External Companies in the Skill Engine API are modeled by linking previous and current hiring behaviour, as well as desired functions to them. This is implemented through Vacancy entities, leveraging the company and active fields available for this entity type.

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Hiring History

A first option is to link real Vacancies to an External Company. These Vacancies can include both positions that are currently open and historical Vacancy advertisements. It’s possible to link a Vacancy while creating or updating it, by specifying the external_id of the External Company via the company attribute in the request body of the Vacancy. If a position is currently open, and you want it to be taken into account in the overall vacancy matching, the active attribute of the Vacancy needs to be set to true. If a position is no longer open, you can create or update the entity to set the same field to false, excluding it from the same process. Inactive vacancies in the Skill Engine API are currently only used in the context of matching with External Companies.

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Desired Functions

If you don’t have Vacancies on file for an External Company, but you do have information about their typical hiring needs through a different way, you can integrate this information into the Skill Engine API through the use of desired functions. You can add these functions by submitting their title to the companies/<external_id>/desired_functions endpoint. This endpoint will create a new Vacancy entity for every submitted title, linking each to the External Company and setting the Vacancy location to the same values as for the External Company. As these entities do not represent currently open Vacancies, their active field is set to false by default, making sure that they do are not involved in the traditional vacancy matching.