Top 10 Tips on Searching Your Candidate Database

Tips on searching your candidate database quickly and effectively.

One of a recruiter’s strongest skills is being able to search effectively to find suitable candidates.

As your Placement Partner candidate database is growing daily, your ability to search for quality candidates becomes more and more important.  Here are some tips to help you with your searches:

1. Always start your search using Sector and Job Function.
2. You can search on more than one Sector and Job Function by holding down your CTR key and selecting multiple options with your mouse.
3. Use ANY and ALL – In the case where you may be searching for candidates based on more than one sector and/or more than one job function, you can specify whether you would like the system to return search results that match ANY of your criteria or ALL of your criteria.
4. If you are not sure how to spell a candidate’s name that you know is already in the database, enter just the first portion of their name or surname to return all possible candidates with names starting with those letters. Example : In the name field, type ‘Jo’ and all names starting with ‘Jo’ will be listed, such as Joanne, Josephine and Joanna.
5. Enter just the first two digits of an ID number in the ID number field to return all candidates born in a certain year. Example: Enter ‘80’ and all candidates born in 1980 will be displayed in the search result.
6. If you leave all the search fields empty and select the search button at the bottom of the search page, all candidates in the database will be listed in the search result.
7. The more fields you complete the more specific your search becomes.
8. A good approach is to start your search wide and then refine your search as many times as you wish in order to return a short list of candidates who meet your criteria. When you select the refine search button, the candidate search form will be displayed again with all previously selected options still selected. You can then select more criteria to further narrow down your search.
9. Use CV Contents Searching – it is a very quick and effective way to look for candidates. It works by searching the candidate’s original CV, which you copied and pasted into the CV contents box on the candidate’s profile.  You can enter a keyword/s or exact phrases.    To search for exact phrases, use quotes. e.g.”Financial Manager”. To search for all keywords specified, use AND between the words. e.g. Financial AND Manager. Use a space if you wish to find any of the keywords specified e.g. Financial Manager.
10. Use the CV age options to tell the system not to search all the CV’s in the candidate database but to search only the new or recently updated CV’s.

Good luck and happy searching!

The Placement Partner Team.