Every time someone on your team disqualifies a candidate, Recruitee asks them why. That one extra click prevents accidental rejections, tells the rest of the team what happened, and turns your candidate database into something you can actually learn from — which roles lose people on salary, which ones lose them on skills. Your company starts with a set of default reasons, and you can rename, reorder, delete, or add to them at any time.

Note: To create or change disqualify reasons you need the Manage disqualify reason permission. Everyone who can disqualify a candidate can use the reasons, whether or not they can edit them.

How disqualify reasons work

Disqualify reasons are set up once for your whole company — the same list appears in every job.

When your company was created, Recruitee added seven reasons to get you started: Not a fit, Lack of knowledge, Hired elsewhere, Overpriced, Spam, Lacks interpersonal skills, and Wrong skill set. Treat them as a starting point and shape the list around how your team actually rejects people.

A reason can do more than label a rejection. You can attach automated actions to it, so that picking Not a fit also sends a rejection email, adds a tag, or creates a task — see Automated actions for disqualify reasons for the full setup.

The same list is used in a few other places:

Knockout questions disqualify candidates automatically, and each disqualifying answer points at one of your reasons.
Pipeline automations that disqualify a candidate ask you to pick a reason too.

Create disqualify reasons

Go to Settings > Workflow > Disqualify reasons.
Scroll to the bottom of the list and click Add new.
Type the reason into the Reason name field. You can use up to 255 characters.
Click Save, or Save and add another to keep going.

Note: The form only asks for a name. Automated actions are added afterwards, to a reason that's already saved — see Add automated actions to a reason below.

Tip: To slot a new reason in between two existing ones instead of at the bottom, hover between them and click the + that appears on the line.

If your list is empty, you'll see No disqualify reasons yet with an Add new button in the middle of the page instead.

Create a reason while you're disqualifying someone

You don't have to go to Settings first. When the disqualify drop-down menu is open — on a candidate profile, or while setting up a knockout question or an automation — click Edit disqualify reasons at the bottom of it. The full list opens in a window where you can add, rename, reorder, and delete, then click Done to go back to what you were doing.

Note: Edit disqualify reasons only appears for people with the Manage disqualify reason permission.

Edit, reorder, and delete reasons

All of this happens in Settings > Workflow > Disqualify reasons.

Rename a reason

Click the edit icon on the right of the reason, or double-click its name.
Change the text in the Reason name field.
Click Save.

Note: Renaming a reason doesn't rewrite history. Candidates who were already disqualified keep the reason as it was worded when they were rejected.

Change the order

Hover over a reason, grab it by the handle on the left, and drag it up or down. The order you set here is the order your team sees in the disqualify drop-down menu, so put your most-used reasons at the top.

Delete a reason

Click the edit icon on the reason you want to remove.
Click Delete.
Confirm with Delete reason.

Important: Deleting a reason can't be undone, and it also deletes any automated actions attached to it. Candidates already disqualified with that reason keep it on their profile — but no one will be able to choose it again.

If the reason is used by one or more knockout questions, Recruitee stops you first with Before you delete this reason... and asks you to pick a replacement. The knockout questions are switched over to the new reason.

Use disqualify reasons

Disqualify one candidate

Open the candidate's profile.
Find the job you want to disqualify them from and click Disqualify.
Pick a reason from the drop-down menu. Use the search box at the top if the list is long.

A lightning icon next to a reason means automated actions are attached to it. Click the icon to see what they'll do before you commit.

Disqualify candidates in bulk

Select the candidates you want to disqualify, from a job's pipeline or from candidate search.
Click the disqualify icon in the bulk actions bar.
Pick a reason in the Disqualify candidates window and confirm.

If you picked a reason with automated actions, Recruitee shows you which actions are about to run. You can go ahead with them, or choose Disqualify without actions to disqualify quietly.

Important: If you're disqualifying from candidate search rather than from inside a job, candidates who sit in more than one job are disqualified from all of their jobs at once, with the reason you picked. Recruitee warns you when that's the case.

Note: If the candidate is in a stage with Fair evaluations enabled, you'll be asked to confirm with Disqualify and show hidden evaluations? — disqualifying reveals the evaluations your team had hidden.

Find candidates by disqualify reason

Once reasons are in use, they become one of the more useful things to search on.

In Candidates, open the filters and you can narrow by:

Disqualify reason is / Disqualify reason is not — one or more of your reasons, or Any disqualify reason.
Disqualification type — Disqualified manually or Knockout question, so you can separate people your team actually looked at from people the application form screened out.

You can also add Disqualified by as columns and sort by them.

See disqualify reasons in reporting

Each job's dashboard has a Disqualify reasons chart — Learn why candidates get disqualified from the hiring process — showing how your rejections break down and how many of the job's candidates were disqualified in total.

This is where a well-maintained list pays off. If nine out of ten rejections are Not a fit, the chart tells you nothing; if half are Overpriced, you have a conversation to have about the salary range.

Cleaning up a list nobody uses
Your team has 30 reasons, and everyone picks the first one. Delete the ones that haven't been used in months, rename the vague ones ("Other" → "Withdrew during process"), and drag the three most common to the top. Rejections get labelled accurately again within a week.

Rejecting kindly at scale
You've hired for a role and have 40 people still in Applied. Attach a rejection email to a reason like Hired elsewhere, select all 40 in the pipeline, disqualify them with that reason, and let the automated action send the email — rather than leaving them without an answer.

Separating screening from judgement
Your application form has a knockout question on work authorization, pointing at a Not eligible to work reason. In search, filter by Disqualification type: Knockout question to check the question isn't screening out more people than you expected.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to pick a reason every time?

Yes. Tellent Recruitee won't disqualify a candidate without one.

What happens if I rename or delete a reason?

Candidates already disqualified keep the reason exactly as it was worded at the time. Renaming and deleting only affect what your team can choose from now on.

Can I have different reasons for different jobs?

The list is company-wide and the same in every job.

What happens to the reason if I requalify someone?

It's cleared. A requalified candidate is back in the pipeline with no disqualification on record for that job.

Who can edit the list?

Anyone with the Manage disqualify reason permission. Attaching automated actions needs Manage automated actions on top of that.

Can I add a reason without leaving the candidate profile?

Yes — open the disqualify drop-down menu and click Edit disqualify reasons at the bottom.

Create and use disqualify reasons