The Past candidates tab in Talent Matching helps you review people who have previously applied to your organization and may be worth reconsidering for the role you’re hiring on. It opens with suggested filters so you can start with a shortlist instead of a blank search.
Note: This article covers the Past candidates tab in Talent Matching. If your organization still uses the older Talent Rediscovery workflow, see Talent Rediscovery.
Past candidates surfaces applicants only. Prospects who were never submitted as applications do not appear in this tab.
Past candidates does not assign AI match scores. It uses filters—not scoring—to surface relevant people from your candidate history.
Users only see past applications they have permission to view.
Open Past candidates on a job
Go to your job dashboard for the role you want to review.
Open Talent Matching, then click the Past candidates tab.
Review the suggested shortlist
When you open Past candidates, Greenhouse applies suggested filters so you don’t land on a blank page. These filters give you a relevant starting point based on the job you’re on.
Suggested filters can include signals such as:
- Milestone reached
- Overall scorecard rating
- Application date
- Similar jobs or department
- Rejection reason exclusions
- Keywords or scorecard focus attributes pulled from calibration, when available
Adjust filters
Use the filter bar at the top of the table to adjust which past candidates appear.
Filters are grouped into four categories: Quality signals, Relevance, Exclusions, and Advanced.
Quality signals
Use Quality signals filters to focus on candidates who performed well in previous hiring processes, such as candidates who reached later milestones or received stronger scorecard ratings.
Relevance
Use Relevance filters to keep results focused on applications that are more relevant to the current job, such as application date, related jobs, department, office, and resume keywords.
Exclusions
Use Exclusions to hide candidates you do not want to revisit, such as people marked as hired, people rejected from this job, or people who already have an application on this job.
You can also exclude candidates by rejection reason, tags, and scorecard outcomes.
Advanced
Use Advanced filters when you need a more specific filter combination than the suggested filters provide.
You may want to adjust filters in situations like these:
- You want to focus on people who reached face-to-face interviews and received strong scorecards.
- You want to broaden the list by expanding the application date range or pulling from additional departments.
- You want to remove candidates with security-related rejection reasons or certain tags.
- You want to surface people rejected due to timing who may now be available.
Load and save filter sets
To quickly apply a different starting point, click Load filters.
Greenhouse includes suggested filter sets, and the menu can also show filters you’ve previously saved for the job.
The Greenhouse suggested filter set includes:
- Focused — Shows candidates with 100% Yes scorecards who were active in the last 12 months. This is the narrowest option and surfaces the strongest past matches.
- Standard — Shows candidates with 75% Yes scorecards or higher who were active in the last 2 years. This is a balanced option for finding strong matches without narrowing the results too much.
- Broad — Shows candidates with 50% Yes scorecards or higher who were active in the last 2 years. Use this option to widen the pool while still prioritizing more positive past feedback.
- Broadest — Shows candidates with any scorecard rating who were active in the last 2 years. This is the widest option and includes the largest set of past candidates.
You can always start from suggested filters and fine tune the results. To save your current filter combination, click Save filters. Under Your filters, you’ll see filter sets you’ve previously saved for this job.
To return to the suggested defaults, click Reset to default.
To remove all filters, click Clear all.
Understand the results
Past candidates is person-based. If someone has multiple matching applications, Greenhouse shows one row for that person rather than a separate row for each application. The table is based on the most recent matching application.
The results table updates based on your current filter settings.
In the table, you can review:
- Past candidate — The person’s name and any tags on their record, such as Active on another job or Duplicate
- Latest matching application — The most relevant past application, including job title, date applied, stage reached, and rejection reason
- Rediscovery summary — A summary of how the candidate performed in past interviews, based on scorecard ratings and interviewer feedback
- Actions taken — Actions completed from the Past candidates tab only
- Tags — Tags on the candidate’s record
Use the Actions taken column to see at a glance whether your team has already reached out to or added someone from this page.
Take action on candidates
Check the box next to a candidate’s name to act on them. Select multiple candidates for bulk actions.
Available actions are:
- Add as a prospect to — Add the candidate as a prospect on a job, to a prospect pool, or to a Sourcing Automation campaign pool (if Sourcing Automation is enabled)
- Add to job — Add the candidate directly to a job’s pipeline
- Send email — Send an outreach email from Greenhouse
- Tag — Add a tag to the candidate record
The Actions taken column shows only actions completed from the Past candidates page.
View candidate history
To review more context before taking action, click a candidate’s name to open the side panel. The panel shows the candidate’s application history divided into active and previous applications. A Matching application tag appears on the specific past application that caused this person to surface in your results.
For each application you can see the job, stage reached, applied date, source, primary recruiter, rejection reason and notes, scorecard rating breakdown, and an AI-generated scorecard summary when one is available. You can also download attached documents or click Go to application to open the full application record.
Use the arrows at the bottom of the side panel to move between candidates.
Understand how Past candidates works with calibration
Past candidates and calibration are related, but they do different things. In Application Review, calibration is used to calculate AI match scores for current applicants. In Past candidates, calibration inputs—such as keywords or focus attributes—can help prefill filters, but this tab does not assign match scores to past candidates.
If you want to change who appears in Past candidates, adjust the filters in Past candidates directly.
Note: Don’t edit or reset your calibration to change the shortlist—doing so will recalculate match scores for all candidates in Application Review. Use filters to make adjustments.
Troubleshooting and limitations
Results seem too narrow
- Try broadening your filters, especially milestone, scorecard rating, application date, and job-related filters.
Results include candidates you expected to be excluded
- Review your exclusions and make sure the filters you want are still applied.
A candidate appears as “Duplicate”
- This tag means the person has more than one record in Greenhouse.
- Check their profile before taking action to avoid duplicate outreach or conflicting records.
Not seeing all expected candidates
- Confirm you have permission to view the past jobs and applications involved.
- Past candidates relies on structured historical data for past applications and does not re-parse past resumes. It does not use Talent Matching match scores for this tab.
Results don’t match what you expected for a specific person
- Open the candidate’s side panel to confirm which past application matched your current filters.