Work Preferences look to the future. As the information is searchable it means you can focus your results to those applicants who want to work the type of job etc, that you are working to fill, which saves you from reviewing records of applicants who would not be interested in the role, for example, it is in the wrong location, wrong salary/rate etc. See the Applicant Searching article for more information.
This area differs from the Employment area of an applicant record which gives you a historic look at what they have been or are currently doing.
The Job Title field will allow you to select from the list item (see Data | List Items article) or free text to indicate their desired role.
Job Function is a list item (see Data | List Items article) and acts as a level above Job Titles. This list can be used however your organisation decides, an example of how this may be used is where you can categorise jobs such as Brand Journalist, Blogger, Column Journalist, Photo Editor etc, under the job function Journalism. Job Function is searchable and gives you the ability to search for a list of applicants that are currently working within or keen on a particular Job Function.
Locations and Industries allow you to list places and industries the applicants; ideally want to work in, are prepared to work in or are not prepared to work in. These fields allow you to specify areas that may be of interest to the applicant beyond their current experience or location. Just because an applicant has previously worked in the Medical industry in London does not mean they wish to continue doing so. Please see the Data | Locations and Location & Geolocation Searching articles for further information.
Where an applicant has expressed they don’t want to work in a particular Location and/or Industry (and this is applied to their record), even if the applicant matches the rest of the criteria used in the search, if that location/Industry is one of the criteria in the search the applicant will be excluded from the results.