This article explains the setup and management of disqualification of candidates during the application process. There are two types of disqualification of candidates; either because they did not meet the position's requirements and were rejected, or because they withdrew from the process for their own reasons.
Tip Setting up a variety of predefined disqualification reasons in your Personio account will improve your Personio reporting and analytics on applicant data exports. Find out more here.
Set up Disqualification Reasons
To predefine disqualification reasons in Personio, you need access-rights for the recruiting settings.
- Go to Settings > RECRUITING > Recruiting > Disqualification reasons to create Rejection reasons and Withdrawal reasons.
- Select the type of disqualification reason you want to set up and click Add reason.
- Type in the reason and Save.
In the following, you can find some examples of useful disqualification reasons to set up:
| Rejection reasons | Withdrawal reasons |
| Candidate not suitable for the role | Accepted offer at another company |
| Compensation expectation too high | Candidate did not show for the interview |
| Failed test | Candidate applied to wrong position |
| Position eliminated / on hold | Not willing to relocate |
| Company does not wish to sponsor work Visa | Position does not meet career objectives |
| Lack of fit for the company | Compensation/salary not matching expectations |
Manage a Candidate's Rejection or Withdrawal
To disqualify a candidate from the selection process, either because they got rejected or withdrew, follow these steps:
- Go to Recruiting > Candidate Profile > Disqualify.
- In the modal, select Reject candidate or Candidate withdrew.
- If you have already predefined disqualification reasons, select a suitable reason from the drop-down menu.
- You can add a Note for further clarification. Notes will appear in the Overview of the candidate profile, as well as in a column of the Excel when Exporting Application Data.
- If you want to anonymize the candidate's personal data, activate the checkbox. The Disqualification reason and Notes inserted during the disqualification will not be deleted when anonymizing candidate data. Find out more about Anonymizing and Deleting Candidate Data.
- If the candidate withdrew, click Disqualify.
If the candidate was rejected, you can either select Reject with email, to send a rejection email automatically to the candidate from within Personio using an email template, or you can simply Reject.
Tip you can also schedule this email to be sent at a later stage by clicking the clock
.
The status of the application will then be shown as Rejected or Withdrawn, and the disqualification reason will appear in the Overview tab of the candidate profile.
Reject Candidates in Bulk
To save time, you can also reject a set of candidates in bulk instead of individually.
- Go to Recruiting > Applications and select the candidates you want to reject by ticking the checkbox in front of their name.
- Click the Actions button and select Disqualify from the list of options.
- Then follow steps two to six described in the point above.