Viewing a candidate profile

What every part of a candidate profile shows, which roles see it, and what each action does.

The candidate profile is the single record for one person. You reach it by selecting a candidate from the candidate list, a job pipeline or a search result. What you see on it depends on your role, the application you are looking at and whether that job uses confidential shortlisting. This article covers each part of the profile and who can use it.

Who can open a profile

System Admin can open any candidate in the organisation. HR can open any candidate, unless your HR access is limited by location. A location-restricted HR user can open talent pool candidates and candidates with an application on a job they are allowed to see. Members can open only candidates who have an application on a job they are on the team for. Agency users can open only candidates their own agency submitted.

If you follow a link to a candidate you are not allowed to see, or one that has been removed, the page says This candidate is no longer available.

Applications: one at a time

A candidate can have several applications. The profile shows one at a time. The Application line under the name shows which one, with its job, reference, stage and whether it is Submitted or Incomplete, plus the date it was started. If the candidate has more than one, choose Switch application to move between them. The list shows the newest first and includes unsubmitted ones.

Documents, Downloads, Timeline, Notes, Interview feedback, Offers, Onboarding, References, Communications, ad-hoc interviews and the gap analysis all show only the selected application. You open on the application you came from, for example the job you clicked through from, otherwise the most recently started one. The back arrow returns you to that job, or to the candidate list if you did not come from a job.

If you switch application while you have typed something you have not saved, such as a note, Recruit asks Discard unsaved changes?. Choose Stay to keep your text or Discard and switch to move on.

A link to an application that is removed, or that you cannot see, shows This application is not available, with a View the most recent application link.

An Incomplete application is one the candidate has started but not submitted. You can select it and read what is on it, but anything tied to a submitted job application is unavailable, with a message explaining why. That covers scheduling an ad-hoc interview, offers, onboarding, sending a reference request and adding notes.

The header

The header shows the candidate's name, current job title and employer, and the following where they apply:

• Scheme icons for Disability Confident scheme, Armed Forces Covenant and Care Leaver Friendly. Hover over an icon to see its name.
• A Talent Pool badge if the candidate is in the talent pool.
• Tags, with a tag icon (Edit tags) beside them. Select it to tick existing tags, or type a new one and press Enter or select Add. Each change saves straight away.

The three-dot Actions menu sits at the right of the header.

The Actions menu

The menu is shown to everyone who can open the profile, but not every item works for every role.

• Move to Pool puts the candidate in the talent pool. You can add a reason if you want to. Their existing applications are left as they are. If the candidate is already in the pool, this item becomes Assign to Job, which asks you to pick a published job, creates an application for them on it and takes them out of the pool. If the candidate has a talent-pool CV, a tick box Attach the talent-pool CV to this application appears. If the job has no pipeline set up yet, you are told it is not ready to receive applications.
• Send Email and Send SMS are for System Admin and HR. Send SMS appears only if your organisation has the SMS add-on, and it is greyed out with a tooltip if the candidate has no phone number.
• Schedule Ad-hoc Interview is for System Admin and HR. It is greyed out with "Select a submitted application to schedule an ad-hoc interview." when the selected application is Incomplete or there is none. Scheduled interviews then appear on the Overview tab with an Ad-hoc badge and can be cancelled while they are still in the future.
• Reassign to another job is offered to people who can move candidates on the selected application's job. It ends consideration for the current job and keeps its history, carries the original form and CV across and sends no notifications. It is blocked while an interview, offer or onboarding is in progress, and it is not offered on a Hired application or one that has already been transferred. The old application then shows as Transferred, and the new one shows "Carried over from" the original job. This replaces the Move to Job bulk action on the Candidates page.
• Edit opens the candidate's personal details: First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, LinkedIn URL, Location, Postcode, Company and Job Title. First name, last name and email are required. An email address can belong to only one candidate, so saving an address that is already in use gives This email address is already in use by another candidate.

Merging, requesting documents, sending offers and updating right to work are not in this menu. They live elsewhere on the profile, as described below.

The duplicate alert

If Recruit finds other records that match this candidate on name or phone number, an amber Duplicate Candidates Detected box appears above the tabs. Each match shows why it matched and a confidence level, with a Merge button. The alert is not shown when the candidate's identity is hidden. See Merging duplicate candidate records for the merge itself.

