Duplicate applications can cause confusion and significantly more work for your users.
To reduce friction while candidates move through your interview pipeline, Greenhouse Recruiting's merge feature allows your organization to manually combine separate candidate applications into a single candidate profile.
All Site Admins can merge candidates and prospects. Job Admins can do this if they are included in a custom permission level that has the ability to merge candidates and prospects. Custom permission levels are only available for Advanced+ customers.
Note: To automate merging candidate profiles, enable our Auto-Merge tool. Learn more.
Manually merge a single candidate
Note: In order to merge duplicate candidates, a Job Admin must have equal job-based permissions assigned across all jobs the candidate has applied to, and the candidate cannot be anonymized.
If a user is encountering trouble when merging profiles, check to confirm their job-based permissions are consistent and assigned to all jobs the candidate has applications submitted for.
To manually merge a single candidate application with another profile, navigate to the primary candidate profile you want to merge, click the ellipses icon in the top right corner of the page, and choose Merge candidate from the list.
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.
Merge candidate profiles in bulk
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.
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.
Click Merge Candidates when finished.
All selected candidate profiles will be merged into the primary candidate profile.
How data merges work
On a candidate's profile, some fields (such as the recruiter and 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)
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
- 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.
Additional considerations
Manually merging candidate profiles will overwrite the candidate_id field used to identify candidates when utilizing our API or HRIS integrations in Greenhouse Recruiting.
Once the candidates profiles are merged, the candidate id of the profile marked as secondary will not be displayed in-app or within the API. As a result, merging secondary profiles with primary profiles may cause downstream integration errors.
If your team leverages these tools, it's recommended to select the newest/active candidate record as primary to merge into any additional historical candidate record(s). It's also recommended to utilize our candidate_merged webhook operating as an alert for your team in the event of any changes.
This webhook will trigger any time a candidate is merged, including auto-merges, and will specify the candidate_id. It will also contain a "new_candidate_id" field which can be helpful for maintaining the correct candidate ID in external systems like Workday.
For additional questions around leveraging candidate IDs when merging candidates, connect with the Greenhouse Technical Support team.