Candidate Matching helps you quickly find the most relevant candidates for a vacancy. Not just a generic AI search of your candidate CVs, it reads the vacancy details, extracts the key requirements, then searches candidate records for matching job titles, desired roles, CV skills, experience, qualifications, education, and previous roles.

The system produces a match score out of 100. This score combines AI relevance scoring with practical checks such as salary expectations, work type, location, industry, experience, and how recently the candidate record was updated. These checks can be included or excluded from Matching Settings if you want to broaden or narrow the results.

Each result includes a short explanation showing why the candidate may be a good fit, including strengths and any considerations. Candidates already on the vacancy pipeline, archived candidates, deleted records, and very weak matches are excluded from the main results.

Results are cached for speed, but you can re-match candidates at any time to refresh the shortlist.

On a vacancy record, click Matching [a] to initiate a search.

Matching Settings [b] allows you to customise the matching calculation by including or excluding:

• Industry (see below)
• Location
• Salary (candidate target salary)
• Work Type (candidate preference for full-time, part-time, perm and/or contract)
• Experience (Candidate employment history)

Results can be further filtered [c] by tag(s), candidate job title, minimum salary, when the candidate record was last updated and availability.

Results can also be filtered by candidate status and vacancy ranking (traffic light).

Use the score slider to widen or narrow the results shown.

To add a candidate to the vacancy, click the Add button.

Select records, and apply bulk actions [d].

Industry is available as a column in the vacancy and candidate grids.

Seniority

Candidate record: Employment History

Seniority levels are fixed (Junior, Mid-level, Senior, Leadership, Executive), and applied automatically for each position in a candidate’s employment history. You can review and change seniority if needed.

Seniority is not industry-specific, so just apply the level that best fits your particular sector.

Highlights

Candidate record: Employment History

Highlights are AI-generated summaries for each position on a candidate’s employment history. These can be reviewed and edited by editing the employment history entry.

Industry

Industry is assigned to both candidates and vacancies, and is used as part of the matching algorithm. It is intended as a broad classification to help improve matching accuracy, rather than as an exhaustive list of sectors.

Industry is available as a column on the Candidates and Vacancies grids, allowing you to sort and filter records by industry.

Industry is assigned automatically (see below), but can also be changed manually on:

• Candidate record: Details screen
• Vacancy record: Details screen

Industry is assigned automatically in the following situations:

• Parsing a CV in [Candidates > Add Candidate]
• Bulk importing candidates (either from a CSV file or a ZIP file containing original CVs)
• Forwarding a CV into your database using the MailDrop feature
• Adding a candidate from [Candidates > Web Import]
• Adding a vacancy by parsing a job description, or by pasting job description text into [Vacancies > Add Vacancy]
• Manually entering text into the vacancy’s Job Description (Private) field on the Details screen. NOte that sufficient text will need to be added for a more accurate result.

If preferred, Industry can be excluded from the matching criteria in the Matching settings.

The available industries are intentionally broad. If selecting manually, choose the option that best suites the candidate’s or vacancy’s primary sector.

Note: is not possible to add your own industry sectors.

Global Search allows you to quickly find a candidate, client, contact, or a vacancy record. You can search using full or partial matches on names, phone numbers, email addresses, and more – see the table below for a full list.

Search Guidelines:

• Search terms can include letters, numbers, and special characters.
• You can enter up to 5 search terms, for example: Smith Rob 078 Leicester @gmail
• Results are returned where each search term appears somewhere in any searchable field – like an AND search.
• Each search word must be at least 3 characters.
• Results are prioritised – fields like names and reference numbers are given higher priority than less specific fields like notes or postcodes.
• The most relevant matches are placed at the top.
• A maximum of 5 results per record type will be displayed.
• The following fields for each record type are searched:

Data	Candidates	Clients	Contacts	Vacancies
Ref		–	–
Name		–		–
Email addresses		–		–
Phone numbers				–
Job title*		–
Current company		–	–	–
Postcode / US ZIP
Notes
Client name	–
Business Area	–		–	–
Client Ref	–	–	–
Client Contact	–	–	–

^{* For candidates – their current job title as set in the candidate record’s employment screen.}

The Custom button [2] links to the legacy Search screen for those who wish to use the previous search options. However, we recommend using the powerful searching tools that are built directly into the grids, which allow for quicker, more flexible searching, saved searches and customisable views.

