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Adding a candidate manually

How to add candidates you have sourced yourself, one at a time or from a batch of CVs, and what Recruit does next.

How to add candidates you have sourced yourself, one at a time or from a batch of CVs, and what Recruit does next.

Use this when a candidate did not apply through your careers page: someone you met at an event, a referral, a headhunted contact, or a folder of CVs from an agency or job fair. You can add one person with a form, or upload up to 20 CVs at once and let Recruit read the names and email addresses from them.

Who can add candidates

System Admin and HR users can add candidates. Members and other roles do not see the button, and opening the page directly sends them away. If you cannot see it, ask a System Admin or HR user in your organisation to add the candidate for you. Every candidate needs a source, so check that your candidate sources are set up first. See Managing candidate sources.

Open the form

  1. Go to Candidates.
  2. Select Create Candidate at the top right of the list. If the list is empty, the same button appears in the middle of the page.
  3. Choose Add manually to fill in a form for one person, or Import from CVs to upload a batch of CV files.

Add one candidate manually

  1. If your user has access to more than one company in a group, a company selector appears at the top of the form. Pick the company first. The list of sources belongs to that company, so changing the company clears the Source you had chosen.
  2. Under Personal Information, enter First Name, Last Name and Email. These three are required. First and last name can be up to 100 characters each.
  3. Optionally add Phone, LinkedIn URL (it must be a full web address such as https://linkedin.com/in/name), Location, Company, Job Title and Postcode.
  4. Under Documents, you can attach a CV. It can be a PDF, DOCX or TXT file up to 10MB. A cover letter can only be attached once you have chosen a job (see Choosing a job and stage below).
  5. Under Source Information, choose a Source. This is required. Only active sources are listed. Optionally fill in Source Details (for example, "Referred by Jane Smith") and Tags. Separate tags with commas, such as senior, remote, react.
  6. Under Job Assignment, leave Assign to Job (Optional) on No job, add to talent pool only, or pick a job. See the next section.
  7. Add anything worth remembering under Notes.
  8. Select Create Candidate. Recruit opens the new candidate's profile.

To leave without saving, select Cancel.

Choosing a job and stage

The job list shows published jobs only. Draft, closed and archived jobs do not appear, and the list holds up to 100 jobs. When you choose a job, a Pipeline Stage field appears and you must pick a stage before the candidate can be created. The stages are the ones set up in that job's pipeline, so you can place someone straight into a later stage such as an interview stage. With a job and stage chosen, the candidate appears in that job's pipeline at that stage. Their history records that the candidate was added manually. With no job, they go into your talent pool until someone assigns them to a job. See Managing the talent pool.

Choose a job first if you want to attach a cover letter. A cover letter belongs to a job application, so the control appears only after a job is chosen, labelled Cover letter for followed by the job title. The CV can be attached with or without a job. The cover letter can be a PDF, DOCX or TXT file up to 10MB.

If you change the job after choosing a cover letter file, Recruit asks what to do with it. Select Use it for the new job, or Remove it from this submission. You cannot create the candidate until you have chosen one. If you clear the job altogether, the cover letter has to be removed.

What emails are sent

Adding a candidate with no job sends nothing. Adding a candidate to a job is treated as a new application, and the usual emails for a new application follow:

  • The candidate receives the job's application acknowledgement email. If your Applied stage has no template of its own, Recruit sends a default wording.
  • If the stage you chose is not the first stage and it has an automatic email attached, the candidate receives that email too.
  • The job's hiring managers are notified of a new application, or the hiring lead if the job has no hiring managers. Their own notification settings apply.

If the first stage of the job is set to move candidates on automatically, a candidate placed in that stage is moved to the next stage straight away. No text message is sent for candidates you add yourself. Check the job's acknowledgement and stage emails before adding someone to a live job, because the candidate will receive them.

Import from CVs

The Bulk CV Import screen creates candidates from CV files. You can upload up to 20 files in one go.

