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Understanding Bullhorn Record Duplicate Checking

When you add a new candidate, contact, or company to Bullhorn, the application performs a duplicate check to ensure a record for that person/company doesn't already exist. Bullhorn does not perform a duplicate check against deleted records, nor those that you do not have access to view. Depending on your privileges, this may restrict duplicate checking to only records you own or only those from within your department. It does, however, duplicate check against archived records.

Depending on the type of record you are adding, Bullhorn compares the following information against existing data.

Leads, Candidates, and Contacts

  • Last name
  • First two letters of the first name
  • Primary email address (Email 1)

If both the last name and the first two letters of the first name (or just the primary email address) match any existing leads, candidates, or contacts, a duplicate warning message appears with a list of those people.

Companies

The duplicate checking logic for companies is different depending on the version of Bullhorn you're on.

Bullhorn Novo

  • The duplicate checker excludes periods in the Company Name and doesn't factor them in.
  • The duplicate checker does not look at the following words or characters:
    • the
    • company
    • corporation
    • limited
    • incorporated
    • inc
    • chartered
    • partnership
    • partners
    • associates
    • association
    • holdings
    • solutions
    • group
    • industries
    • of
    • corp
    • co
    • ltd
    • LLC
    • chtd
    • GMBH
    • SA
    • AG
    • PC
    • PS
    • PSC
    • PA
    • SC
    • SPA
    • &
    • *
    • !
  • The duplicate checker then looks for existing companies with names containing all remaining words.
  • It also checks if the phone number exists on other company records in the system.

If a duplicate record is found, a duplicate warning message appears with a list of records whose criteria matched. If the record is already in the system, click Cancel and, if necessary, add the new information to the existing record. If the record is not in the system, click Continue And Add. If you accidentally add a duplicate record, you can merge it with the existing one.

S Release

  • Company name (ignoring words like "The," "Company," "LLC," etc.), matching the first number of characters depending upon the length of the name:
    • If the new company's name (minus the "The") is more than 20 characters long, everything except the right-most 5 characters of the new company's name.
    • If the new company's name (minus the "The") is between 16 and 19 characters long, everything except the right-most 4 characters of the new company's name.
    • If the new company's name (minus the "The") is between 12 and 15 characters long, everything except the right-most 3 characters of the new company's name.
    • If the new company's name (minus the "The") is between 8 and 11 characters long, everything except the right-most 2 characters of the new company's name.
    • If the new company's name (minus the "The") is fewer than 8 characters long, the entire new company's name.
  • Primary phone number in the format of *617*123*4567, with the asterisks being wildcards that could represent dashes, periods, parentheses, spaces, etc. However, because one wildcard only represents one character, a phone number in the format of (617) 123-4567 will not be recognized as a duplicate, even if the original phone number is entered in the exact same way, as there are 2 characters (a parenthesis and a space) between the area code and the prefix.

If any of these criteria match, a duplicate warning message appears with a list of records whose criteria matched. If the record is already in the system, click Cancel and, if necessary, add the new information to the existing record. If the record is not in the system, click Continue And Add. If you accidentally add a duplicate record, you can merge it with the existing one.