Creating a New List in Bullhorn Automation

Overview

This article explains how to create a list in Bullhorn Automation, and includes some frequently asked questions about lists. Lists are a way to target a particular audience of records seen in your ATS. Bullhorn Automation uses lists for automated actions to determine who to target. This includes Automations, Owner Assignment Rules, Sending Dynamic Jobs to Candidates and Smart Tokens.

Entities Supported

The entities supported for this are Candidate, Job, Lead, Placement, Sales Contact, and Submission.

How to Create a List

There are three areas in Bullhorn Automation where you can begin building a list:

• The Advanced Search feature on the Contacts page
  • This is considered best practice by the Bullhorn Automation support team, as you can test out different list criteria before you select Save and start syncing your list. See Testing and Troubleshooting List Criteria to find out more about the Advanced Search capabilities.
    
• The Lists page
  
• From within an automation
  
  

By clicking any of these links you will see a side window pop out that allows you to begin building your list.

Choosing Your List Type

• One-time lists are best viewed as a snapshot of list criteria at the time. It will only add records that match the criteria at the time you select Save, and will not change.
• Always updated lists are lists that continually add or remove records dynamically as they meet the criteria. These lists are updated on the same schedule as ATS data syncing.

Choosing your Entity

Which entity or record type are you targeting: Candidate, Job, Lead, Placement, Sales Contact, or Submission?

When dealing with Submission and Placement-based lists, you’ll also choose whether to point to Candidates or Sales Contacts. For Job-based lists, you can choose between targeting the Job record only, or targeting the main Sales Contact on that Job record.

Choosing the entity might be a little tricky depending on your use case. For example, if you plan to build an automation that will email a candidate with specific details about their submission, you’ll need to build a Submission-based list with a Submission-based automation. Since there are cases where a candidate can have more than one submission, they will receive an email for each unique Submission record.

Condition vs Condition Group

Bullhorn Automation list criteria can be listed as separate Conditions or Condition Groups. List criteria grouped within one Condition Group must follow the same AND/OR rules.

If your list requires the use of both AND/OR statements, you can achieve this by using separate Condition Groups.

As a general rule, most list criteria should be contained within one Condition Group unless you plan to use both conditions, AND/OR.

FAQ

If I pause an automation with contacts at various stages, and change the list for the automation, will it keep all relevant contacts in the steps they’re currently at?

As long as they still match the list criteria, they will stay at the stage they're currently at.

Is there a maximum number of contacts we can send through an automation?

Not necessarily, but there are certain things you can do to ensure everything runs smoothly if you are using a large list. If your list contains hundreds of thousands of contacts, you could utilize Staggered Start to limit the amount of records that enter an Automation each day to ensure the system does not get slowed down.

If I am using multiple different lists for the same automation, and some contacts are in more than one list, does this mean they will receive multiple messages?

If it's a Candidate or Sales Contact-based automation, emails and text messages will only be sent to each contact once, even if they are on multiple lists.

Is there an easy way to take contacts who appear in a current, paused, campaign and bulk move them to a new one?

If you have a Tearsheet of those contacts, you can segment a list for that Tearsheet and the automation they are currently in to be able take action on them.

I have a Tearsheet in Bullhorn that is a mix of Candidates and Sales Contacts. Can I use this with either Sales Contact-based or Candidate-based automation?

When creating lists and automations, Bullhorn Automation splits Candidates and Sales Contacts, so they will never be part of the same list or automation.

When you have a Tearsheet with a mix of Candidates and Sales Contacts, you will need two separate lists to capture that, one for Candidates, one for Sales Contacts.

How can I prevent an individual Candidate or Contact from entering an automation?

If you want to exclude a Candidate or Contact from an automation, you can create a list with just that record, specifying their ATS ID (or email address) as the list criteria.

You can then add that list as a Suppression List within your Automation Enrollment Settings. That will prevent that record from entering the automation.

Why were Contacts / Candidates removed from an automation after I edited a list?

If you make changes to the list criteria after turning the automation on, contacts / candidates that previously synced to the automation may be removed if they no longer meet the criteria.

To avoid records being removed from automations due to list changes, we always recommend:

• Making sure your lists are final before turning on an automation.
• Checking a list is not being used in any other automations before making any edits.

Can we turn on an automation before the entire list is synced?

Yes! The list will continue to sync first before the automation begins sending, but you won't break anything by turning it on sooner than the list fully loads.

Check out Understanding Bullhorn Field Edit Types and Bullhorn Automation List Criteria, Building Lists based on Bullhorn Automation Activity, and Testing and Troubleshooting List Criteria for more helpful information on building lists!