  1. Choose a Source. It is required and applies to every file in the batch.
  2. Optionally choose a job under Job Assignment, and a Pipeline Stage if you do. The same job and stage apply to every candidate in the batch.
  3. Drag the CV files onto the drop area, or click it to browse. The counter shows how many of the 20 you have selected. Use Remove beside a file to take it out.
  4. Select Import 5 CVs (the number matches your files).

Accepted file types are PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT and ODT, up to 10MB each. Anything else is refused with "[filename] is not a supported CV type." or "[filename] exceeds the 10MB size limit." Adding more than 20 files shows "You can upload up to 20 CVs at once." Selecting Import without a source or without any files shows an error asking you to add one. If the upload itself fails, you see "Upload failed. Please try again." and nothing from that batch is created.

Recruit reads only the name, email address and phone number from each CV. Everything else can be added later on the candidate's profile. Every candidate created this way is tagged IMPORTED_VIA_CV (tags show in capitals on the profile), and the CV is attached to their profile. Each file then shows a status, and a summary line counts how many were created, need review, are duplicates or failed.

What each result means

  • Queued and Parsing CV... are in progress. The results update on their own.
  • Candidate created: the profile exists, with the CV, source, and job and stage if you chose them. The emails described above are sent when a job was chosen.
  • Needs review: Recruit could not read a name or an email address from the CV. Fields for first name, last name, email and phone are shown with whatever was found. Complete them and select Save candidate, or select Discard to throw the file away. Save candidate stays greyed out until first name, last name and email are all filled in.
  • Duplicate of existing candidate: a candidate with that email address is already in Recruit. The CV is not imported and no new record is created. There is nothing to save on this row.
  • Failed: the file could not be processed. The reason is shown. Select Discard to remove it. You can add that person with the manual form instead.

If you correct an email on a Needs review row and it matches an existing candidate, the row changes to Duplicate instead of creating a second record. Select Done when you have finished to go back to the candidate list. While any row still needs review, leaving the page (through a link or the browser's back button) asks "Leave the import review?". Select Stay on this page to keep working, or Leave to lose your place. If a batch takes longer than five minutes, a banner says some imports are taking longer than expected. Candidates that were already created remain on the Candidates list.

Duplicate checks

Recruit checks for duplicates in two ways. First, the email address. Two candidates cannot share one. On the manual form you see "A candidate with this email address already exists." and nothing is created, so search for the existing candidate and use that record. In an import, the file shows as a Duplicate.

Second, after a candidate is created, Recruit looks for other records with the same first and last name, or the same phone number (digits only, so spacing and punctuation do not matter). Matches are marked with a Duplicate badge on the Candidates list, and the candidate's profile shows a Duplicate Candidates Detected alert with a Merge button. This does not stop the candidate being added. See Merging duplicate candidate records.

Problems you may see

  • First name is required, Last name is required or Enter a valid email: fill in the field. The form will not submit until all three are correct.
  • Enter a valid URL: the LinkedIn URL must start with https://.
  • Source is required: pick a source. If the list is empty, ask a System Admin to set up an active candidate source.
  • Please select a pipeline stage: you chose a job but not a stage.
  • Only PDF, DOCX, and TXT files are accepted or File size must be under 10MB: the file was rejected as soon as you picked it. Choose another file.
  • Choose whether to keep or remove the cover letter before creating the candidate.: you changed the job after choosing a cover letter. Select Use it for the new job, or Remove it from this submission.
  • Could not upload the CV. Please try again. or Failed to upload cover letter. Please try again.: the candidate was not created. Submit again.
  • Candidate created without the cover letter: the candidate exists, but the cover letter did not attach. Upload it again from their profile.

Where the details end up

Everything you entered appears on the candidate's profile. The text in Notes shows on the Notes & Feedback tab as a read-only note. It cannot be edited from there, and it is separate from the team notes people add per job. See Adding notes to a candidate.