---
title: Best Practices: Managing & Analyzing Archive Reasons
slug: best-practices-managing-and-analyzing-archive-reasons
docTags: G8dmC6tNw9fak7qGrSH3Z,f0XWRZYNmNCZ92aMGG0MU
createdAt: 2025-07-10T10:29:23.993Z
---

Archive reasons can reveal useful trends throughout your recruiting process, from top-of-funnel activity to late-stage outcomes, such as why candidates decline offers. This guide covers how to structure your archive reasons for analysis and how to explore the results using common fields and report types.

Before you begin, make sure your archive reasons are set up and ready to use. For instructions on adding, archiving, and deleting reasons, see [Configuring Archive Reasons](docId\:qJrF2_-0Z4Qq01TcsX392). 

We’ll start with a recommended taxonomy and guidance on special cases, then walk through how to create a custom grouping of reasons. Finally, you’ll find [example analyses](docId\:r1tYNIVQjQ5ikc3v8ctTF) for:

- Viewing archive reasons by stage group
- Filtering and exploring archive reasons in more detail
- Examining archive reason trends over time
- Using archive reasons to re-engage candidates

# Permissions & access

Archive reasons are available on all plans:

| Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
| ----------- | ----------- | ---- | ---------- |
| ✅           | ✅           | ✅    | ✅          |

:::hint{type="warning"}
By default, only Organization Admins can configure archive reasons. Elevated Access users can be granted access to archive reasons through [Additional User Permissions](docId\:MHy0TXb4sxnqYe9XKvN8e).
:::

Custom reports can be configured on the Plus, Enterprise, and Legacy Plus plans:

| Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
| ----------- | ----------- | ---- | ---------- |
| ❌           | ✅           | ✅    | ✅          |

:::hint{type="warning"}
Organization Admins and Elevated Access users can create reports. Elevated Access users will only see data they have permission to view.
:::

# Creating an effective taxonomy of archive reasons

The purpose of adding archive reasons is to facilitate a review of why candidates are being rejected or dropping out, and that why should drive insights that help improve your team's process. You may find, for example, that the primary offer decline reason shifted from relocation to compensation in the quarter you implemented new policies. This raises the point that you want to examine these reasons, generally speaking, via two broad methods: by trend over time and in aggregate.

![The trend in reasons over time to reveal changes due to your team's process and external market factors.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/n7JOLTtYK7cMq3p5LopWV_rejectedatonsiteinterviewbycategoryovertime.png)

The trend in reasons over time reveals changes due to your team's process and external market factors.

![A segmentation analysis, e.g. by department or interview stage group, helps identify dominant reasons.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/naFbEtx-DSXfTDtE4a0sV_onsiterejectionsbycandidate.png)

:::hint{type="warning"}
A pitfall to avoid: ambiguous reasons. You want your reasons taken in aggregate to be informative.
:::

Here are some recommendations to help identify the archive reasons that matter most to your team:

- What stage of the recruiting process are we most invested in improving? Do the archive reasons we have facilitate that process?
- Do you have any unique factors at your company or team that need to be accounted for? This can show up in archive reasons unique to evaluating certain company values or evaluating a very specific industry experience or skills that go beyond "lacks skills" type reasons.
- Pay close attention to whether the given reason is informative. One of the most common archive reasons we see is "offer declined." This reason makes sense when doing a very basic analysis of comparing all archives and seeing how many are offer declines. However, given you can group and filter by stage (and other conditions of interest) with Ashby, such a general offer reason does not provide much insight. Six months from now, when you analyze offer declines, you want to identify actionable signals about this critical stage in your recruiting process.
- Another common archive reason is "Other," which, in aggregate, can be taken to represent the fraction of your candidate archives that lack informative categorization. In our experience, the "other" option is a well-intentioned but easy default for recruiting teams that need to move quickly. We recommend checking whether "other" is a significant portion of your archive reasons and, if so, reviewing your available reasons.
- Consider what stage in your process you might use a particular reason. "Not a fit for role" might be acceptable at the application review or screen stage, but for later stages, more specific reasons that match hiring criteria, such as values or skill and level-based reasons, can help optimize your process.
- Another common archive reason is "Withdrew." This, in our opinion, is more of a category than a reason: there are many reasons a candidate may withdraw from the interview process, and your analysis should reveal them. Remember to ask yourself whether your archive reason informs a potential insight or action for your team.
- Archive reasons can also help other teams in your organization. For example, using the "Fraudulent candidate" reason can help your security teams identify and track suspicious activity more easily via a centralized marker.

