Rejecting and withdrawing candidates

How to reject and withdraw candidates one at a time or in bulk, what the candidate is sent, and how to reverse a rejection.

A candidate leaves the active pipeline in one of two ways. Rejecting says the organisation is not taking them forward. Withdrawing records that the candidate is no longer in the running, whether they asked to be taken out or you are closing the application for them. This article covers both, the emails that go with them, and how to undo a rejection.

Who can reject, withdraw and reactivate

You can reject or withdraw on a job if you are a System Admin or HR user, or the job's Recruiter. A Hiring Manager on the job can do so only if an Admin or HR user has turned on Allow hiring managers and interviewers to move candidates under Settings, Roles & Permissions, Pipeline permissions. Reject and withdraw follow the same rule as moving candidates between stages. Interviewers, Members with no role on the job and Agency users cannot reject or withdraw.

Reactivating a rejected candidate is open to System Admin, HR, and the Recruiter or a Hiring Manager on the job, whatever that setting says.

If you are not allowed, the Reject and Withdraw buttons are greyed out. Hover over them to see why: "Only admins, HR and this job's recruiter can reject or withdraw candidates." If you still get through to the server and are refused, the message reads "You are not permitted to reject candidates" or "You are not permitted to withdraw candidates". On a single application you may instead see "You do not have permission to reject applications for this job" (or withdraw, or reactivate).

Reject one candidate

Open the job and go to the Pipeline tab.
Click the candidate's name to open the review window, then select Reject. In Kanban view you can also drag the card onto the Rejected column.
Under Rejection Reason, choose one of: Not Qualified, Experience Mismatch, Overqualified, Underqualified, Location, Salary Expectations, Culture Fit, Incomplete Application or Other. A reason is required.
Add text in Additional Details if you want to. It is optional, except when the reason is Other, where you must fill it in.
Select Reject. You will see "Application rejected successfully".

The reason is kept on the application and shown as a badge on the candidate's card, for example "not qualified", or "other: relocating abroad" when you added text. The reason is for your team. It is not sent to the candidate.

A line under the dialog title tells you what to expect from the rejection email. With the job set to send immediately it reads "If a rejection template is available, an email will be sent immediately." With a delay it names the delay, for example "The configured email delay is 24 hours." Both lines say the result will confirm what happened to the email.

After you reject, the confirmation tells you the outcome. It says the email was scheduled for a particular time, or that it was skipped (for example when no Rejection template exists), or, if something else went wrong, "The application was rejected, but the rejection email was not sent or scheduled."

Reject several candidates

On the Pipeline tab, tick the boxes beside the candidates and select Reject Selected in the bar that appears. The dialog is titled "Reject N Applications". You choose one reason, and it is applied to everyone selected. Recruit handles up to 100 at a time. The result is reported as "N applications rejected successfully", or "N rejected, M failed" when some were refused. The message does not name the ones that failed. The usual cause is that you do not have permission on one of the jobs involved. Open the failed candidate and reject them on their own to see the exact message. The confirmation also lists the email outcome for each candidate by name.

On the Candidates page you can select candidates and use Reject in the bulk action bar. This works by candidate, not by application: every active application each selected candidate has, on any job, is rejected, and each job uses its own rejection email timing. A candidate with no active application is reported as failed. A candidate is also counted as failed if any one of their applications could not be rejected, even though the others were.

The rejection email

Rejecting a candidate can send them an email. Whether it does, when, and which wording is used depends on three things.

Timing. On the job's Settings tab, under Rejection Email Settings, Email Delay Mode is one of No Email, Send Immediately (the default), Delay 24 Hours, Delay 48 Hours or Delay 1 Week. With a delay, the email is queued and goes out that long after the rejection.
Template. Recruit uses the first one it finds: the rejection template set on the stage the candidate was rejected from, then the template chosen on the job, then, if the job has none chosen, the most recently created Rejection template in your organisation.
An email address. A candidate with no email address is not emailed.

Where these settings are found, who can change them, and how to cancel a delayed email in Settings > Scheduled Emails are covered in Stage automations and rejection emails. Emails that are sent, queued, cancelled or failed all show on the candidate's Communications tab.

Nothing is sent when the job is set to No Email, when there is no email address, when no Rejection template exists, or when the job's chosen template has been deleted. If there is no template to use, the confirmation says "Rejection email was not sent or scheduled because no rejection template is configured", and the Communications tab shows a failed rejection entry for that application explaining the same thing. Create a Rejection template in Settings or choose one on the job or stage.

