1. Open AI Search
Go to Candidates in the left menu. Make sure the AI Search tab is selected at the top of the results area. The search bar is in the middle of the screen; the filter panel is on the left.
2. Describe the role
Type what you are looking for the way you would brief a colleague. Press ⌘+Enter (Mac) or Ctrl+Enter (Windows), or click the arrow, to run it.
Good examples:
"Senior Java backend engineer, 6+ years, Spring and microservices, Berlin or within 50 km, fluent German"
"Sales manager, B2B SaaS, 3 to 6 years, fluent German, Munich"
"Data engineer, Python and SQL, Snowflake and Airflow, 3–6 years, remote in the UK"
You can also paste a whole job description.
Tip: to look up one person by name, email or Bullhorn ID, use the All candidates tab and its search bar at the bottom. It is faster than running an AI search for a name.
3. Check what the AI extracted
The filter panel fills in automatically:
Work experience range (for example 6 – 30+ years)
Skills, with the important ones ticked as required
Location with a radius
Ideal Candidate Brief: a short text with the rest of the meaning (titles, industry, language)
Fix anything that is wrong before you go further. Typical: a skill marked required that should be optional, or a location you did not mean.
4. Read the results
Results are ranked by relevance. Each card shows the match score, an AI summary and a list of evaluations (green = met, red = not confirmed). Hover an evaluation to see the evidence from the resume. See How to read AI Search results.
5. Refine, don't restart
After the first run, the search bar moves to the bottom and becomes the refine bar. Type "add Kubernetes", "remove the location", "only candidates with banking clients": it updates the same search. New Search at the top of the filter panel is the only thing that starts from zero.
Do
One clear sentence about the role plus 3–5 key requirements
Experience as a range ("3 to 6 years") rather than only "senior"
Mark 1–3 real must-haves as required, leave the rest optional
Add a realistic location or radius
Don't
Mark every skill as required
Use broad categories as required ("IT", "front end development")
Mix two different roles in one search
Expect precise results from "tech person"