Overview

Block Candidate instantly suppresses a profile from all search, sourcing, and outreach across your entire Eightfold instance. Designed for urgent compliance situations like opt-out requests or conduct issues, it ensures organization-wide enforcement while fully preserving the candidate's data and history.

What happens when a candidate is blocked:

• The candidate is removed from all search results and recommended leads across the organization.
  
• All messaging and outreach through Eightfold are disabled.
  
• Most actions (like advancing stages or scheduling) are disabled, though recruiters can still tag, note, export, print, or delete the profile.
  
• Profile data is preserved for audit trails with restricted visibility.

Blocking is a toggle. The same menu location offers Unblock Candidate, which immediately restores full search visibility and contactability for all users.

Accessing the feature

1. Go to Candidate Profile.
   
2. Click the ⋮ (More Actions) menu.
   
3. Select Block Candidate.

Notes

• Scope: Tenant-wide, not tied to a specific job or requisition. Blocking a candidate affects every current and future opportunity they might otherwise match to.
  
• Duplicate profiles: If this candidate has other profile records linked as duplicates, the block status is reflected across the whole cluster from a visibility standpoint.
  
• Reversible: Yes, at any time, by any user with the appropriate permission — there is no waiting period or support ticket required.

Common use cases

• A candidate has explicitly asked not to be contacted again (opt-out).
  
• A candidate has been reported for inappropriate or abusive conduct.
  
• Your organization has a do-not-hire or conflict-of-interest policy that applies to this individual.
  
• You need to immediately stop all outreach to someone while an internal or legal review is in progress.

Recommendations

• Add a note explaining the reason for blocking so other recruiters and your team have context and an audit trail.
  
• Use Block Candidate when you need an immediate, org-wide suppression — it takes effect instantly for all users, everywhere.
  
• Periodically review blocked candidates and unblock when the underlying reason no longer applies (e.g., an opt-out request expires or a review concludes).

When not to use this

• Don't use it for a single role rejection. If a candidate simply isn't right for the specific job they applied to, reject or withdraw them from that application/pipeline instead. Blocking suppresses them from every future opportunity, not just the current one.
  
• Don't use it to delete data. Blocking hides a profile from search and contact — it does not remove the candidate's information. Use Delete Profile if the goal is data removal (subject to your data retention policies).
  
• Don't use it to manage duplicate profiles. If your concern is that a candidate has multiple, incorrectly-linked profile records, see the Exclude from Dupe Linkage feature instead.