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How can I add multiple candidates in bulk?
How can I add multiple candidates in bulk?

Bulk upload using one of 3 methods: manually entering candidate data, uploading a spreadsheet, or dropping in multiple resumes.

Edd Slaney avatar
Written by Edd Slaney
Updated over 7 months ago

Pinpoint offers 3 methods for manually adding candidates to an open vacancy.

All three methods start with the Add Candidates button on any jobs' overview page.

Clicking this button opens the Create from Form page, where you can add a single candidate's application details in if you're uploading an individual application. If however you want to upload more than one, you can do so by downloading our Template spreadsheet, filling it in and uploading it again, or by dragging multiple resumes into Pinpoint and letting it do the heavy lifting for you.


Before uploading candidates in bulk, it can be really useful to have the "New bulk applications created" notification switched on in your Settings > Notifications.

This will let you know when your upload has been successful, and give you some helpful information about any unsuccessful uploads - such as missing data, or an issue with the file type.

Uploading candidates via Spreadsheet/CSV File.

In this method, each row in the spreadsheet you upload will contain a new candidate's information.

Step 1: Click on the Download Template button from the New Applicant page.

Step 2: Open the .csv file in a spreadsheet editor such as Microsoft Excel or Apple's Numbers. Fill out the data for each candidate in a separate row of the spreadsheet.

Caution: The data in this spreadsheet needs to be added with precision as some of it must conform to specific conventions, as follows:

  • Phone Numbers: The field 'phone_iso2' need to be the ISO3166 Alpha-2 country code for our system to correctly add the country code onto the phone number when sending SMS messages. For the full list click here, but some of the more common ones are:

    • GB - Great Britain

    • US - United States

    • CA - Canada

    • ZA - South Africa

    • VN - Viet Nam

    • ES - Spain

  • Then, the 'phone' number field must not contain the country code.

  • Locale should be set to 'en', unless you have Pinpoint configured for multilingual use, in which case you can use any locale you have enabled the platform for. You can see Pinpoint's available locales in our Developer's documentation here.

  • Date of Birth: This need to be in the format YYYY/MM/DD. A word of caution: when opening a CSV in Excel, the program will attempt to convert any dates to your local standard date format (such as DD/MM/YYYY in the UK) so the example data in the CSV file may be misleading. Always use YYYY/MM/DD.

  • Postcode: is ZIP code for those outside the UK.

  • For answers to pre-screening questions:

    • Questions that require a Yes/No answer should be written as TRUE for Yes and FALSE for No.

    • For multiple choice questions, list any answers separated by a comma ( , )

Step 3: Save the file and upload it back to Pinpoint by clicking the Import Data button and follow the upload instructions.

Step 4: If any errors were detected in the CSV file, Pinpoint will alert you to the problematic data and you will need to edit the document to resolve any of the stated issues and re-attempt the upload before it will work correctly.

You can import up to 50 candidates at a time. If you need to import more than 50 candidates, please split your CSV file into multiple files and repeat the upload process.

Step 5: Once uploaded, Pinpoint will give you the option to review the candidates and make sure the details and answer they gave are correct. You can click on the down arrow to expand each candidate's application to review and edit the data. Once you are happy everything is correct, you can press the Create Candidates button to add them all to Pinpoint


Uploading candidates by creating from Résumé / CV

Step 1: From the New Applicants page, click on the Create from Résumé/CVs tab.

Step 2: Either drag and drop resumes into the Drag and Drop area, or click on that area to open the document uploader.

You can upload up to 20 résumés/CVs at one time. If you need to upload more candidates, please do this in multiple batches of up to 20 résumés/CVs.

Step 3: When you press the Create Applications button, the platform will upload the documents and create the candidates automatically from the data inside the Resume. This will be done in the background so you can continue to work while it's being done, and you'll be notified when the upload is complete. You will then be able to review the candidates who will now be in the 'Applied' workflow stage of the job.

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