Candidates: your people database
How the Vakanssi Candidates screen keeps one record per person, with sources, tags, duplicate merging, and attaching a candidate to a job.
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Pro feature
The Candidates screen is part of Vakanssi Pro. It comes from the Sourcing & CRM module, which you turn on under Hiring, then Tools, then Features. With the module off, there is no Candidates menu item. The free plugin does not include the module at all, so it has no Candidates screen and nothing to switch on. See Features for how to enable it.
The Candidates screen Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license is your people database: one record for every person you have ever dealt with, whether they applied to a job themselves or your team added them by hand. It is where you track people over time, apart from any single job they applied to.
A candidate is a person, an application is one apply
This distinction runs through the whole screen, so it is worth a moment:
- A candidate is a person. Each human has exactly one candidate record, no matter how many times they apply.
- An application is that person applying to one job. It carries the stage, the CV, and everything else specific to that job.
So if Dana applies to your Support role in March and your Marketing role in June, you have one candidate (Dana) with two applications. You work applications on the Applications screen. You work people here.
Opening the Candidates screen Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license
- Click Hiring in the left sidebar of the WordPress admin.
- Click Candidates.
You get a table with one row per person and these columns:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Name | The person’s name. Click it to open their full profile. |
| Their email address, which is also how Vakanssi spots duplicates. | |
| Source | Where they came from, shown as a readable label such as Applied, Careers page, Sourced, Referral, or Imported. |
| Tags | The labels you have put on them (see Tags). |
| Applications | How many of your jobs they have applied to or been added to. |
| Added | The date the record was created. |
Above the table, a search box and dropdowns for source and tags let you narrow the list. Since v0.33.23, the search box matches first name, last name, email, or the full name in either order, so typing “Dana Levi” finds her exactly like typing “Dana” or “Levi” alone.
The source dropdown lists only the sources actually present in your data, each with a readable label and a count, for example “Applied (34)”.
If your search or filters match nobody, the table says so and offers a Clear filters button, rather than reporting “No candidates yet” as if your database were empty.
Clicking a name opens that person’s profile: their contact details and tags on the left, and on the right every job they have applied to, their interviews, their CVs, and their activity, gathered from all their applications rather than just one.
Bulk actions
Since v0.33.25, you can act on several candidates at once instead of opening them one by one. Tick the checkboxes on the rows you want, choose an action from the Bulk actions dropdown above the table, then click Apply.
Three actions are built in:
- Add tag. Type a tag into the field next to the dropdown, choose Add tag, and apply it. Every selected candidate gets that tag, the same one you would add from a single profile. Leaving the field empty asks you to fill it in first. See Tags.
- Add to job. One entry per published or draft job, showing your 25 most recent. Attaches every selected candidate to that job, the same as adding one candidate at a time. Anyone already on the job is left alone.
- Delete permanently. Removes the selected candidates for good, along with their applications, CVs, and interviews. Vakanssi asks you to confirm first and states how many records it is about to remove.
Bulk delete cannot be undone
Deleting candidates removes their applications, CVs, and interview history with them. Vakanssi confirms the count before it runs, but once you click through there is no way back.
Delete permanently only appears for roles that can delete applications, Administrator and HR / Compliance. See Roles & permissions.
After an action runs, a notice at the top of the screen reports what happened, for example how many candidates were tagged or added to the job. If a selected candidate was not yours to change, or was already on the target job, the notice says so instead of staying silent.
Editing a candidate’s details
Open the person’s profile, then click the pencil icon next to their name (or Edit on the Details card) to edit their details. Click Save changes when you are done. Cancelling with changes in the form, or navigating away or closing the tab, asks you to confirm first, so an edit in progress is never dropped by accident.
Since v0.33.23, if a teammate saves a change to the same candidate while you have the form open, your save does not silently overwrite theirs. A banner names who made the change when it can, with Save my changes to overwrite anyway or Discard mine and load theirs to pick up their version instead. See Collaboration for how this protection works across the whole plugin.
Adding someone by hand
People do not only arrive through your application form. Maybe a colleague forwarded a great CV, or you met someone promising at an event. Add them here so they are in your database before there is any job to attach them to.
