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Deleting Candidate Data

When a candidate asks for their data to be removed, delete their candidate record. This page lists what that removes, what it does not, and what you have to do yourself.

Only Super Admins and Hiring Managers can delete candidates. Deleting cannot be undone.

How to delete​

Open the candidate and select Delete. If the same person applied to several jobs, each application is a separate candidate record: search for their email address in Candidates and delete each one.

Deleting a job also deletes every candidate who applied to it.

What is deleted​

Everything OpenATS stores about the candidate:

  • name, email address and phone number
  • the CV file, the text read from it, and any AI analysis of it
  • answers to application questions
  • assessment attempts, answers and scores
  • interviews, scorecards and ratings
  • offers and rejection records
  • the history of emails sent to them from OpenATS, including the text of each email
  • the candidate's activity timeline, stage history and the team chat about them

The database records are removed immediately. The CV file is erased from storage by the background worker a moment later, so the worker has to be running. If storage cannot be reached, the worker keeps trying for most of a day and writes a [resume-delete] line to its log each time. If it gives up, the log line names the file so you can remove it by hand.

A CV that was uploaded on the careers page by someone who never sent the application is erased automatically about an hour after the upload.

What is not deleted​

OpenATS cannot reach these. Remove them yourself if the request covers them:

  • Emails already sent. They are in the candidate's mailbox, in the sent items or inbox of anyone copied in, and in your email provider's own log (most SMTP providers keep a record of each email).
  • Calendar entries. An interview that was added to an interviewer's Google Calendar stays there, with whatever details of the candidate it holds.
  • Backups. A database backup made before the deletion still contains the candidate. The same goes for point-in-time recovery on a hosted database, and for backups or version history of the CV bucket. Old backups should expire on a schedule you can state.
  • Messages in a job's team chat that mention the candidate by name. Only the chat on the candidate's own page is deleted.
  • Copies people made. A CV that someone downloaded, printed or forwarded.

Logs​

Server logs record that an application arrived and that a candidate was deleted using the candidate's id and the job's id, not their name or email address. Keep log retention short all the same, since logs are not rewritten when a candidate is deleted.