A LinkedIn Recruiter Flaw You Should Know About

booleanstrings Boolean, LinkedIn, LIR 3 Comments

I have a European client who keeps coming back with the same request, to source for a particular job opening. They are growing and are looking for multiple people who match the same requirement. By now, the number of profiles I have sourced for them is getting close to 1,000. As I repeat the search, ideally, I would like to skip the profiles that I have already viewed and either submitted to the client or rejected, and review the ones I have not seen.

LIR (LinkedIn Recruiter) offers a seemingly convenient option to “hide previously viewed” (in the last 3 or 6 months) profiles. You do a search, pick that option and do not see the previously viewed candidates. I have been using the option and have found out that it doesn’t do what I expect it to do.

You’d think you select “hide previously viewed,” do a search, go through the pages of the search results and find all you haven’t viewed. Wrong.

The way Recruiter has implemented this feature can deprive you of viewing profiles that you haven’t seen. Here is why. You look at the profiles on the first search results page, view some of them, then move to the second page. At this point, LIR recalculates the search anew. Now, the first page has some results you haven’t seen! Not only does LIR shift the results up – the order of the results in the new search that LIR executes as you move to the second page may change – LIR sometimes reshuffles the results.

So, when you select not to see previously viewed profiles and do a search, you shouldn’t go to the next page. Instead, refresh the first page of the results, and you will see new profiles. Continue refreshing the first page until you haven’t viewed any profiles on it. Only then you should move to page 2. Then, continue refreshing page 2, until you no longer open any results on it, then go to page 3, and so forth.

The same is true if you set the filter to not show the profiles that you have added to a project. If you search using this option, then add any profiles to a project on the first page, you need to continue redrawing the page, and you will see profiles you haven’t seen before.

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Comments 3

  1. The project example is only true for however many you add to the project from that page. If you add 5 people from the page, it will then show you 5 new people. Some times I will refresh, other times not, depending how tough of a search it is.

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  2. Depends on the number of results, but there is also another way of reviewing search results.

    What you are describing is reviewing the main result page and clicking on profiles that you would like to review in full.

    LIR also supports “advancing” from profile to profile manually, through the full profile page. There are two left/right arrows in the upper-right side of the profile. By reviewing profiles like this, even if you are hiding your previously viewed profiles, you can ensure that you won’t be missing on any of your search results.

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