Duplicacy Resolution Options in RBox – RBox

Summary
RBox allows you to control how duplicate candidates are handled during manual and automatic addition to the database. This article explains the duplicacy check options available and how each option works.

1. Details
Candidate duplicacy is a common scenario in any recruiting operation whether it is in placement business or Internal Hiring at a corporate. Multiple records for the same candidate may exist in your recruitment data due to resumes being sourced/received via varied sources such as Job Boards, email, submittal from company website etc.

Common scenarios due to which duplicacy happens:

Candidates sending their resume multiple times for different positions
Same resumes received by different recruiters
Resumes sent at various times are different as candidate may have gained more experience, changed jobs, additional degrees etc.

Example

A candidate ‘Deepak Sharma’ applies for a position you’ve advertised on a Job Board which gets added to your database via Chrome Extension.
The same candidate again sends you his resume for another similar position via email which gets added to the database too.
After telephonic screening of this candidate, a recruiter in the team asks the candidate to send an updated copy of his resume. This updated copy of the candidate’s resume also gets added to the database as a new candidate record.

Hence any Applicant Tracking System (ATS) needs to have a facility for detecting and handling duplicate resumes.

1.1 Duplicacy Resolution Options in RBox
RBox’s zeroDup silently ensures your resume database stays duplicate-free at all times. You can set automatic duplicate resolution options to control how RBox detects and handled duplicate/updated resumes when they are being added.

You can select from the following options via the System Configuration module for duplicacy resolution:

Smart Merge New with Existing: This option will automatically detect updated candidate details in parsed resumes and decide whether to merge these with existing candidate records (based on additional/new details), replace the existing resume file or skip the incoming resume.
Overwrite Existing Candidate: Setting this option will cause RBox to always replace the existing candidate resume with the incoming resume regardless of whether any updated details are detected in the incoming resume.
Skip New Candidate: Select this option if you want RBox to always skip incoming resumes that are duplicates of existing resumes regardless of whether any updated details are detected in the incoming resume.
Do Not Resolve Duplicacy: Set this option if you want to turn off the automatic duplicacy resolution. In this case RBox will not perform any action when duplicate candidates are detected. Note that this will lead to multiple copies of the same candidate getting stored in the database.

a. Example

Assume that a candidate record ‘Amit Gupta’ exists in the RBox database which contains the following qualification and employment information:

U.G Degree: B.Sc (Physics)
Past Employer: Silverline Industries Ltd.
Current Employer: Prime Systems Ltd.

Now the same candidate sends you an updated copy of his resume with the following updated details:

P.G Degree: M.Sc (Physics)
Past Employer: Prime Systems Ltd.
Current Employer: First Data Corporation

Now the handling of the 2^nd (updated) copy of the resume will happen as follows when each of the duplicacy resolution options mentioned earlier is set:

Smart Merge New with Existing: The 2^nd copy of the resume will get merged with existing record and the candidate details will appear as follows:

U.G Degree: B.Sc (Physics)
P.G Degree: M.Sc (Physics)
Past Employer1: Silverline Industries Ltd.
Past Employer2: Prime Systems Ltd.
Current Employer: First Data Corporation

Overwrite Existing Candidate: The existing details of the candidate will get overwritten by the details in the 2^nd copy of the candidate’s resume. The candidate details will then appear as follows:

U.G Degree: <blank> (earlier value reset)
P.G Degree: M.Sc (Physics)
Past Employer: Prime Systems Ltd.
Current Employer: First Data Corporation

Skip New Candidate: The existing details of the candidate will be retained with no change. The updated qualification & employment information in the 2^nd copy of the resume will be ignored.
Do Not Resolve Duplicacy: The existing candidate record will be retained with no change in qualifications & employment information and an additional candidate record will get added for the 2^nd copy of the candidate’s resume.

1.2 Setting Duplicacy Resolution Options
You can set the duplicacy resolution options at the overall system level and also when performing specific resume transfer operations from desktop, email etc.

Note that the duplicacy resolution option you set when performing individual resume transfer operations will override the system level option.

a. Setting System Level Option
You can set the duplicacy resolution option at the system level from the System Configuration module via a user login having administrative privileges.

Refer to the following help article to learn how to set the duplicacy resolution option at the system level: Candidate Sourcing Settings

b. Setting Option for Individual Operations
You can set the duplicacy resolution option individually when transferring resumes from the following sources:

Import from Desktop
PSAN Outlook Addin
PSAN Chrome Extension

2. Related Resources

Candidate Sourcing Settings