Duplicate candidate profiles split one person's history across two records, waste your team's time, and can send the same outreach twice. This article shows you how to stop duplicates before they happen, how Beamery merges them automatically, and how to merge them by hand when Beamery flags them. It is for anyone managing contacts in Beamery: talent acquisition teams, sourcers, and admins.
Why this matters
Clean data is what makes your talent database worth trusting. When recruiters can trust the data, adoption grows across the team. Duplicate profiles do the opposite: they scatter a candidate's activity across records, create doubt about which profile is correct, and lead to duplicated effort.
Managing duplicates keeps one candidate as one profile, with a single complete timeline. Search before you add, let automatic deduplication do the work where it can, and merge the rest when Beamery prompts you.
Who can access this
Automatic deduplication applies to every contact added to Beamery. There is no setup required and nothing to switch on. Manual merging is available to users who can view and edit contact profiles.
How to prevent duplicates before they happen
The best way to manage duplicates is to avoid creating them. Search Beamery for a contact before you add them. There are three ways to do this.
Quick Search
Use Quick Search to find contacts by name, email address, or ATS ID (Applicant Tracking System ID). Search by email address where you can, since email is the surest way to confirm you have the right person. If a name returns many results, use Data Filters instead (see below). The Contact Type also shows in the Quick Search dropdown, so you can tell an employee profile apart from an internal applicant profile at a glance.
Search from the Beamery Extension
Search inside the Beamery Extension works much like Quick Search in the platform. Click the magnifying glass icon to open Search. Search by email address to be sure you have the right individual, or by name. When you view a public LinkedIn profile, the Extension shows the contact automatically if they were already created in Beamery with their public LinkedIn URL on file.
Use Data Filters
Data Filters are the best way to identify a contact using more than one data point. For example, you can
filter for a contact by email address AND first name AND last name. Matching on all three means you
can be fairly certain any result is the same individual. Save the filter configuration as a Saved Filter, then
return to it any time you want to run a duplicate check before adding a contact.
How automatic deduplication works
For automatic deduplication to happen, a contact needs a unique identifier: an email address or a social profile URL, such as a public LinkedIn profile URL. Email address is the preferred unique identifier, because it is the only piece of information guaranteed to be unique to one person.
Unique identifiers Beamery uses include:
- Email address
- Social link
- ATS ID
- WorkerID
If a contact is added with a unique identifier that already exists on a profile, the two profiles are merged automatically. This applies however the contact is added: manually, via the Beamery Extension, via spreadsheet import, or via a Form submission.
Example. A colleague adds a contact from the Beamery Extension and includes the email address. Six months later, you import the same contact with the same email address. On import, the profile you added is merged automatically into the one your colleague created. Instead of "contact added" in your Notifications, you will see "contact updated." If the contact name matches on both profiles, you will also. see an alert in the profile info section.
The advantage: automatic deduplication lets you add new data to existing profiles. On a spreadsheet import, as long as every contact has an email address, any that already exist in Beamery simply get the new information added to their existing profile. Some organizations use this to bulk update fields, including custom fields. The same is true for Beamery Forms: Forms require an email address by default, so a returning prospect's form data is added to their existing profile rather than creating a duplicate.
If candidates share the same name but not the same email address or social URL, they will not merge automatically. You will see the potential duplicate banner on those profiles instead. Follow the manual steps below to review and merge them.
How to merge duplicate profiles manually
When there is more than one profile for the same candidate, merge them into a single profile to avoid
confusion and duplicated effort. Follow these steps.
-
Open the merge options. When Beamery detects potential duplicates, an alert banner appears at the top of the profile. Click Review & open merge options. Beamery identifies potential duplicates using Integration ID (if applicable), email address, social link, and full name. If you do not see the duplicate marker but are certain you have found duplicates, check that the contact names are an exact, case-sensitive match, refresh the page, and the alert should appear. Switch between the duplicates using the dropdown in the top right.
If two candidates share the same name and email address but have different
ATS IDs, the alert will not appear. This is because they are synced from your integration, where
the profiles are treated separately. - Review what will be kept and what will be removed. A modal appears showing every potential duplicate Beamery has identified, including the contact you are currently viewing. A red trash can icon marks each data point that will be removed from the merged contact, so you can see clearly which data is retained and which is deleted permanently. For example, if two email addresses each carry the primary tag, all email addresses carry over to the merged contact, but the primary tag is removed from the duplicate contact (shown by the red trash can).
- Take a closer look if you need to. To inspect a potential duplicate's full profile before deciding, click the diagonal arrow icon next to their name.
- Move between multiple duplicates. If there is more than one potential duplicate, move between them using the arrow icons at the top right of the modal. Only two profiles can be merged at a time, so review and merge each duplicate one at a time.
- Decide, or defer. If you are certain the profiles are not duplicates, click Keep both contacts. This stops them from being suggested as duplicates in future, for you and for everyone on your team. If you are unsure, take no action and close the modal with the x in the top right. This can be a good moment to assign a colleague a task to confirm whether the profiles should be merged.
- Choose the primary profile. Once you are satisfied the profiles are duplicates, decide which one is the primary profile. The merged profile pulls information from both, but the primary profile's information shows as the primary. For example, the primary contact's email becomes the primary email, and the duplicate's email appears as an additional email. For single-value fields such as Status, the value comes from the primary contact. Select the primary by clicking the radio button at the top of that contact.
-
Review and merge. Review the post-merge result on the far right of the modal, then click Merge contacts.
Once merged, contacts cannot be un-merged.
After merging, you will see the resulting profile. The timelines of both original profiles combine onto the new merged profile. Please note this means some events may appear twice where you might expect one, for example how and when the profile was created.
Automatic merging with CSV import
When you complete a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) import, you may be importing contacts that already exist in Beamery. Beamery automatically merges duplicate records that have matching email
addresses and/or social URLs. This covers both duplicates within the same CSV file and candidates who
are already in Beamery.
If candidates share the same name but not the same email address or social URL, they will not merge automatically, but the potential duplicate banner appears on those profiles. Follow the manual steps above to review and merge them. For instructions on running a CSV import, see How to Import Contacts from a Spreadsheet into Beamery.
Employees and internal applicants
The Contact Type on a profile is visible in the Quick Search dropdown. This lets you tell an employee profile apart from that person's internal applicant profile, so you do not merge two records that are meant to stay separate.
Merging contacts via the API
You can also merge duplicate contacts via the API (Application Programming Interface). Neither contact may be deleted or anonymized for this to work. Please note this endpoint should only be used to keep contacts in sync with your ATS integration, and it should be used with caution, since it can cause data integrity issues with the ATS. See the full API developer notes for detail.
Conclusion and next steps
You can now prevent duplicates by searching first, rely on automatic deduplication whenever a unique identifier is present, and merge duplicate profiles by hand when Beamery flags them. Keep email addresses on your contacts wherever possible, since that is what makes deduplication work.
For related steps, see An Overview of the Beamery Profile. If a merge does not behave as you expect, contact your CSM (Customer Success Manager) or Beamery Support.