Discrepancies in Search: LinkedIn Recruiter vs. Personal

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Up until recently, search results in LinkedIn Recruiter (LIR) and in (any) personal account were the same. LIR provides more results available for viewing for a given search and better results visibility (and also some facets that are not available in a personal search).

This has changed dramatically.

If you have a LinkedIn Recruiter account, you must read on.

Here are three examples of searches, compared side-by-side for a personal vs a LIR account. (Guess, which account provides more results?)

EXAMPLE #1

Search for C++ 3D iOS “computer games”, title = engineer OR developer, in the Bay Area 

Personal account: 150 results.

search1

 

Click on “View Results in Recruiter”

search2

 

… the same search shows only 43 results in LinkedIn Recruiter:

search3

 

So, in the EXAMPLE #1 the numbers are:

C++ 3D iOS “computer games”, title = engineer OR developer, in the Bay Area 

  • Personal: 150 results
  • LIR: 43 results

 

EXAMPLE #2

hospital health care, NYC, currently at New York Presbyterian Hospital

  • Personal: 5,574 results
  • LIR: 1,302 results

 

EXAMPLE #3

Research Intel Labs China

  • Personal: 283 results
  • LIR: 119 results

 

In the above examples, LIR provided anywhere from about 50% to 20% (!) of the numbers of results that a member would get with a personal account – including a Basic account.

I do have some guesses for the reasons of the discrepancies, but I can’t be sure. There’s no official documentation or information in blogs about this, as far as I can tell. I don’t think the discrepancies are caused by software bugs. My best guess is that these are “side effects” of developing Galene and the Economic Graph.  I have seen some cases where the discrepancies are the other way around: LIR shows more results than personal, for no apparent reason.

Bottom line:

Take a note of it. Don’t lose matching results. I’d recommend to search from both personal and from LIR and, perhaps, X-ray as well.