A delayed email is dropped if the candidate has been reactivated by the time it is due. If the candidate has unsubscribed from emails or their address has been suppressed, the email fails and the Communications tab shows the reason. Candidates submitted by an agency receive the rejection email like anyone else.

Sending the rejection email later

If a job's Email Delay Mode is No Email, nothing goes out when you reject. The Rejected column then groups candidates by what has happened to their email: Awaiting rejection email, Rejection email queued, Rejection email sent, or Rejected before email tracking.

On the Pipeline tab, tick the rejected candidates. You can tick rejected cards and rows, but not withdrawn ones.
Select Send rejection email in the bar. It is enabled only when every ticked candidate is rejected.
Choose a Rejection template, check the recipients and send.

The candidates stay rejected. Nobody is reactivated. Move to Stage is greyed out while a rejected candidate is ticked, with the message "Rejected applications cannot be moved. Reactivate one from its review panel to return it to the process." Use Reactivate from the review window to return someone to the process.

Withdraw a candidate

Use this when the application should end but is not a rejection: the candidate has told you they are no longer interested, for example.

Open the candidate in the review window and select Withdraw. In Kanban view you can drag the card onto the Withdrawn column. For several candidates, tick them and select Withdraw Selected, or use Withdraw in the Candidates page bulk bar.
Enter a Reason (optional) if you want one recorded.
Choose a Withdrawal email. The default is No email. The list holds your templates in the Candidate Withdrawal category.
Select Withdraw. You will see "Application withdrawn successfully".

Unlike rejection, a withdrawal email has no delay setting and no job default. It is sent straight away only if you pick a template, and one choice applies to everyone in a bulk withdrawal. It is delivered even to a candidate who has unsubscribed from other emails. Create the template in Settings > Communication Templates with the Candidate Withdrawal category. The fields Recruit fills in are the candidate's name, email and phone, the job title, location, reference, region, postcode and category, the company name and contact number, (you) and . There is no recruiter name field in this category.

The card moves to the Withdrawn column and carries a Withdrawn badge.

When a candidate withdraws themselves

Candidates can withdraw from the Manage Your Application page, reached from the manage link in their application emails. They select Withdraw My Application and confirm with Yes, Withdraw. The page warns them that this cannot be undone. Once an application is withdrawn, rejected or hired, the page shows "This action is no longer available for your application". Asking for their data on a single application to be deleted from the same page also withdraws that application.

The application moves to the Withdrawn column. The job's hiring managers are emailed to say the candidate withdrew, or the hiring lead if the job has no hiring managers. Each person can turn this off with Application withdrawn under Settings > Notifications. No withdrawal email goes to the candidate in this case.

Reactivate a rejected candidate

On the Pipeline tab, open the candidate from the Rejected column.
Select Reactivate. There is no dialog. You will see "{name} has been reactivated".

The candidate returns to the stage they were rejected from, because rejecting never moved them. No email is sent, and their stage entry email is not sent again. A rejection email that has already gone cannot be recalled. One that is still waiting on its delay is cancelled and will not be sent.

Reactivate is only offered for rejected applications. If you try it on any other status you get "Only rejected applications can be reactivated". A withdrawn application has no Reactivate option.

What changes in the pipeline and reports

The candidate leaves their stage column and the stage's count drops by one. They appear in the Rejected or Withdrawn column (a group of the same name in List view), and the Rejected card shows the reason. Reactivating puts them back in their old stage and the count goes up again. Reminders still queued for the candidate stop, including application form, reference form, interview booking and video interview reminders.

The Pipeline report counts rejected applications under Total Rejected. Its per-stage figures include active applications only, so rejected and withdrawn candidates drop out of them.

Problems you might hit

Please select a reason appears if you confirm a rejection without choosing one.
Please provide a reason appears when the reason is Other and Additional Details is empty.
Failed to reject application or Failed to withdraw application shows with the cause underneath. The permission message is the most common.
If the Reject and Withdraw buttons are greyed out, hover over them. The setting that lets hiring managers move candidates is probably off and you are not the job's Recruiter.
If the candidate says they got no rejection email, check the job's Rejection Email Settings, then the candidate's Communications tab, and confirm the organisation has a Rejection template.
If you rejected the wrong candidate, reactivate them straight away. If the email was set to send immediately it has already gone.