these records relate to each other helps you use Bullhorn more effectively, and it's essential if you're customizing fields, building reports, or troubleshooting data issues as an admin.

Standard Tabs

Every record type includes five tabs by default. Your company may have customized or removed some of these.

Tab	What it's for
Overview	A snapshot of the most important information on the record (contact info, status, latest note, etc.)
Edit	The fields users fill in to create or update the record
Files	Uploaded documents related to the record (resumes, cover letters, applications)
Activity	A log of everything that's happened on the record (emails, edits, tasks, hiring steps)
Notes	Every note any user has added that references the record

Records can also include additional tabs beyond these five. Some come built in for a specific entity (like the Contacts tab on a company record), some are custom tabs your admin team can add, and some come from an integration with the Bullhorn API or a Marketplace partner. For more on the API side, see Changing Standard Bullhorn Behavior.

How Records Relate to Each Other

Every entity in Bullhorn connects to other entities. For example, an internal user is linked to the candidates they've added, and those candidates can in turn be linked to one or more jobs.

There are three ways two entities can relate to each other. You'll see these relationships represented as symbols in the diagrams throughout this article.

Relationship	What it means	Example	Symbols
One-to-one	One record of type A links to exactly one record of type B	Not used in the diagrams on this page
One-to-many	One record of type A can link to many records of type B, but each B links back to only one A	One corporation can have many Bullhorn users, but each user belongs to only one corporation
Many-to-many	Records of type A and type B can each link to many of the other	A user can belong to many secondary departments, and each department can have many users

Candidate Records

A candidate record captures information about a person your team is considering for a job, including name, email, resume, salary expectations, job preferences, and skills.

Additional tabs beyond the standard five:

Tab	What it's for
Tax Info	Federal filing status and exemptions
Work History	Previous employment, including start date, title, and salary
Education	Certifications, GPA, and degree information
Certification	Medical field certifications only

 

Entity relationship diagram:

Related records:

Related record	What it means
Appointment	Appointments tied to the candidate
Education	The candidate's education records
Email	Emails tied to the candidate
File	Files tied to the candidate
Internal User	The record's owner. Candidates are owned by their creator by default, but more than one user can own a candidate record
Job	Jobs the candidate is associated with
Note	Notes tied to the candidate
Placement	Placements tied to the candidate
Reference	References tied to the candidate
Submission	Submissions tied to the candidate
Task	Tasks tied to the candidate
Work History	The candidate's work history entries

 

Contact Records

A contact record captures information about the people your team communicates with, such as hiring managers, including name, phone number, title, and the company they work for.

Entity relationship diagram:

Related records:

Related record	What it means
Appointment	Appointments tied to the contact
Company	The company the contact works for. A contact must be linked to exactly one company
Email	Emails tied to the contact
File	Files tied to the contact
Internal User	The record's owner, by default the user who created it
Job	Jobs the contact is associated with
Note	Notes tied to the contact
Placement	Placements for jobs tied to the contact
Task	Tasks tied to the contact

 

Company Records

A company record captures information about the businesses your candidates could be placed at, including benefits, company history, and culture.

Additional tab beyond the standard five:

Contacts: Lists every contact associated with the company.

Entity relationship diagram:

Related records:

Related record	What it means
Contacts	Contacts associated with the company
Parent	The company that holds a controlling stake in this one, if applicable

 

Job Records

A job record captures information about a position your team is recruiting for, including job title, salary, location, skills, and employment type.

If your company staffs multiple employment types (for example, contract and permanent), you can create a separate job record type for each. This makes sure users capture the details specific to that type, like a contract end date. You can have up to five job record types.

Entity relationship diagram:

Related records:

Related record	What it means
Appointment	Appointments tied to the job
Candidate	Candidates submitted to or placed in the job
Company	The company tied to the job's contact
Contact	The contact for the job. Every job must have one
Email	Emails tied to the job
File	Files tied to the job
Internal User	The record's owner, by default the user who created it
Note	Notes tied to the job
Placement	Placements made for the job
Submission	Candidates submitted to the job
Task	Tasks tied to the contact

 

Placement Records

A placement is created from a submission once a candidate accepts a job (the submission is created when the candidate is first submitted for the job). Placement records include the candidate's name, salary, and start date.

Many placement fields are "correlated," meaning they pull their default values from the job record so users don't have to re-enter the same information. Users can still change these values.

Additional tabs beyond the standard five:

Tab	What it's for
Change Requests	Where users request approval for changes to bill rate, pay rate, start date, or other placement details after the placement is created
History	A log of every change made to the record, whether through the Edit tab or a change request

 

Entity relationship diagram:

Related records:

Related record	What it means
Candidate	The candidate placed in the job
Change Request	A request submitted to a manager or admin for changes to the placement
Contact	The contact for the job tied to this placement
Company	The company tied to the job's contact
File	Files tied to the job
Internal User	The record's owner, by default the placement's creator
Job	The job the placement was made for
Note	Notes tied to the placement
Submission	The submission whose status changed to Accepted, creating this placement

 

Internal User Records

Internal users are the people at your company who have Bullhorn accounts.

Entity relationship diagrams:

Related record	What it means
User Type	Determines what the user can access in Bullhorn
Action Entitlements	Entitlements granted to the user's user type
Menu	Menus granted to the user's user type
Corporation	The corporation the user belongs to
Department	The user's primary department, and secondary department if applicable
Private Label	The private label that determines how Bullhorn looks and feels to this user
Email Address	Email addresses tied to the user

Related record	What it means
Appointment	Appointments the user owns
Candidate	Candidates the user owns
Contact	Contacts the user owns
Company	Companies tied to contacts the user owns. Users can't own a company directly
Distribution List	Distribution lists the user owns
Jobs	Jobs the user owns
Placement	Placements the user created
Client Submissions (Sendouts)	Client Submissions the user created
Submissions	Submissions the user created
Tasks	Tasks the user owns