Reviewing inbound applicants
Work the Applicants page and the New applicants lane — read AI fit and match scores, view CVs, and add, store or decline applicants.
Applicants from your job portal, LinkedIn and your own website all arrive on one Applicants page (Jobs → Applicants). Kepler parses each CV and scores the applicant against the job, but nobody is added to a pipeline automatically: every applicant who isn't screened out as junk waits until a recruiter adds, stores or declines them.
Where applicants show up
- On Jobs, click Applicants in the toolbar. The button shows how many are waiting, and only appears while someone is.
- On the Jobs board, a job card with people waiting shows N new applicants to decide on. Click it to open that job's pipeline.
- On a job's Pipeline tab, the board starts with a New applicants lane while anyone is waiting (see below). In the table view, click Review on the line above the pipeline (N applicants need a decision) to open the Applicants page filtered to that job.
- On Pipeline, the line above the views does the same for every job.
- From an applicant notification.
The New applicants lane
On a job's pipeline board, each waiting applicant has a dashed card with their fit, where they applied and how long they've waited. Click Accept to stage to add them at the posting's stage, or Decline. You can also drag a card onto a stage to add them there, or onto the reject tray to decline. Click the card itself to open the full review in a side panel, with Accept to stage (the arrow picks another stage), Store only and Decline. In the panel, J and K (or the arrow keys) move between applicants, and A, S and D accept, store and decline.
The Applicants page
The chips across the top switch between Needs decision (the default), Screened out, Stored, Declined and Added, each with a count. All jobs and My jobs narrow the list; a job filter shows as its own chip, which you can clear.
Applicants are grouped by job, then by fit: Good fit, Knock-out (a must-have is missing), Low fit (folded away until you open it), then Not scored yet. Applicants who failed a screening rule sit last, under Failed a rule. Each row shows the applicant's name, fit, match percentage, headline and application date, plus flags such as duplicate? or unreadable CV.
Reviewing an applicant
Select an applicant to see everything on the right:
- Fit for this role — the match badge (Strong Match, Moderate Match or Weak Match) with a percentage, and the AI's reasons.
- Criteria — how the applicant meets each of the job's match criteria.
- May already be in your CRM — possible existing candidates, so you can merge instead of creating a duplicate.
- Experience (from the CV) and any screening answers. Click View CV to open the CV itself.
Deciding
Decide with the buttons in the bar at the bottom of the page:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Add to pipeline at stage | Creates the candidate record (or uses the existing one) and an application at that stage. Use the arrow beside the button to choose another stage under Add at stage. The default is the posting's stage, then your workspace's Inbound default stage. The button reads Accept & merge when the applicant will be merged into an existing record (one possible match, or the one you picked with Merge into this), Create as new when there are several possible matches and you haven't picked one, and Accept anyway when the applicant failed a screening rule. |
| Store only | Keeps the applicant as a candidate for other roles, without an application on this job. Stored applicants can be added to a pipeline later from Stored. |
| Decline | No candidate record is created and nothing is sent to the applicant. Declined applicants stay visible under Declined. |
Each decision shows Undo for a few seconds. Undoing an add removes the application, and the candidate too if the add created them and nobody has used the record since.
Use J and K (or the arrow keys) to move through the queue and X to tick the current applicant. Deciding is always a click on this page.
Screened out
Open Screened out to inspect applicants Kepler classified as spam or junk — nothing is deleted silently. You can still add one with Restore and add, or store it.
If a CV couldn't be read, the applicant stays in Needs decision marked unreadable CV. Use Retry in the Processing section, or open the CV and decide yourself.
Bulk review
In Needs decision, good fits arrive ticked. Tick or untick applicants (or use Select all), then choose Add N to pipeline, Store N or Decline N. The Low fit group has its own Store all and Decline all, and Handle the rest, at the top of an applicant's details, offers to add all of a job's good fits or store all its low fits at once. Applicants who might already be in your CRM are held back from bulk adds for a one-by-one decision.
Notifications
The job owner gets a notification straight away for a Strong Match good fit, and for an applicant whose CV couldn't be scored. Everyone else waiting is summed up once a day in an Applicants waiting for review notification. Choose how these reach you under Settings → Notifications, in Applicants.
Review applicants at least daily while a posting is live — response rates drop sharply after 48 hours, and the Good fit group tells you exactly who to call first.