- Click Hiring in the left sidebar, then Candidates.
- Click Add candidate at the top of the screen.
- Fill in their details, including a Source so you remember where they came from, and any Tags.
- Click Add candidate. The person appears in the list.
The Email field doubles as a duplicate check. Since v0.33.33, if someone with that email is already in your database, Vakanssi refuses the submission instead of saving over them: the form names who has that address and links to their profile, and nothing is saved until you change the email or open their record instead.
A name or an email is required, and the email has to look like a real address. Since v0.33.24, if you leave out something Vakanssi needs, it hands the form back with everything you already typed still filled in and marks the field it could not accept, so a mistake never means starting over.
Tags
Tags are free-form labels you attach to people: a skill (“PHP”), a seniority (“Senior”), or anything else useful (“Met at WordCamp”). They belong to the person, so they follow the candidate across every job they ever apply to.
The payoff comes later. When a new PHP role opens, filter the list by the “PHP” tag and you have an instant shortlist of people you already know are worth a look. Pick a tag from the dropdown above the table to filter by it.
You do not have to come here to manage tags. A Candidate tags control also sits in the Details tab of every one of that person’s application panels on the Applications screen, so a talent-pool manager can add or remove a tag without leaving the pipeline they are already working in. Since tags belong to the person, a tag added from one application shows up on all of them.
Finding and merging duplicates
Even with email matching, the same person sometimes ends up in your database twice, for instance if they applied once with a work email and once with a personal one. The Find duplicates button rounds these up so you can join them into a single record.
- Click Hiring in the left sidebar, then Candidates.
- Click Find duplicates.
- Vakanssi shows groups of candidates who share the same name. For each group, pick the record to keep and choose the duplicates to merge into it.
- Confirm the merge.
Since v0.33.24, each group also shows phone, location, source, application count, and the date added, with any value the group disagrees on highlighted. When there are more than 25 groups, the screen shows the first 25 and tells you the total found.
Since v0.33.33, confirming without ticking any duplicates tells you nothing was merged and what to tick, rather than reporting a false success with a count of zero.
Matching is by name alone, so two different people who share a name land in the same group and look identical here. A highlighted phone or location is a real warning sign; a different source, application count, or date added is normal for one person who applied more than once.
When you merge, the history from the duplicates, their applications, files, and interviews, moves onto the record you keep, and their tags fold together. Any detail on the surviving record’s details panel that was still blank, a LinkedIn link, website, country, headline, or the recruiter note, is filled in from the one you discard. The record you keep is the one that survives.
Merging cannot be undone
Merging joins the records for good. The history moves onto the record you keep, but the extra records are gone, and there is no undo. Before you confirm, look for any highlighted phone or location differences: they’re the best sign these are two different people, not one duplicated record.
Exporting to CSV
Click Export CSV at the top of the screen to download the list as a spreadsheet: name, email, phone, location, source, tags, application count, and the date added. It respects whatever search, source, or tag filter you have applied, so you can export “everyone tagged PHP” instead of your whole database.
The button only shows for roles with export permission (HR / Compliance and Administrator, see Roles & permissions).
Adding a candidate to a job
When someone in your database fits an open role, you can attach them to that job directly, with no application form needed.
- Click Hiring in the left sidebar, then Candidates.
- Click the person’s name to open their profile.
- Click Add to job in the profile header, pick the job from the dropdown, then click Add.
Since v0.34.10, a job the person is already on shows in the dropdown as “(already added)” and cannot be picked, and a notice under the header confirms what happened, for example “Added to Senior PHP Engineer.” The list includes draft jobs as well as published ones.
This creates a normal application for that person on that job. It lands in the job’s first stage, ready to work like any other application on the Applications screen. Because you added them rather than them applying, they are not sent the usual “we received your application” confirmation email. Reach out to them personally instead.
How de-duplication works
Whenever an application comes in through your form, Vakanssi checks the email address against the people already in your database. If it matches someone, the new application is attached to that existing candidate, which is how the Applications count climbs above one. If it matches nobody, a new candidate record is created. Matching people by email is what keeps your database one-row-per-person instead of a pile of repeats.