CATS was heavily based on the paper process of recruiting in its design. The idea is that anyone familiar with the paper process could quickly pick up CATS and become efficient right away. If you need to add a job order, you would pick up a company's manila folder, fill out a job order document and put it in the folder. For candidates, you'd have a stack of resumes. For contacts, a rolodex.

Because the fundamental purpose of a candidate is so exclusively related to hiring, and the purpose of a contact is for development of business, our goal from day one was to separate the records.

If you would prefer to "merge" together the candidate and contact records, and instead view a "person" record which consolidates the information from both profiles, that is possible:

1) Click on the "Settings" tab.
2) Click on "Administration" (blue bar).
3) Click on "General Configuration".
4) Enable the "Merge" feature (about 4 down).

Now, when viewing a candidate or contact record, you'll have the option to merge that record into it's pair. It will try to find a duplicate first -- if it cannot, it will add a new record. Once there's a merge, you can view and edit a "Merged" record which includes all the fields, extra fields, attachments, activities, jobs, etc. from both records merged into one.