Summary: This article describes how Source & CRM merges candidates and profiles in Source & CRM. What are the rules to determine default profile, and what happens to edited data.
Q: When does profile merging occur in Source&CRM?
Resumes/Profiles that come into Talemetry with the same email address(any contact email address for candidates with multiple emails) become part of the same Candidate record. It doesn't matter the source of the resumes/profiles (i.e. ATS via API, Imported resumes, Add-Ins, Job Board resumes, etc.).
Then resumes and profiles are added to the same candidate, a default resume/profile is chosen.
Q: What is the rule to determine the default (aka primary) profile when profiles are merged?
First we check the option selected in the CRM feature "Set Primary profile as "ATS Profile" or "Most Recent Profile". By default, all accounts have it set to "ATS Profile", though it can be changed to "Most Recent Profile" if this option better suits company's business needs. When the feature is set to "ATS Profile", ATS candidates will have their ATS profile set the default. Candidates with multiple ATS profiles get the newest ATS profile (based on Age of Resume) set the default. When the feature is set to "Most Recent Profile", then any newest profile regardless of its source is set the default. Exclusion of this rule is if the person's default profile was defined manually by recruiter. In this case, the default profile will not change even after a newer profile is merged into that person. As well, Visitor profile will never be the default profile for a candidate (special rule).
Q: Can a user force a specific profile to be the default/primary?
Yes. A recruiter could choose a specific profile on the candidate to be the primary. The user goes to the Profiles tab, chooses a profile that is not the primary, and click on "Set as Primary"
Once a profile is primary, it remains primary even if newer profiles are added to the candidate.
Q: What are the criteria used to merge candidates and profiles?
The main criteria to merge a candidate is identical email address (any contact email address for candidates with multiple emails). However, there are a few special cases:
- If a candidate is created via an inbound text message, that temporary candidate only has SMS number. If a new candidate comes into the system with an identical SMS number, the message history is merged (the temporary profile is removed)
- For visitors, we are merging based on the visitor web tracking id initially. Once the candidate gets known information (i.e. the email address), then merging is done based on the email address.
Q: How does Talemetry and the Updated Profile UI behave when a candidate has many profiles?
When there are multiple profiles with the same email address, they are merged together into a single candidate with multiple profiles. We have a maximum of50profiles per candidate, after which we will stop linking those profiles together into a single candidate. Each profile after 50 will get is own candidate. There are many reasons for that, including the performance of the backend and the UI for recruiters.
Q: When profiles are merged, what data is shown on the candidate?
- Contact Data
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The contact data is always from the primary/default profile (see "What happens to edited data when profiles are merged?" for a special case)
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If a new profile comes in and becomes primary/default, the contact data changes to be the new primary.
- NOTE: If the new primary profile has poor contact data (compared to the previous primary profile) then the contact data could get worse
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- Work History/Education History/Summary (Overview Tab)
- From Default profile
- You can see the specific Work History/Education History/Summary for each profile on the Profiles tab
- Applications
- Show applications from all profiles (grouped by profile)
- Other Fields/Custom Fields
- Shows all fielded data collected from all profiles
- Default Profile fields may override data or be primary if there is data on the same field on multiple profiles
- You can see the list of all of the specific data collected on each field by expanding (Show All)
Q: What happens to edited data when profiles are merged?
- Contact Data Edits override contact data from new primary profiles
- Once any user makes an edit to the contact data of a candidate, new profiles coming in have no effect on the contact data
- Custom Field edits override new fielded data from new primary profiles
- Only affects the specific field that has edited data
- New data goes into history for that field (Show All) but does not get indexed/not searchable.
Some examples of merging candidates with custom fields data.
- Both candidates have edited field A: after the merge, value from the primary profile is displayed in the field. The value from the merged profile is not saved.
- Main candidate has an edited field A, secondary candidate has an edited field B: resulting candidate has both fields A and B.
- Main candidate has no value for field A, secondary candidate has an edited value for the same field: resulting candidate has the edited value for the field.
- Main candidate has an edited value for field A, secondary candidate has an original value for the same field: resulting candidate has the edited value, the original value can be seen under Show All.
- Main candidate has an original value for field A, secondary candidate has an edited value for the same field: resulting candidate has the edited value, the original value can be seen under Show All.
- Main candidate has an original field A, secondary candidate has an edited field B: resulting candidate has A and B fields.
- One candidate has original field A, another candidate has original field B: resulting candidate has both A and B fields.
- Both candidates have the same original field: resulting candidate has the value of the primary profile, the other value can be seen under Show All.
Q: I know that 2 candidates in Talemetry are the same person but they have different emails (or one is missing an email). How can I merge them?
- Go to one of the profiles that you want to merge
- Edit Contact Info
- Change email address to be the same as the other profile (i.e. edit an old email address of the candidate and enter the new/correct/preferred email address that exists as another candidate)
- You will be prompted to merge. Confirm
- You will see the new combined Candidate with both of the profiles. The default profile will be chosen based on which one is the newest profile.