The tabs

Overview

Application Summary shows the job (linked to the job page), the date the selected application was submitted, the source, any star rating and the application reference.

Contact Information shows email, phone, location, postcode, LinkedIn and a View CV link.

The status of the selected application is in the header: Active, Withdrawn, Rejected (shown in red), Hired, Disqualified, Transferred or Incomplete. Which stage the application is in, and when it moved, is on the Timeline tab. To see another application, switch application at the top of the profile.

If the candidate is in the talent pool, a Talent Pool panel shows when they were added and the reason.

To reject or withdraw an application, see Rejecting and withdrawing candidates. To move a candidate between stages, see Moving candidates through pipeline stages.

Application Responses is collapsed until you open it. It shows the answers from the application form, grouped by page. Download Application Form produces a PDF. System Admin and HR also get Download Application Form (redacted). If the candidate edited their application afterwards, a History button opens each submitted version. Equal opportunities monitoring answers and conviction disclosures are not shown here.

The Overview also shows a Gap analysis panel for the selected application, labelled as submitted or, if the candidate edited the application afterwards, as edited by the candidate. It lists the gaps in their history as explained (with the reason they gave) or unexplained. Download gap analysis saves it as a PDF.

If the job has qualifying questions, their answers and the automatic outcome appear in their own panel, and a System Admin can edit the answers. If the candidate has completed a HireFlix video interview, the Video interview panel shows the recording and transcript. When the application is at a video interview stage, a Review video button opens the full review screen. See Reviewing a video interview.

Documents, CV and downloads

The Documents panel holds the CV, the cover letter (an uploaded file, or the text the candidate typed), the LinkedIn link and any uploaded documents, for the selected application. View CV opens the CV inline below the panel and Hide CV closes it. An uploaded cover letter can be opened inline in the same way with View and Hide. If the file type cannot be previewed, download it instead.

System Admin and HR see Download (full) and, where an anonymised copy exists, Download (anonymised). Everyone else who can see a CV gets the anonymised copy from Download, and cannot open the original or the cover letter file. Uploaded documents, Upload, Replace, delete and Request Document are System Admin and HR only. Deleting asks you to confirm. See Requesting documents from a candidate.

If a candidate has no CV, System Admin and HR see Upload CV. The first CV you upload is attached to the selected application. A Hiring Manager on the candidate's job sees the control too, but only for the first CV and only if your organisation has switched on Allow Hiring Managers to add a CV under Settings, Security. For a candidate in the talent pool with no application, System Admin and HR see Upload talent-pool CV. If your organisation has switched on Hide candidate CVs from Members under Settings, Security, Members see no CV at all, not even the anonymised one.

The Downloads card lists the files the selected application can produce for you. When there is more than one, tick the ones you want and choose Download as zip (one or more) or Download merged PDF (two or more). System Admin and HR also get a Redacted copy box that leaves out personal details and anything that cannot be redacted.

Work history, education and ad-hoc interviews

Work History fills from the application form or the parsed CV. Select Add Entry to add one by hand: Job Title, Company and Start Date are required, and leaving End Date blank marks the role as current. If you do not know the exact day, the date fields accept a month and year only. Hover over an entry for the pencil and bin icons.

A Gaps in the current profile box above the entries lists gaps in employment and education combined. How long a gap has to be before it is listed comes from your organisation's gap settings, in days or months. Where only months were given, the entry reads "possible gap, exact dates unknown". System Admin and HR can use Download gap analysis once there is at least one work or education entry.

System Admin and HR also get Re-import history. It rebuilds missing work history, education and references from the candidate's applications and leaves entries that already exist, including any you edited, unchanged. Select Confirm re-import to run it.

Education is read only and comes from the application form.

Timeline

The Timeline lists what has happened on the selected application, newest first: the application, stage changes, rejections, evaluations, offers, notes, emails and texts, tag and detail edits, right to work updates and video interview events. To see another application's history, switch application. See Candidate activity timeline.

Notes and feedback

Interview feedback appears at the top of this tab for System Admin and HR, once at least one interviewer has submitted it for the selected application, with the interviewer, recommendation (Strong hire, Hire, Maybe, No hire or Strong no hire), notes, job and stage. Other roles see a message saying they cannot view it.

Below that are the notes entered when the candidate was created and the collaborative notes for the selected application. Notes belong to one application, so to add a note on a different job, switch application first. See Adding notes to a candidate and Submitting interview feedback.

