Bringing your data into Yena

Your database is your business. A recruiting firm that switches systems doesn’t start over — it brings years of candidates, client relationships and placement history along. This guide covers both ways to do that:

• Self-serve — spreadsheets, CV files and your browser. Most firms have their core data in within an afternoon.
• With our team — a full transfer from your previous system, including the things a spreadsheet can’t carry: applications with their pipeline stages, notes, placements and activity history.

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What you can bring yourself

The order matters: companies first, then jobs, then candidates. Records link up as they arrive — a candidate whose company already exists lands attached to it.

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Candidates from a spreadsheet

Export your candidates from your old system as CSV or Excel — both work, including older Excel formats — and go to Candidates → Import CSV. The wizard walks four steps: upload, map columns, review, import. Mapping is where migrations are won. The wizard reads your headers and maps the obvious ones itself — names, emails, phones, LinkedIn, salary, availability, even billing fields. Anything it doesn’t recognize you can map to one of your custom fields, or create a new custom field on the spot. Your mapping is remembered, so the second file with the same layout maps itself. Three things happen on import that protect your data:

• No duplicates. A row matching an existing record by email, LinkedIn or phone is merged into it, never duplicated — and the merge adds information without erasing what’s already there. Name-only matches are never auto-merged: two people can share a name.
• Companies come along. Company names in your candidate rows are matched against your client list; existing companies get linked, new ones are created automatically, and each imported candidate lands attached to theirs.
• Everything is logged. Tenant Admin → Import History records every run — what was created, merged and skipped — so you can prove what came in.

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Candidates from CV files

The stack of CVs that never made it into your old system is data too. Candidates → Import CV takes up to 20 files per batch — PDF, Word, RTF, ODT, even photographed CVs — and parses each one into a full candidate record: every role with its description, education, skills, languages and the candidate’s summary. On Pro and Team plans a batch can be up to 1,000 files. The same duplicate protection applies: a CV of someone already in your database updates their record and attaches the file instead of creating a twin.

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LinkedIn profiles

The browser extension imports a full profile — headline, work history with descriptions, education, skills, languages — straight into Yena, and can drop the candidate onto a job’s pipeline or into a list at the same time. For sourcing-driven firms this is the fastest way to keep building the database while you migrate. See the extension guide.

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Clients and jobs

• Clients: Clients (Companies) → Import CSV. Name and domain are enough to start; the mapper also carries billing details (VAT, IBAN, addresses) if your export has them. Existing companies are recognized and skipped, not duplicated.
• Jobs: Jobs → Import CSV carries open roles with fees, project numbers and dates, linking each to its company by name. You can also scan a client’s careers page from their company record to pull in their live vacancies as draft jobs.

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Full migration with our team

Spreadsheets can’t carry your pipeline history. If you want to keep:

• applications — which candidate sat at which stage of which job,
• notes and attached files,
• placements and historical fees,
• activity history,

then take the managed route: you give us an export from your previous system, we map it, run a full rehearsal import first, and review the result with you before anything goes live. Your team keeps working; the switch happens when the data is verified. Contact us to plan a managed migration — knowing your old system’s name and rough record counts is enough to start.

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After the import