If your AI search or job-matching returns far fewer candidates than you expect, this guide walks you from quick UI fixes to deeper system checks so you can get useful results fast.
Quick checklist — try these first
Loosen required skills. Reduce the number of skills marked Required to 1–2 (or make some “optional”). Required skills are hard filters and will remove candidates who don’t have them.
Remove or relax exclusions. Any negated skill (e.g., “no PHP”) will exclude candidates.
Widen location / radius. Small radius or a single tiny town restricts results. Try a larger radius or add nearby cities / “willing to relocate.”
Broaden experience ranges. Change “5 to 8 years” → “3 to 8 years” or “3 to 10 years.” Experience is applied as a filter.
Check for short job text. If you launched from a Bullhorn job, the job description must be ≥30 characters for automatic filter generation — short/ambiguous descriptions may under-specify the search.
Practical query tips that immediately help
Use a single clear sentence with 3–5 key requirements rather than many small fragments.
Use experience ranges (e.g., “3 to 6 years”) instead of only “senior.”
Put your 1–2 strongest skills as required; make the rest optional so the AI can rank good conceptual matches.
When to contact support / your admin
Provide these items to speed troubleshooting:
Example search text/job ID you used
Filters shown in the sidebar
One or two candidate profile IDs you expected to find
Any error messages or timeouts shown in UI
Our Support team can check Candidate sync, internal queries, re-ranker health, and feature flags. Candidate.ly records auditing and sync timestamps that help diagnose indexing or sync gaps.
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