Well-designed user interfaces follow the rule of WYSIWYG – “what you see is what you get”. Unfortunately, LinkedIn Recruiter doesn’t do the best job in this regard. Just look at the screenshot of two searches for company=Apple I have done. Which number is correct, on the right or the left?
The secret in the two different numbers displayed is that, on the right, I have added a space to the company name: Apple<space>. I’ll get the same number as on the left if I enter Apple in the quotation marks (a slight difference in large numbers of results is to be expected).
What is happening here? If we choose the company Apple from a list of company choices, the results are employees of the company Apple. But, if we enter a space after Apple or put the word in “, we get employees of companies whose name contain the word Apple, such as Apple, but also Apple and Associates, Apple Vacations, etc. Some of the companies found may be Apple’s affiliates, but not all.
To negate each of the above conditions (company equals Apple, and Company name contains Apple) in Recruiter we have two different types of UI: negating the company Apple or the word in the company name:
Take a note of it.
P.S. And here is another story on the subject.