Permissions: Job Admin and above

Product tier: Available for all subscription tiers

Any applicant who applies online through your careers page will automatically sync with your Greenhouse Recruiting account. However, there may be times when you want to bypass your career page application form and manually add candidates or prospects instead.

In Greenhouse Recruiting, a candidate is someone who applied for the job and is in the hiring pipeline. A prospect is someone who has not applied for a job but who you want to consider for future opportunities.

In this article:

Manually add a candidate

To add a new candidate, hover over Add at the top of the page, then click Add a Candidate. 

Screenshot of the add candidate option in the Add dropdown menu

Select the Job for the candidate. If needed, you can select the Initial Stage to place the candidate in the correct place in the interview process.

Enter the candidate's information in the fields. Any required fields will be marked with an asterisk (*). 

Note: You can upload a candidate's resume to have Greenhouse Recruiting automatically enter some candidate information for you. Click here for more information.

Upload any documents for the candidate at the bottom of the page.

When you finish, click Add this candidate.

Screenshot of the add this candidate button

Note: Select Follow this candidate under the Name & Company section to receive updates when the candidate advances to a new stage in the interview process or undergoes a status change (such as being marked as "Hired" or "Rejected")

Screenshot of the follow this candidate check box

Parsing resumes

If you do not want to type out all the information for a candidate, you can upload their resume to be automatically processed, or "parsed," by Greenhouse Recruiting.

To automatically process a resume, click and drag the file into the top left corner of the Candidate page. You can also click Choose File to locate and upload a file.

Screenshot of the drag resume to parse box

Wait for Greenhouse Recruiting to process the resume. When it's finished, verify that the candidate's information is correct. Embedded images or other resume layouts may cause the candidate's information to be uploaded incorrectly.

When everything looks good, click Add this candidate.

Note: After uploading a resume, you may still have to complete some required fields for the candidate's record. These required fields are chosen by your organization. 

Manually add a prospect

Prospects, unlike candidates, are not tied to a specific job. When you identify a prospect, it represents an individual who is not applying for a job but instead is maintaining a relationship with the recruiter in hopes they will eventually be a good fit for an opening.

You can upload a prospect by selecting the Prospect tab at the top of the Add a Candidate page. 

Screenshot of the prospect tab

Adding a prospect is exactly the same as adding a candidate, except you can add a prospect to multiple jobs, departments, or offices.

Screenshot of the add prospect page

However, the workflow for adding a prospect is identical. See the section above for more information on adding a new candidate.

Upload candidates by email

If you don't want to parse resumes through the Candidates page, you can also send candidates to Greenhouse Recruiting through email to be automatically processed through Maildrop.

Maildrop works best when you're consistently receiving candidates for the same job post and need to manually add them to Greenhouse Recruiting. 

To add candidates through Maildrop, navigate to the Add a Candidate page and select Forward Resume via Email.

Screenshot of the forward resume via email link

Locate the job in the list, and copy the associated email address.

Screenshot of a maildrop email address

Attach the candidate's resume to a new email, and place the job email address in the "To" field.

Send the email. The candidate will be processed and added to Greenhouse Recruiting. 

Adding multiple candidates through email

Maildrop can also be used to add multiple candidates to a single job post. To add multiple candidates, attach their resumes to an email and write BULK in the subject line of the message.

Screenshot of an email with multiple resumes attached and the word bulk in the email subject

When the email is sent, the attached resumes will be processed.

Note: To improve performance, Maildrop will process as many attachments as possible in 60 seconds. If all attachments cannot be processed in this time, you will receive an email with a list of the unprocessed candidates.

Typically, 15 to 20 candidates can be processed in 60 seconds. If you have a long list of manually added candidates, you may have to send multiple emails.