In the consulting sessions that Shally and I do, recruiting managers and sourcing practice leaders often ask about dispositioning non-applicants for OFCCP compliance purposes.

We usually recommend that such sourced leads/prospects be stored initially in a separate database (e.g., CRM). Your company needs a policy for reaching out within a certain timeframe (e.g., 2 weeks or 30 days - it really doesn't matter as long as you're consistent):

• If the person responds in any positive way (i.e., other than asking to be removed from your lists), you can advance them to your ATS for further cultivation and direct them to apply for any positions of interest.
• But if the person doesn't respond to your email(s) and/or call(s) within that timeframe (or responds negatively), you can have a policy whereby they are expired from your database and dispositioned as "not interested."

Note that we didn't use the word "delete" for the latter case: You should code them as "do not contact" so someone else in your organization doesn't independently source them in the future and inadvertently send them an unwanted communication.