How does CATS identify duplicate records?

When adding a record to CATS, we perform checks to identify if it already exists in order to prevent creating a duplicate. These checks depend on the type of record you're trying to add.

For candidates:

Primary email match
Any social media field URLs match
First name, last name and zip code match
First name, street address, city and state match
First name, last name, and phone number match

For contacts:

Primary email match
Any social media field URLs match
First name, last name and zip code match
First name, last name, address, city and state match
First name, last name, and phone number match

For jobs:

Title, city and state match an already active job

For companies:

Name matches leftmost portion of an existing company. For example, if "Acme" is entered and a company named "Acme, Inc." already exists, a duplicate would be found
Website match

Mass import:

In addition to the list above, our mass import tool can identify duplicates with the following criteria:

CATS ID

Browser extension:

In addition to the list above, our browser extensions will identify candidates and contacts as duplicates with the following criteria:

First name, last name, city, and state match
First name, last name and employer match
Current social media URL

Street addresses must contain both a letter and a number to prevent "lazy" addresses (for example, "New York, NY") from incorrectly flagging records as duplicates.

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.

It is not possible to customize how CATS locates duplicates or to disable duplicate detection.

If a duplicate record has made it into your site, please see our merging duplicate records article.