Governance

Right to Work is available to everyone who can open the profile. Use Update Status to set Not Started, In Progress, Verified, Expired or Failed. Under Documents, select Add Document, choose a type (Valid Passport, Valid Visa/Work Permit, Biometric Residence Permit (BRP), UK Gov Share Code Verified, UK Birth Certificate or Other Document) and give it a label. Expiry date, notes and an attached file (PDF, DOC, DOCX, PNG or JPG) are optional. Each document has icons to view, download, edit, mark as verified or not verified, and delete.

The UK Gov Share Code field saves a code, and Check on GOV.UK opens the government checking service. A status of Expired or Failed shows a warning that verification must be completed before an offer can be extended. A Verified status with a check date shows a green banner with the date and, where recorded, who verified it. See Right to work and governance.

The rest of the tab is for System Admin and HR. GDPR Consent records three permissions: Data Processing, Marketing Communications and Talent Pool Inclusion. Select Record Consent (or Edit Consent), tick what applies and select Save Consent. Under Data Subject Rights, Export Candidate Data downloads everything held about the candidate as a PDF or an Excel file. Request Deletion submits a request to erase all their data. The request is processed automatically after seven days unless you select Cancel, and the button reads Pending Deletion while it waits. See Candidate data rights: export, deletion and consent.

Onboarding, HRIS Sync and Data export

Onboarding is started per application. It needs a submitted, active application, and the job needs an onboarding template. On an unsubmitted application the tab says "Onboarding can start once this application has been submitted", and on one that is no longer active it says "Onboarding can only start on an active application". System Admin and HR can start, cancel and update tasks. Everyone else has view-only access.

If an HRIS integration is connected, System Admin and HR can push the candidate to it from this tab, and the sync history sits below.

If your organisation has set up an emailed data export, System Admins also see a Send candidate export control on this tab. It emails one file containing the candidate's data from all their eligible applications to the recipients set on the export. It does not go to the candidate, and you can send it again at any time. If nothing is sent you see a reason, for example that the candidate has no application to export, that the export is switched off, or that it has no destination email address. See Starting onboarding for a hired candidate.

References

System Admin and HR see one card per referee for the selected application, with Request Referees (asks the candidate to nominate referees), Add Referee and Send Reference Request. A reference request needs a submitted application. On an Incomplete application you can still add referees and ask the candidate to nominate them, but the tab says "This application has not been submitted yet, so a reference form cannot be sent for it." Everyone else sees a message that references are managed by administrators and HR. See Setting up reference requests and referee forms.

Communications

This tab lists every email and text sent to the candidate for the selected application with its date, subject, recipient, source and status (Queued, Scheduled, Sending, Sent, Cancelled, Failed or Bounced). Filter by status or source, and use Previous and Next once there are more than 50. Select a row to read the message. Hover over a Failed or Bounced status to see the reason. System Admin and HR can Cancel a scheduled email, which cannot be undone, and Resend a failed or bounced one, optionally to a corrected address.

Offers

Offer History lists each offer on the selected application with its dates, terms and outcome. System Admin and HR can create a new offer with New Offer (or Create Offer when there are none), withdraw one, and download a signed contract. An offer needs a submitted application to attach to. See Making an offer and Offer lifecycle.

What confidential shortlisting hides

When the candidate applied to a job with confidential shortlisting and has not yet been revealed, the profile changes for anyone who is not allowed to see who they are. The name shows as Candidate followed by the application reference. Email, LinkedIn, phone, location, postcode, job title, employer and tags are removed, the avatar turns grey, and the duplicate alert is hidden. Send Email is greyed out with a tooltip pointing you to the application instead. Only the anonymised CV is offered and the cover letter file is withheld.

Candidates submitted by an agency are hidden in the same way, as Agency Candidate, from everyone except the agency that submitted them, until they are revealed. A System Admin or HR user sees full details, unless they are also a Hiring Manager or Interviewer on that job, in which case the profile is hidden from them too. Recruiters on a confidential job are hidden as well. If the candidate has applied to several jobs, the profile shows full details whenever any one application you can access allows it.

Records from another company in your group

If you belong to a group and open a candidate owned by one of its companies, a banner tells you which company owns the record. For most group users the Actions menu is hidden and every change is disabled. A group admin whose access allows editing sees a banner saying they are editing another company's record.