• + means must have (like AND )
• – means exclude (like NOT )
• A space (no symbol) is treated as either/or (like OR )

This guide provides examples that compare traditional Boolean searches with their equivalents in the Search Builder.

Special Characters

Boolean ignores special characters such as &, #, +. To include a word or phrase that has special characters, add a Contains or Does Not Contain as shown below:

• Searches (save and load searches) [1]
• Column selection [2]
• Column filter [3]
• Advanced Search Builder [4]
• CV Search [5]
• Clear [6]
• Actions [7]
• Quick Searching [8]
• User Rating [9]
• Quick Preview [10]
• Postcode and Postcode Radius
• Tag searching
• Unique to each Grid (Candidates, Clients, Contacts)

The Main Grids let you customise your columns, along with sorting, filtering and grid preferences [a] and [b]. You can also add search criteria – allowing you to save [1] your preferred layouts and searches, set a default view, and quickly load saved searches whenever needed.

• [a] Choose to show or hide archived records.
• [b] Choose how many records to display on each page.

Also see our video tutorials.

[1] Searches

Save columns and searches – set a default layout and load searches whenever you need them.

[2] Columns

Choose a maximum of 10 columns to display in the grid.

[3] Current Filters

See which column filters are active, and remove column filters.

[4] Search Builder

Create complex searches for all data (even if not selected as a column).

Also see CV Searching.

[5] CV Searching

Searches candidate CVs marked as ‘Searchable’. This is set by default when a CV is parsed into the database. You can change which document is searchable by editing it from the Docs screen on the candidate’s record.

The Quick Search looks across all columns. A space acts as an AND, so you can find a name from one column and a job title from another in the same search. It also returns partial matches – for example, searching for birm will return results like Birmingham.

[9] User Rating

Each user can rate candidates individually. Ratings are user-specific, meaning a candidate’s rating may vary between users. For example, one user might rate a candidate as green, while another might rate the same candidate as amber.

Use the column filter to find candidates based on their rating – for example, to display only candidates rated as green or amber. You can also sort candidates by rating by clicking the column header.

The user rating is also displayed, and can be changed in the Quick Preview, the candidate’s record, and the Vacancy Pipeline. It is also shown as read only on the Dashboard Pipeline.

To clear all user ratings, select “Clear All Ratings” from the Actions menu.

[10] Quick Preview

Quick Preview [a] allows you to see and update a candidate’s record without leaving the grid – useful for working through a list of results.

Choose which page to view [d]. CV is selected by default. If you choose a different page [b], your selection is remembered when viewing different records, until you refresh or leave the Candidates Grid.

• Overview: Key information from the record’s Overview screen
• Journals: You can add a new journal via the ‘Quick Journal‘ option.
• Vacancies: Also shows interviews for the candidate.
• CV: Shows a preview, and will highlight search criteria following a CV Search.
• Notes: View and edit the record’s notes – simply type in the text field and save.
• Docs: See a list of documents on each candidate’s record.

Perform a range of actions [c] (email, text, add to vacancy, add to group and more).

Close the preview [e].

Your user rating can be changed directly in the Quick Preview panel [f].

Postcode and Postcode Radius

Ensure ‘Postcode’ has been added to the grid, and click on the column filter [a] to access the Postcode Search. You can search using a full, or partial postcode, for example B15. To filter by a specific postcode, simply leave the distance field empty.

Choose between UK postcodes or US ZIP codes [b]

Tags

Add Tags to the Grid and click the column filter [a]. If no categories are selected, all tags [c] will be listed, or find tags by category [b].

