Managing candidates
Add candidates manually, from CVs, LinkedIn, imports or your job portal — and work their full story from one profile.
Candidates are the heart of your database. A candidate record carries identity and contact details, structured work history, documents, applications to jobs, interviews, placements and every email and note along the way.
Ways candidates enter Kepler
- Manual entry — open Candidates, click Add candidate and switch to the Enter manually tab.
- CV upload — upload one CV or a batch on the Upload CV tab of the same dialog (or paste a CV on the Paste text tab); AI reads each one and adds it as a candidate. See Adding candidates from CVs.
- From LinkedIn — import a profile in one click while browsing, with the Kepler Chrome extension.
- CSV import — see Importing your data.
- Job portal applications — applicants you accept from the Applicants page or a job's New applicants lane become candidates, with their CV attached and parsed (see Reviewing inbound applicants). Store only adds them as a candidate without putting them in the pipeline.
- LinkedIn applications — parsed from LinkedIn notification emails onto the same Applicants page.
- Email and WhatsApp attachments — with Save attachments to records on under Settings → Record capture, a CV someone sends is filed on their candidate record. With Create a candidate when someone new sends a CV also on, a CV from someone not yet in Kepler becomes a new candidate, and whoever received it is notified. Both apply to new messages only.
The candidate profile
Interviews, Placements, Lists, Calls and History sit under More.
| Tab | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Overview | The candidate at a glance: summary, consultant summary, work experience, work preferences, compensation, and skills & education. |
| Profile | The structured résumé — work history, skills, education — read from their CV or LinkedIn and editable. Profile history shows every change and can restore an earlier version. |
| Pipeline | Every job pipeline the candidate is in, with the current stage and outcome. |
| Notes / Tasks | Notes and manually logged calls, meetings and messages; reminders and follow-ups. |
| Communications | Synced conversations with the candidate. |
| Documents | CVs, formatted CVs and other files, uploaded by you or captured from email. See Resumes & documents. |
| Interviews | Interview history across all jobs. |
| Placements | Deals where this candidate was placed. |
| Lists | Talent pools and shortlists the candidate belongs to. |
| Calls | Recorded calls and meeting intelligence linked to the candidate. |
| History | The full timeline — stage moves, notes, meetings, field updates. |
Contact details, status, owner, availability, source and your custom fields sit in the Details panel: click Details › at the end of the tab row to open it over the page (on a small screen, Details is in the bar at the bottom). Click a field to edit it; its History icon shows every value it has held.
Current title and Current employer follow the newest role in the candidate's work history, so you change them by editing the Profile's work history. A CV or a LinkedIn update keeps them current the same way.
Availability
Availability records whether the candidate is Immediate, Unavailable or Unknown; their notice period is a separate field under Work preferences. Use availability in filters and kanban views when you're sourcing for a role.
Finding missing details
When a record has no LinkedIn, work email, mobile or personal email, Find details in the Details panel looks them up. A LinkedIn search is free; email and mobile lookups use credits, are only charged when something is found, and need the person's LinkedIn profile confirmed first. You can also select rows in a table and choose Find details to run a batch. Who can run lookups, and how many credits each person may use, is set under Settings → Enrichment.
By default, Kepler also searches the web for a LinkedIn profile whenever a candidate is added without one (Search the web for LinkedIn when a candidate is added, under Settings → Enrichment → Automatic). A sure match is added with Undo; anything less certain waits on the record for you to choose.
Once a candidate's LinkedIn is confirmed, Update from LinkedIn refreshes their roles, education and location from it. It uses 1 credit, and only when something changed; the changes show with Compare and Undo.
Comments and hover cards
- Comments — click the speech-bubble button at the top of a candidate, contact, company or job page to open its discussion (on a small screen, Comments is in the bar at the bottom). Type @ or click Mention someone to bring a teammate in; they're notified. Use the discussion's menu to Mute this discussion — mentions still reach you.
- Hover cards — rest the pointer on a candidate, contact or company name (in a table, a list or a record) to see their email, phone and LinkedIn with copy buttons, plus quick actions such as email, add a note, add a task or add to job. A missing detail offers Find. On a touch screen, press and hold the name.
Adding a candidate to a job
From the candidate, open Pipeline and add them to a job; or work from the job's Pipeline tab and add candidates there. Either way they enter the pipeline and can be scored by AI matching against the brief. See Pipeline stages.
Use Lists for long-running talent pools ("Java contractors — Zurich") so sourcing for the next similar role starts from a warm shortlist instead of a cold search.