Every candidate arrives from a different direction: an application through your website, a lead from a Meta campaign, a CV that lands in your mailbox, a phone number on a sticky note. As long as those pieces stay scattered, you spend most of your time looking things up again.

Under Candidates it all comes together. Each candidate has one profile holding contact details, CV and cover letter, every job they applied for, the status of each application, your colleagues' feedback and a score. That gives you this: one up-to-date file per candidate that you read at a glance and that flows straight into your ATS.

By the end of this article you will know how to filter the overview, create a candidate yourself, update a profile, and recognise which details were filled in by AI. You will find the screen under Menu → Recruitment → Candidates.

Before you start

• You need access to the Recruitment module. If you cannot see the screen, the module is switched off or your role has no rights to it.
• Which fields are available — and which are required — is set under Settings → Attributes → Candidates. Anything switched off there does not appear in this screen.
• To use Resume parsing and the Review score, the AI features have to be on. What they do and how to recognise them is covered in AI: resume parsing and review score.
• If you work with an ATS connection, that connection decides which fields you may change in Booston. Each section below says where that applies.

The Candidates overview

The overview is your working list. At the top you see the title Candidates, the New candidate button on the right, and below it a counter that tells you exactly what you are looking at: Table records found for: …, followed by the filters currently applied.

What the columns show

• Name — the candidate's name. Click it to open the profile.
• Latest candidate action — the most recent action: the job applied for, or Open application for an open application.
• Last action date — the date of that latest action.
• User ID — the candidate's unique number within Booston.
• Recruiter — the recruiter attached to the job.
• Campaign — the campaign the candidate came from.
• Highest progression — a progress bar showing the highest status reached across all of this candidate's applications.
• Score — the rating in stars.
• Resume (the eye icon in the column header) — a document icon next to every candidate with a CV. One click opens the CV in a new tab.
• Edit — opens the candidate's profile.

Filtering and searching

Every column with a filter or search icon can be narrowed down:

• Search on Name or on Latest candidate action.
• Filter by period using Last action date (start and end date).
• Filter by Recruiter and by Campaign.
• Filter by Highest progression: Lead, Application, No contact, Contact, No potential for us, No reaction back, Appointment, Presented to team, Presented to client, Rejected by team, Rejected by client, Candidate withdraw and Hired.
• Filter by Score: from Zero stars to Five stars.
• Filter by Resume: With resume or No resume — useful when you only want to review candidates who have a CV.

Every active filter is listed in the counter at the top. Clear Filters resets them in one click.

Expanding a row

Click a candidate to unfold the row. You then see each application separately, with its source (through the website, a Meta lead form, a campaign, or added by hand), the date, and the status of that specific application. Handy for candidates who applied for several jobs: the overview shows the highest status, the unfolded row shows the full picture.

Changing status and score directly

You do not have to open the profile to change something. Click the stars under Score to give a rating, or use the edit icon next to the progress bar to change an application's status.

Creating a new candidate

Click New candidate at the top right. A panel opens with the title Create Candidate. You only fill in the essentials here; you complete the rest of the profile afterwards.

1. Upload the CV. Drag the file into the upload area Click or drag file to this area to upload candidate's CV, or click to pick a file. With Resume parsing switched on, the message Parsing CV… appears and Booston fills in the form for you — see AI: resume parsing and review score. The file stays visible with its name and size; the bin icon removes it again.
2. Under Select action, choose the job the candidate is applying for. Type to search; the list shows the job title, the job number and the recruiter. If the candidate does not belong to a specific job, choose Open Application. This field is required.
3. Complete the name and contact details: First name, Middle name, Last name, Email, Phone and Mobile. For phone numbers you pick the country code first and type the number after it.
4. Click Save & close. Booston creates the candidate, links the chosen action, files the CV under Files as Resume and opens the profile straight away on the Overview tab. To stop halfway, click Cancel.

Seeing fewer fields here than you expected? That is deliberate: the panel shows only the action, the name and the contact details. You add everything else in the profile, via Editing a candidate.

AI: resume parsing and review score

Booston can do two things for you automatically as soon as a CV is present. You recognise both by their purple icons — across the whole dashboard, purple means: this was filled in or decided by AI.

Resume parsing — reading the CV

When a CV is uploaded, Booston reads the document and fills in the candidate fields: name and contact details, but also education level, industry, competences, languages, driving licence, availability and every other attribute you have activated.

Two things worth knowing:

• Only empty fields are filled. Anything you have already entered is left untouched.
• Every field filled by AI gets a purple Booston icon next to its label. Hover it and you see Filled by AI. So in the profile you can see immediately which details came from the CV and which were entered by a person.

Change such a field yourself and the purple icon disappears when you save. From that moment it is your value.

Review score — rating the candidate

With Review Score switched on, Booston rates the candidate based on the CV, the job text, the company information and your own rating instructions. The result is a score from one to five stars.

• An AI score shows purple stars with a purple AI icon beside them, both in the overview and in the profile.
• Give a rating yourself and your score takes over, and the purple display disappears. Your judgement always wins.

With Review Notes switched on as well, Booston writes a short justification as feedback on the candidate: a summary, the strengths in green and the points of attention in red. That feedback sits in the side panel under Feedbacks, among your colleagues' notes.