Choose the Boolean logic [d] for your search: OR returns records with any of the selected tags. AND returns records whose tags include all the selected tags.

Tags with the Advanced Search Builder

Although the column filter (above) should be your primary method for tag searching, you can further refine your tag search with the Advanced Search Builder. The example, below, will return records where a tag includes ‘Adobe’.

In the example, below, either ‘Adobe Photoshop’ or ‘Adobe Illustrator’ will be returned.

Selecting Records

Select All Records (Actions menu [7]): Select all records returned with current filters and search criteria applied. Excludes archived records if the filter is set to ‘hide archived’.

Select records per page: Records can be selected per page.

Unique To Each Grid

Candidates Grid

Clients Grid

Postcode (Sites)
Perform a geographical search based on any of the client’s site addresses.

Tags (Sites)
Search clients by tags applied to their sites. For example, find clients with sites tagged HR Management.

Email Main or All Contacts
When emailing selected clients, choose whether to email only the main contact or all contacts linked to those clients.

Bulk Actions
Update Status, Source, Managing Consultant, Business Area, and toggle the Do Not Contact (DNC) setting. If DNC is enabled on a client, none of its contacts can be emailed or sent SMS messages—even if their individual DNC setting is disabled.

Contacts Grid

Business Area (Client)
Search contacts by the tags applied to their associated client. For example, find contacts belonging to clients tagged with Engineering.

Consultant (Client)
Filter contacts based on the managing consultant assigned to the client (contacts themselves don’t have a management consultant).

Status (Client)
Search contacts by the status of the client, for example, clients with a status of Active.

Tags (Client Sites)
Find contacts based on tags applied to the site they’re linked to.

Tags (Client)
Search contacts by tags assigned to their associated client.

Note: This is our legacy search

The searching functionality inside Recruit So Simple gives you the ability to find the records you need quickly and efficiently, using a wide variety of tools and options. To begin, first select the type of records you want to search for and then build up your search query using any of the available options. You can use the Keyword, CV and Additional options together, or separately on their own – the choice is yours. However, all of the criteria entered must match to enable a result.

1. Select the type of record you want to search
2. Keyword search
3. CV text search

Keyword Search

The Keyword Search option will look for your chosen keywords inside most of the fields inside Recruit So Simple, including address information, current job and notes. The query must be at least 3 characters long (excluding spaces) and every keyword entered must be found inside the record for it to be displayed as a result.

The keyword search doesn’t support full Boolean searching (the CV Search does). However, you can enter more than one word separated by spaces, for example:

Portsmouth Southampton Plymouth
Will find records with any of the above in their address information.

CV Search

The CV Search option allows you to search for text inside candidate CVs. You can use Boolean queries in this search. If no Boolean operator is specified then the default behaviour will be “AND”, i.e. all of the words must exist (see below). CV searching is case insensitive, it will also consider most accented characters equivalent to the non-accented character (e.g. E, e and é are equivalent).

Only letters, numbers, and the chatacters + and # can be searched on, any other characters will be ignored.

Each candidate can only have one searchable CV. You can choose which one under the candidate’s Docs screen.

Here are some examples of CV search queries:

John Smith Sales
Will find CVs that contain ALL of the 3 words.

“John Smith” sales
Will find CVs that contain the exact phrase “John Smith” AND the word “sales”.

“Sales manager” OR “Sales director”
Will find CVs that contain EITHER of the exact phrases.

“Sales manager” –London
Will find CVs that contain the exact phrase “Sales manager” but do NOT contain “London”.

(”Sales manager” Manchester) OR (”Sales director” London)
You can use brackets to group queries. In this example, it will find CVs that contain the exact phrase “Sales manager” AND the word “Manchester”, OR CVs that contain the exact phrase “Sales director” AND the word “London”.

Note that you can use the pipe character | as an alternative to the OR operator.