Invalid Internal Candidate Record Created in RCM-Can't Hire this External Hire using MPH: Release

[Juanita1]

Dear SAP Community,

While testing the H1 2025 SuccessFactors Maintenance Release, we ran into an issue where we are unable to hire External Hires in Manage Pending Hires (MPH) in EC.  After bringing the Candidate through the ATS, and Onboarding 1.0, after all the required fields are updated in MPH and we select to hire the new employee, we receive an error message which prevent us from hiring.  

I'd like to know if anyone else has been experiencing anything similar in your Release/Preview Environment while testing for the H1 2025 Release.  Here's the process and I give you the error message as well.

Info:

The testing was done using the Legacy Candidate Workbench (Candidate Pipeline) in Release.  We are also using Onboarding 1.0.

Reproducing the issue:

1. User create job requisition & posts externally

2. External candidate applies to the job

3. System creates the external candidate profile record (correctly)

4. User takes the new hire through the ATS and initiates onboarding

5. System creates the new Post Hire Verification (PHV) Activity for thew New Hire (both US and Global scenarios apply)

6. User completes the PHV step in Onboarding 1.0.

7. System Creates the Internal Candidate Profile for the New Hire (Candidate profile record is invalid.  Candidate ID is created as "1" which is not normal.  Cannot access the internal candidate profile - get an error when clicking on it.

8. User completes the remaining Onboarding steps

9. Onboarding sends required information to EC - OCI record creates and new hire is flagged as ready to hire

10. User attempts to hire the new hire in MPH

11. System returns an error message and doesn't allow the hire.

Error Message says: "An error occurred when creating a new internal candidate for the hire (user ID 1XXXXXX). Please ask your administrator to ensure the candidate is created in the system."

We have an SAP incident open, and they are reviewing this, but we would like to see if anyone else is experiencing this issue.  Any information could lead to a quicker resolution.

Thank you!

[Juanita1 · Accepted solution]

Hello All,

I'm responding to my original community question.  We were able to work with SAP to confirm the root cause.  I know other customers have experienced this issue and hopefully this information helps you.

• We did confirm that the root cause of this issue in Release/Preview is due to an SAP Gigya migration referenced in this KBA
• The Gigya migration was universally pushed to all preview instances and requires a unique and valid email address for all candidates.
• In our system, the Internal Candidate profile is created at the completion of the Post Hire Verification step in Onboarding 1.0.  In order to avoid this issue, when going through the post hire validation step in, the recommendation is to put a new unique email or add a (.) to an email address so for example if the candidate’s email was Tylawater@gmail.com, instead make it Tyla.water@gmail.com
• Gigya will NOT be universally pushed to production, this will be admin opt in. This means that the issue will not occur in PROD and external hiring will not be impacted.

SAP is working on a better solution for the preview instance.  In the meantime, prior to the better solution, the advice is to update your testing scripts so that you enter a new unique email address in the post hire validation step of Onboarding 1.0 as indicated above.

Juanita