On Thursday, April 10, 2025 we released Matador Jobs 3.9.6 to all our users. This hotfix release contains an important update for user that integrate with the Bullhorn ATS to ensure applications sync to their ATS.
“The Input Was Too Large” Error
Beginning approximately 10 days ago, users began reporting an issue where some applications were not syncing to Bullhorn. We found that sometime between 3 and 7 days ago, some applications began to fail to sync with this error:
The input was too large. The specified input was [large number] bytes and the maximum is [smaller number] bytes.
This error was encountered when Matador attempted to save candidate data during an application sync but did not affect all applications. We found that on affected applications, the process resume step was returning a data object that was at the maximum byte limit for the API. We will make minor and small changes to the candidate data object, including adding “source” and sometimes adding data from application form questions, and because the object was returned to Matador at the limit, these changes were resulting in the data object to slightly exceed the limit. Then, when Matador submitted the data to the Bullhorn API, it was rejected for being too large.
Our investigation found that highly formatted resumes were being processed by Bullhorn and converted into HTML with embedded images and font files. One of the trouble resumes we were provided had over 30 embedded font files included. This is why the data object was at maximum.
Our assumption is that the Bullhorn resume processor was modified in the last month or so with the intent to try to maintain, as much as possible, the look of the resume document into the Bullhorn Candidate description field, but when a highly formatted resume was provided, it would be unable to do so without reaching the data transfer limit. This leads us to the following questions:
- Is important resume data being left off of the processed object due to the data transfer limit?
- What can we do the returned data to allow for us make our minor modifications, like adding form response data or information on source, without losing important data from the resume processor?
We cannot answer question number 1, but we have filed a ticket with Bullhorn Marketplace Developer Support to ask these questions on your behalf. Bullhorn engineers will review the ticket and perhaps make changes to ensure everything works as intended.
To answer question number 2, assuming any changes to Bullhorn will take time, we are making the decision to remove all presentational HTML tags from the candidate description portion of the processed resume data, which will have the effect of removing all embedded fonts and most embedded images, but will leave in place structural HTML including paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists, block quotes, bold/italic/superscript/subscript, and more. This change will free up space for us to do additional processing on the candidate object and consistently and successfully save the data to Bullhorn. To provide a consistent experience, we are using the same allowed HTML tags list from the job description, which was ironically updated to include more possible tags in Wednesday’s hotfix release.
Release Notes
- Bugfix: (Bullhorn Integration) Candidate objects returned from the Bullhorn API following resume processing will have presentational HTML tags removed from the candidate description field.
Update Now!
Matador Jobs 3.9.6 is released for automatic* update to all subscribers as of Thursday, April 10, 2025. If your subscription has expired, renew it on your account page. If you find any issues, please send a support request.
* Please Note: some versions contained bugs that required users install manual updates. See here if you are having trouble recieving an automatic update.
