Deleted candidates and Trash

Deleting a candidate moves them to Trash. For 15 days an administrator can restore them exactly as they were. After 15 days they are deleted permanently.

What deleting does

When you delete a candidate, from Candidates or from Users:

• They disappear from every list: candidates, applications, referrals, vacancies, the calling queue, filters and their counts, reports and automated emails.
• They are signed out and cannot sign in.
• Nothing is thrown away yet. Their profile, applications, answers, remarks, call history and CV are kept, so a restore can bring them all back.

On Candidates, tick one or more candidates and choose Delete. They leave the list at once, and a message at the bottom left says they moved to Trash, with Undo for 10 seconds; the time waits while your pointer is on the message or it has keyboard focus. Undo puts them back as if nothing happened: nothing is deleted until those seconds are up. Recruiters and line managers have no Delete in their workspace: they ask an admin. Only an admin can restore a candidate from Trash.

Restore a candidate

Select Candidate Trash in the sidebar, or Trash at the top of Candidates. Only admins see it.

Each row shows who deleted the candidate, when, and how many days are left. Search by name, email or phone, or filter by Deleted by.

Candidates who deleted their own account are here too, marked The candidate (own account) in the deleted-by column; the Deleted by filter has one option that shows all of them. If one of them writes to support asking to come back, check it is really them before restoring — call the phone number on the account; the address an email arrives from is not proof on its own. Then Restore the row; they can sign in again straight away. Until then, signing in (with the right password), signing up or Forgot password tells them the account was deleted and until when it can be recovered. Candidates an admin deleted are only told their account is not active.

• Restore on a row brings that candidate back.
• Tick several rows and choose Restore selected to bring them all back at once.

Deleting several candidates at once is all or nothing: if any one of them cannot be deleted (for example, because it has referrals), none of them are and nothing changes. (Selections larger than 100 are sent in batches of 100, and each batch is all or nothing.)

A restored candidate returns to every list with their applications, answers and CV, and can sign in again.

After 15 days

Every night, candidates who have been in Trash for 15 days are deleted permanently: their profile, applications, answers, CV file and call recordings. This cannot be undone.

Once the 15 days are up, the row shows Deleting tonight and can no longer be restored, even if the nightly clean-up has not run yet.

A candidate who referred other candidates cannot be deleted. Deleting them is refused with a message saying they referred other candidates and asking you to contact support.

Adding someone who is in Trash

A candidate in Trash still holds their email address and phone number. If you try to add a new candidate with either, Workrize tells you the candidate is in Trash. Restore them instead.

A candidate deleting their own account

Since 4 October 2026 a candidate who deletes their own account from their profile goes to Trash like any other deleted candidate, and is erased after 15 days. Before that date it was erased at once, so older self-deletions are not here.