Candidate identity resolution
Candidate identity resolution is the process of determining whether multiple source records belong to the same real person while preserving source provenance, uncertainty, and a review boundary for ambiguous matches.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-06
Why it matters in recruiting and sourcing
Every downstream candidate feature depends on identity. A false merge can combine the wrong employment history, skills, contacts, clearance evidence, and recruiter activity. A missed merge inflates duplicate counts and wastes review time. Identity must therefore be treated as its own evidence problem.
Example
A GitHub profile and provider record share a name and employer, but location and chronology conflict. SourcingOS should preserve the proposed link as uncertain until stronger identifiers or recruiter review resolve it rather than silently merging the records.
Common failure modes
- Merging on name similarity alone
- Treating employer match as definitive identity
- Discarding source identifiers after a merge
- Allowing cross-tenant identity decisions to leak
- Calculating source uniqueness before identity resolution