Where do you switch this on?

Go to Settings → General → AI settings → Candidates. There you will find:

Below that sits an instruction field per star level, from one to five stars. In it you describe when a candidate deserves which score. The more concrete those instructions, the better the rating matches your practice.

And this goes to your ATS too

The details AI takes from the CV do not stay inside Booston. As soon as the reading is done, Booston exports the candidate to your ATS — including the fields just recognised. The rating goes along too: if you gave stars yourself, those are exported; if you did not, the AI score goes instead. That way the candidate is complete in your ATS straight away, with no retyping.

Editing a candidate

In the overview, click the candidate's name or the edit icon in the Edit column. A panel opens with the title Edit Candidate, followed by the name.

At the top you see a summary: the full name, the creation date, the highest status reached and the source of the first action. Below that are three tabs.

The Overview tab — everything at a glance

The reading view, organised in cards that follow the same layout as the edit form:

• General — gender, date of birth, nationality, languages spoken.
• Contact — e-mail address and phone numbers. Addresses and numbers are clickable, so you call or mail straight from the screen.
• Location — the full address, with a link to the map.
• Skills & Preferences — work experience, experience level, industry, contract type and competences.
• Misc — notes, driving licence, means of transport.
• Personal & Social — about the candidate, hobbies and all social media profiles (LinkedIn, Instagram, X, GitHub, TikTok, website, blog, video).
• Motivation & More — reason for leaving, motivation and other information.
• Questions — the answers to the open questions and select lists from your application form.
• Documents — a preview of the CV and the cover letter.

Cards without content stay visible but empty, so the layout stays recognisable.

The Edit information tab — changing details

This is where you edit the profile. The layout follows the cards from Overview exactly, so you never have to hunt for where something belongs.

• The purple AI icon next to a label means the value came from the CV. Change it and the marker disappears — see Resume parsing — reading the CV.
• Under Location you will find the Location search field at the top with the map beside it. Type an address, pick the right result and the separate address fields fill themselves. This layout is identical to Locations and Jobs, so entering an address works the same way everywhere.
• Required fields are marked with an asterisk in front of the label.
• Click Save & close at the bottom to save, or Cancel to close without changes.

The Files tab — managing CV and cover letter

A table with the candidate's documents:

• File Name — the file name, searchable.
• File Type — Resume or Motivational letter, filterable.
• Action — download or delete.

The upload area sits below the table. Drag a file into it and Booston asks through Choose file type whether it is a Resume or a Motivational letter. Choose Resume with Resume parsing switched on and this CV is read automatically as well.

The side panel: context, feedback and actions

To the right of the tabs sits a column that always stays visible.

• Recruiter — the recruiter attached to the job.
• User ID — the candidate's number in Booston. ATS ID — the number the candidate has in your ATS. Handy when checking an export.
• Score — the rating in stars, with a purple AI icon when the score comes from AI, as described in Review score — rating the candidate. Click to give your own rating.
• Feedbacks — the notes about this candidate. Type your note in the text box and click Save. You can edit or delete your own notes later; leave your colleagues' notes alone. The AI justification appears here too.
• Actions — one card per application, with the job title (clickable through to the job), the source, the date and the status. The edit icon moves an application one stage further. Add action links the candidate to an extra job or to an open application — for example when someone also fits a second role.

Practical tips

• Upload the CV first. Do it before filling in any fields and AI takes most of the typing off your hands. Fill things in by hand first and those values stay, with AI only completing what is still empty.
• Check the purple fields. They are a good starting point, but a CV is not always unambiguous. Go through them before you pass the candidate on to a colleague or to your ATS.
• Invest once in your star instructions. The quality of the Review score stands or falls with how concretely you describe when a candidate deserves one, three or five stars. Half an hour of work pays off in usable scores for months.
• Use the No resume filter to see who you still need to request a CV from — those candidates get no automatic rating either.
• Keep one action per job. If a candidate later applies for a second role, use Add action rather than changing the existing action. That keeps the history of both applications intact.
• Record your reasoning in Feedbacks. A short note when rejecting or advancing someone saves your colleagues — and you, three months from now — a lot of digging.

Coming soon

We are working on a number of improvements that make creating and editing candidates smoother and bring the screen further into line with the rest of the dashboard. Once they are live they work automatically, and we will update this article.

• Deleting a file affects only that file. When you remove a CV or cover letter, all of the candidate's other details stay in place.
• The Overview tab stays complete. After uploading or deleting a file all cards stay visible; you no longer have to close and reopen the panel.
• Uploading a CV for a new candidate runs without error messages, including when AI is not switched on for your environment. Without AI the upload area simply works as a regular file upload.
• The chosen job sticks. Pick a specific job under Select action and the candidate is linked to it, rather than being saved as an open application.

Need help?

Cannot work it out, or unsure which setting fits your situation? Mail support@booston.io or call 085 0044 215 and mention:

• the name of your environment;
• which candidate or job it concerns;
• what you want to achieve, or the message you see.

Would you rather walk through the screen together? Book a free 30-minute online demo — then we will go through it with you. Job Done!