A candidate applied in March, was rejected, and in September applies for the same role again. Element does not create a second candidate and does not report a duplicate — it recognises that this is the same person in the same project and handles it as a re-application.
What the system actually does
It depends on the state the candidate was in.
They were rejected — they are back in play. The system restores them to the project's application stage, the first one, and puts them at the top of the column. They do not return to where they left off: the process starts from the beginning, because this is a new application, not a reversed decision.
They were active — they stay where they are. Nobody moves them, because an ongoing process matters more than the fact that they submitted the form a second time.
In both cases the system records the new source — the one the second application came through. That way source statistics show the channel that actually worked this time.
How to spot it
A warning icon appears on the candidate card on the board, with the tooltip Re-application. Clicking it opens the candidate panel on the "Actions" tab. The same icon lights up when a candidate has filled in more than one application form in this project.
On the candidate's activity timeline you will find a Candidate applied again entry with the date.
This moves the GDPR clock
If your administrator has set an anonymisation deadline counted from the newest application, a re-application pushes that deadline forward. The countdown restarts from the new date.
This is deliberate: if the candidate has just written to you, the relationship is live, so their data should not disappear in two weeks only because the first contact was a long time ago. The GDPR settings article covers the deadlines in detail.
When it is not a re-application
If a candidate applies for a different role, this is not a re-application but an ordinary addition to a second project — the same person in two recruitments at once. And if the system creates a new profile for them instead of recognising the existing one, that is a case for the article on duplicate candidates, because the contact details evidently do not match.