When adding candidates and resumes to CATS, we perform several checks to identify if the candidate already exists in order to prevent creating a duplicate record. This includes (but is not limited to):

• When candidates apply to jobs on your website.
• When you email resumes into CATS via your resume inbox.
• When adding candidates using the "Add Candidate" area within CATS.
• When mass importing documents or data from CSV files (limited).
• When adding CATS via our Firefox toolbar, Outlook and Word plugins.

What happens when a duplicate is found varies. If adding a resume and a duplicate is found, the resume is added to the existing record. If a candidate applies online and a record already exists, any mismatched data is merged into the profile replacing any older information.

As of March 2010, the criteria that we use to determine whether or not a candidate is a duplicate record includes:

• Email match
• First name, last name and zip code match
• First name, street address *, city and zip code match
• First name, street address *, city and state match
• First name, last name and phone number match

* Street addresses must contain both a letter (a-z) and a number (0-9) to prevent "lazy" addresses (i.e.: "New York, NY" when that data _should_ be in city and state) from incorrectly flagging records as duplicates.

If any of these conditions are met with an existing record, then the new candidate is considered a duplicate. One additional note: not all of these methods are used during mass document or CSV imports, these utilities use only a few of these criteria.

It is not possible to customize how CATS locates duplicates or to disable duplicate protection. Similar duplicate protection applies to contacts, job orders and companies as well (with different criteria).

If a duplicate slips through because none of the above criteria is a match, there is a "Merge Duplicate Records" tool found in the datagrid mass actions which allows you to selectively merge records.