This is a fairly common question and it usually stems from people with a heavy CRM background. Most Applicant Tracking Systems store "persons" in one of two ways: as a single record with complete information, or separated into multiple records, one for each major category (as we do). This is a quick explanation of why we decided to use this model.

CATS was heavily based on the paper process of recruiting in its design. The idea is that anyone familiar with the paper process could quickly pick up CATS and become efficient right away. If you need to add a job order, you would pick up a company's manila folder, fill out a job order document and put it in the folder. Similarly in CATS, you browse to the company and click "Add Job Order". If you think a candidate is a good fit for a job you're working on, you'd make a note on the job order and a notation on the candidate's resume. Similarly in CATS, that information is right there on the page when viewing a job or candidate.

Because the fundamental purpose of a candidate is so exclusively related to hiring, and the purpose of a contact is for development of business, our goal from day one was to separate the records as opposed to a single record with cluttered tabs for all the information you'd need. Part of this is for simplicity, as we like to keep all relevant information right on the same page as the record you're viewing. To show both business and hiring-related data would be a mess on a single record.

Don't get me wrong, obviously there is a business case to retaining both candidate and contact records. We've added linking to make sure the data-in-common like contact information remains in sync. We'll be improving this linking process as well, making it easier to create and maintain both records; but merging the two data types together is not a future goal.