Introduction

Eightfold automatically links duplicate candidate profiles using signals like email, phone number, LinkedIn URL, and ATS candidate ID to provide recruiters with a consolidated view. The "Exclude from Dupe Linkage" feature allows you to stop this automated process for a specific profile.

When applied, the feature performs the following actions:

• It immediately unlinks the profile from its current duplicate cluster.
  
• It prevents future automatic re-linking during routine resume, application, or ATS syncs.

This guide explains the functionality, ideal use cases, and essential limitations, noting that reversing this action requires support assistance.

Accessing the feature

1. Navigate to the Candidate Profile.
   
2. Click the ⋮ (More Actions) menu.
   
3. Select Exclude from Dupe Linkage.

Important notes

• Takes effect immediately: existing links are broken right away, not just for future matches.
  
• Not a self-service reversal: unlike Block Candidate, this action cannot be undone from the profile page. Reversing it requires reaching out to your Eightfold support contact, who can restore normal duplicate-detection behavior for the profile.
  
• Not an absolute guarantee against merging: the exclusion stops automatic, system-driven linkage. It does not prevent a manual data-consolidation performed by Eightfold support if that's later determined to be necessary (for example, correcting a genuine data-quality issue).
  
• Scope: applies to the specific profile record you excluded, not to the candidate's identity in general — if the same person later creates a brand-new profile, standard duplicate detection still applies to that new profile.

Common Use Cases

• Two genuinely different people share contact details (for example, a shared team inbox, recruiting agency address, or a manager's email used by multiple applicants), and the system keeps incorrectly merging their profiles.
  
• A profile was mistakenly linked to someone else's record and needs to be split apart and kept separate.
  
• You need to protect a sensitive or high-profile candidate's record from being altered by an unrelated incoming duplicate match.

Recommendations

• Verify before excluding. Check the résumé, contact details, and application history of the profiles involved to confirm they really do belong to different people before using this action.
  
• Treat this as a semi-permanent decision — because reversal requires support intervention, only use it once you're confident the separation is correct.
  
• If your goal is simply to clean up a one-off duplicate (merge two profiles that are the same person), use profile merge/consolidation instead — this feature does the opposite of that.

When not to use this

• Don't use it to temporarily hide a profile. This feature governs duplicate-detection behavior, not visibility — it has no effect on search, sourcing, or contactability. Use Block Candidate for that.
  
• Don't use it if you're unsure whether the profiles are true duplicates. Excluding a profile that actually is a duplicate will keep the candidate's history permanently fragmented across multiple partial records, and undoing that mistake requires a support request rather than a simple undo.
  
• Don't use it as a one-off fix for a single bad merge. If you just need to correct one incorrect link without changing how the profile behaves going forward, ask Eightfold support to review the specific merge instead of excluding the profile from all future linkage.