Candidate Availability Searches

This article describes the way that the candidate Availability fields work within a candidate Search.
The behaviour described is specific to searches and the system behaves differently when you are using the [Candidates] workbench filters.

Candidate Availability dates.

The date when a candidate becomes available can be stored on the candidate record.
It can be seen either at the top right of their candidate recored in the [Profile] section or at the bottom centre of the 'Requires' page of their record.

Searching using Available Dates

When you do search for these you just put a date in the "from" on the search.  This will search for anyone who is available at that specific date.

In the following examples you can see how this works.

Candidate 1 -  12/12/2013 – 18/11/2014
Candidate 2 -  12/01/2014 onwards
Candidate 3 -  12/02/2014 onwards

Scenario 1:
Search Availability  [12/01/2014] – [--/--/----]
If I put 12/01/2014 in the from date, then it will bring back Candidate 1 and Candidate 2 who are both available at that time.  Candidate 3 is unavailable until 12/02/2014 so does not come in to the search.
Result = Candidate 1 & Candidate 2

Scenario 2:
Search Availability  [12/01/2014] – [01/03/2014]
If you put a from and to date in then it is looking for people available for that entire time slot, so if I put in from Candidate 1 and 2 will still be brought into the search, but Candidate 3 is not available for the first month of that period so again would and should be excluded. i.e. They need to be available before (or on) 12/01/2014  and not become unavailable before 01/03/2014
Result = Candidate 1 & Candidate 2

Scenario 3:
Search Availability  [13/02/2014] – [--/--/----]
If I asked the system to look for people available from 13/02/2013 then this looks for people who are available at that date, and all the candidates above would be brought into the search as they are all available at that time.
Result = Candidate 1 Candidate 2 & Candidate 3

Scenario 4:
Search Availability  [12/01/2014] – [05/12/2014]
Once again, because you enter a from and to date in then it is looking for people available for that entire time period. In this case  Candidate 1 ceases to be available before the end of the time period, and so will be excluded. Candidates 3 does not become available early enough, so only Candidate 2 is suggested since they are the only one available for the entire period.
Result = Candidate 2 only.

Essentially if you want people available next week you just do a search for availablity from next weeks date.  This will bring everyone up who are available at that date.  You only put a “to” date in if you wish to find candidates who are available over a specific time period. (Although if you do not record any "To" dates on the candidate then there is no point at all as it will not make any difference).

You should think of the available from date on a candidate record as a "not available until" and the available To date on a candidate record as a "not available after". It will make more sense to you.