Reject applicants on LinkedIn Recruiter

Who can use this feature?

This feature isn't available for Recruiter Lite.

LinkedIn Recruiter allows you to reject candidates who’ve applied to your job posting with or without a rejection message. You can only do this if you have chosen to collect applicants through Recruiter while creating your job post.

When you reject a cadidate, it moves their profile under archived. You can unarchive a candidate and move the profile into a different pipeline stage. However, if you selected to notify the candidate on rejection, then the candidate wouldn't be notified of the change.

You can either reject an applicant manually, or you can enable auto-archiving of candidates who don’t meet the required screening qualifications in your job posting or out of country applicants who apply to your job posting and send them rejection notices after they have been in your archive for a period of time. You can always move a candidate from the archive back to active status.

To manually reject an applicant for a job on Recruiter:

Click Jobs at the top of your Recruiter homepage.
Click on the applicant count number under the Applicant column. You will be routed to the Applicants tab in your project's Talent Pool.
On the Talent pool tab, click the Applicants button.
Click Reject to the right of the applicant’s name.
In the rejection window that appears, you can record your reason for rejecting the applicant by Select a rejection reason from the dropdown.

Note: Your reasons for rejection will only be visible to you.
You can send an email notification to the applicant informing them that their application will not be taken forward. You have the option of editing the rejection notification to suit your need.

If you wish to reject the applicant without sending them a notification, switch the toggle next to Send rejection notification to Off and click Reject without notifying.
Click Reject and notify.

Click Cancel to go back to your applicant list without rejecting the applicant.

You can reject multiple applicants at once by checking the box next to their names and clicking Reject at the top of the applicant list. Your reason for rejection for all the selected applicants will be the same.

Here's a tip

There are no templates for manually rejecting applicants, only for auto-rejecting applicants. When you send a manual rejection, you'll have to edit messages to candidates on an individual basis.