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  4. Candidate profiles

Merge candidate profiles

Permissions: Site Admin, and Job Admin who can merge candidates and prospects

Product tier: Available for all subscription tiers

Duplicate applications can cause confusion and significantly more work for your users. The merge feature allows your organization to combine two or more candidate profiles into a single candidate profile.

In this article

Note: Click here for more information about automatically merging candidates with the Auto-Merge feature.

Manually merge a single candidate

Note: In order to merge duplicate candidates, a Job Admin must have the same job-based permissions for all jobs the candidate has applied to.

You can manually merge a single candidate with another candidate on their candidate profile.

Go to the candidate's profile that you want to merge. Then scroll to the Tools section at the bottom of the candidate's profile and select See More.

Click Merge this candidate.

Search for the primary candidate in the search field and choose their profile from the list.

Note: If the duplicate and primary candidates are in the wrong order for the merge, click Switch Candidates to change their position without losing your progress.

When the correct profiles are selected, click Merge.

Note: You cannot un-merge candidates.

Bulk merge candidate profiles

To merge multiple candidate profiles into a single candidate profile, click the Candidates tab from the navigation bar and identify the candidates who should be merged from the subsequent list.

Click Bulk Actions.

Note: Use the search feature and filter panels on the left-hand side of the page to help narrow down the list of candidates if necessary.

Select the candidate profiles to be merged by adding a check in the box to the left of their name. Click Edit Selected (#) when finished.

From the subsequent dialog box, click Merge.

Select which profile should become the primary candidate profile. All other candidate profiles will be merged into this profile. To learn more about what data will be retained and what data will be deprecated as a result of setting a primary candidate profile, review the section below.

Note: This action is cannot be undone. Candidate profiles cannot be un-merged after selecting Merge Candidates.

Click Merge Candidates when finished.

All selected candidate profiles will be merged into the primary candidate profile.

Note: Candidate profiles cannot be merged if data from either profile has been deleted via the GDPR feature.

How data merges work

On a candidate's profile, some fields (such as the recruiting coordinator assigned to the candidate) can only have a single individual or value assigned. Sometimes, when a profile is merged, different values will be listed on the primary and secondary profiles. This situation is called a conflict.

When a conflict occurs, Greenhouse Recruiting will prioritize data from the primary candidate if it conflicts with the duplicate candidate profile.

If any of the following data in the duplicate profile conflicts with the primary profile, the primary profile's values will be used.

  • Current company
  • Current title
  • Source
  • Recruiter
  • Coordinator
  • Referral
  • Job Forms
  • Interview kit URL (This conflict will impact any scheduled interviews you may have for the non-primary candidate. Those interviews will need to be manually updated for the merged candidate)
Note: If you have enabled Auto-Merge, Greenhouse Recruiting will prioritize the oldest candidate profile when merging duplicate profiles.

However, in some cases, a field may be able to have multiple pieces of data (such as candidate tags or phone numbers). In this case, Greenhouse Recruiting will combine the values from the primary and duplicate profiles into a single list.

The following pieces of data will be combined if multiple values exist:

  • Data in the activity feed
  • Scorecards
  • Attachments
  • Phone number
  • Email
  • Social media links
  • Websites
  • Address
  • Education
  • Candidate tags

If any conflicts are resolved as part of the candidate merge, they'll be listed in the merged candidate's Activity Feed.