If you're just getting started, or looking to improve your current setup, the next section presents a standard set of archive reasons by category.

# Recommendation: An example of a set of archive reasons

:::hint{type="info"}
Ashby supports archive reason categories, and our Greenhouse customers inherit the Greenhouse categories "Rejected by Org" or "Rejected by Candidate". Lever does not support archive reason categories, but Ashby's [Calculated Fields](docId\:wJbhW3Mnd_381wU1N8F-x) can help resolve that challenge by creating custom groupings.
:::

Depending on the size of your organization, the level of detail in your archive reasons may vary. Typically, larger organizations can support more reasons, as a larger volume of applicants permits greater specificity. For this reason, there is a judgment call here: if you're a small team just getting started, you may not want to get too detailed on all the reasons a candidate can exit consideration. For starters, an example set of archive reasons by archive reason groupings appears below.

## Category: Rejection by Organization

The reasons your organization uses may vary depending on your interview process, industry details, or certain policies. The reasons below serve as a standard starting set, but you may need to add more, e.g., specific values-related reasons.

| Rejection by Organization Reason                     |
| ---------------------------------------------------- |
| Lacks work authorization                             |
| Role fit: general skills/qualifications              |
| Role fit: experience level - too senior              |
| Role fit: experience level - too junior              |
| Reference/Background Check                           |
| Location - unwilling to relocate / remote policy     |
| Values fit reason(s), e.g. "Value fit - team player" |
| Follow up - Role Filled                              |
| Fraudulent/fake candidate                            |

## Category: Rejection by Candidate Reasons

The offer-specific reasons below serve as a more detailed example. You may not find all of them necessary at your current company size.

| Rejection by Candidate Reason   | Offer Specific Reasons                     |
| ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| Remain with current company     | Offer Declined - Leveling                  |
| Not interested - General        | Offer Declined - Compensation Salary       |
| Not interested - Industry       | Offer Declined - Compensation Equity       |
| Not interested - Role / Project | Offer Declined - Career growth             |
| Not interested - Career Growth  | Offer Declined - Accepted competing offer  |
| Accepted other offer            | Offer Declined - Remain at current company |
| Unresponsive                    | Offer Declined - Other                     |
| Bad Timing                      | Offer Reneged                              |

## Category: Rejection due to process or data cleanup (aka, "Other")

The reasons that fall in this category should be thought of as those you most likely do not want to include in your archive reason analysis, barring analysis that is looking at, e.g., data quality or re-engagement. For example, when analyzing reasons for offer rejections, you want to exclude cases where candidates were archived and moved to a different role.

| Other Reasons               |
| --------------------------- |
| Did not respond to outreach |
| Position closed / on hold   |
| Transferred to another role |
| Position filled             |
| Cleanup - Inactivity        |
| Non-compete                 |

## Custom groupings with Calculated Fields

If you *do* specify many reasons, you can minimize the fragmentation of reasons by creating custom groupings with Ashby's [Calculated Fields](docId\:wJbhW3Mnd_381wU1N8F-x) feature. Apart from the standard grouping above, you may want to consider special use cases, such as grouping all archive reasons that permit follow-up with the candidate at a later date. A custom grouping of the above reasons for selecting candidates for re-engagement may look as follows.

| Custom Grouping Reasons                          |
| ------------------------------------------------ |
| Position filled                                  |
| Position closed / on hold                        |
| Location - unwilling to relocate / remote policy |
| Follow up / Future consideration                 |

# Hands-on with Ashby Analytics: Analysis examples

Below, we present a few pragmatic example types related to archive reasons. Each analysis includes a short description and a recorded example, but for reference, we find the fields below to be some of the most useful when navigating and analyzing archive reasons.

| Ashby Fieldname              | Why it's helpful                                                                                |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Archived At                  | Allows you to select the timeframe in which the applications you want to analyze were archived. |
| Furthest Stage Group Reached | Allows you to group by or filter to the furthest stage group the application reached.           |
| Archive Reason               | Gives the specific archive reason used.                                                         |
| Archive Reason Type          | Gives the broad archive category: rejected by org, rejected by candidate, or other.             |

***

The above is just one of many useful fields for analysis; others include Department or Team, Source Type (Origin for Lever users), and potentially hiring team member fields such as Recruiter and Hiring Manager. If you've created [Calculated Fields](docId\:wJbhW3Mnd_381wU1N8F-x) for custom grouping, you can use those for your analysis, too!

## Archive reason by stage group

With Ashby, you can examine archive reasons by the stage group in which the candidate was archived. The composition of reasons should change as candidates progress through your interview process, so this analysis helps you keep an eye out for on-site reasons being appropriately matched to the on-site stage. If you find that candidates are being archived for reasons such as lack of fit or unwillingness to relocate, that's a sign that prior stages, which should be screening for such factors, are not functioning, resulting in precious time and resources being expended on-site.

![Bar chart showing candidate rejections broken down by stage group, illustrating how archive reasons vary across different stages of the recruiting process.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/ld80FyIO9zofvjj-aqOhm_candidaterejectionsbystagegroup.png)

::loom{url="https://www.loom.com/embed/9235bb1dbcd141578aaa93c376d1185a"}

## Narrow the scope of analysis & explore: Onsite stage group

We can focus on the previous analysis by examining the onsite stage group specifically. With this narrowed scope, we can examine other variables that may be significant factors. In the example below, we take a closer look at the onsite rejections by candidate and source type, revealing that agency-sourced candidates have a higher rate of not being interested in the opportunity. In general, as you proceed with an exploratory analysis, consider filtering and grouping it by a specific department, region, or interview stage.

![Bar chart showing candidate rejections at the onsite stage group broken down by source type, with agencies showing a higher rate of candidates not interested in the opportunity.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/cqaRpWQkIgdngMBl_qIxA_candidaterejectionsbysourcetypeatonsite.png)

::loom{url="https://www.loom.com/embed/8bdf23df7c7a409983294126fdbeade1"}

## Look at the trend over time

Plotting archive reasons over time can be challenging if your recruiting efforts are not at a sufficient volume. Two approaches to help with that are to look for trends in the broader archive reason categories (e.g., rejected by candidate) or in custom groupings, or to use longer time periods, such as a quarterly time series rather than a weekly one. This type of analysis is especially important in evaluating policy changes or external market factors. In the example below, we see some reasons change from quarter to quarter, while others (such as accepting another offer) remain constant, suggesting that the time to offer may be a strategic initiative to improve.

![Line chart showing engineering candidate rejection reasons by archive reason category over time, highlighting which reasons remain consistent and which change across quarters.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/muQmkwk4xpduvPFZ83KI9_engineeringcandidaterejectionsovertime.png)

::loom{url="https://www.loom.com/embed/bfc90aee18cd4cb38a6d4aec9e01159c"}

## Utilize archive reasons for re-engagement

Candidate re-engagement is a cost-effective way to source talent. With targeted archive reasons, you can filter by previously interviewed candidates to drive contextualized outreach later. For example, if your remote work policy changes, you can follow up with all candidates archived under the "relocation / remote policy" reason and let them know of new opportunities.

![Screenshot showing a candidate search or filter view in Ashby, filtered by an archive reason such as location or remote policy to identify candidates for re-engagement outreach.](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/0p8tQ--ZZOxRtkVp6Qr-e/UBSca4nw1WjWMT_MwzfVp_screenshot2021-11-03at92755pm.png)

::loom{url="https://www.loom.com/embed/55f2e4648b814035845f22bb5cc92925"}