How to Approach Attributes and Filters in Projects

Table of Contents

What are Attributes?

What is the Difference between Attributes and Keywords?

Adding Attributes to Your Project

Understanding, Excluding and Highlighting Attributes

Adding Levels of Experience 

Findem Magic

Boolean Operators

Executive Condition

Clear All Attributes

What are Attributes?

With all Findem projects, attributes go beyond keywords to identify prospects with qualities that make them exceptional hires. Attributes might include: ‘open source contributor’, ‘past founder’, ‘recently graduated’, ‘has a PhD’, or ‘builds diverse teams’, just to give a few examples.

Using attributes gives you unparalleled precision when looking for candidates.

How are They Built?

A machine learning model aggregates data from over 100,000 different sources to build a comprehensive view of each candidate. 

What is the Difference between Attributes and Keywords?

In other tools, keywords are single words or phrases you search for in a singular profile. In Findem, attributes are like supercharged keywords. They don't just match words; they understand the context by combining information from multiple data sources. 

So, while keywords might find anyone mentioning 'Google', attributes can pinpoint a 'VP of Marketing at a fast-growing startup with Google experience', filtering out less relevant matches automatically.

Why Use Attributes Instead of Keywords?

An attribute refers to the ability to search using two or more data sources. Attributes eliminate the reliance on keyword searches or lengthy boolean strings to find candidates with specific phrases in their profiles.

With Findem, you can search for a VP of marketing at a fast-growing startup who saw a startup through a Series C, and who also started their career at Google. Conducting the same search using a keyword matching tool would require you to filter out:

• the VP of a 2-person company
• the marketing manager at a small non-profit
• the BDR who joined after Series C
• the intern who lists Google as a client
• and many more mismatches

Adding Attributes 

To discover, view, and select attributes, click the plus sign next to the specific category and choose from the available sub-menus.

Moving down the attribute bar on the left side of your project, you can specify locations (as well as timezones), define essential skill sets, and provide specific company information such as business model or current stage. You can even specify educational requirements. 

Here, we're adding a Seniority level for a Technical Sales Specialist role. Click Seniority.

From here, you can input the keyword you're looking for, and a list of suggestions will appear, or you can hover your mouse over the modal to open the Browse all option, which will open a list of all pre-existing options for Seniority that Findem has gathered.

Search Seniority

Browse all Seniority

Note that you can make any attribute categories into Must Haves for candidates by toggling the Must Have switch in the upper right of each category. More on Must Haves and Nice to Haves below.

Understanding, Excluding and Highlighting Attributes

Hover over any selected attribute to bring up the More options modal. Several options appear: definition, highlight, exclude and delete.
Using these options allows you to fine-tune your search, ensuring that you focus your efforts on candidates who best match the job requirements. 

Definition: This provides a detailed explanation of what the attribute includes. This is particularly useful when you're not sure what a specific attribute entails or if it's relevant to the role you're hiring for.

Highlight: With Highlight, you can turn an attribute into a Must Have. This means the system will prioritize candidates who have this attribute above others. It's especially useful when an attribute is crucial to the role.

Exclude: With this, the system will filter out any candidates that have this attribute. Use this option (as opposed to Delete) when you know certain characteristics or experiences that are deal-breakers for the role. For example, if you know you don't want anyone who lives in San Fransisco for the role (it's a hybrid role based in San Diego), you can include the San Fransisco location attribute, then mark it as 'Exclude'; whereas if you don't do this, candidates based in San Fransisco could still show up in your candidate list.

If you decide that an attribute is no longer necessary, you can remove it by selecting Delete. Deleting an attribute will remove the attribute from the search criteria. You can always add attributes back. 

Adding Levels of Experience 

There are three types of experiences you can add to your search criteria. Open the Show More Filters option to bring up the Experience attribute filter.

Overall Experience refers to the total number of years a candidate has worked in any role or industry, or total work experience, not just experience relevant to the role you're hiring for.  

Current Experience indicates how long the candidate has been with their current employer. For example, if you’ve worked at your current company for 4 years, that’s your current company experience.

Role Experience measures the time a candidate has spent in a particular role or function. For example, if you’re looking for someone with 2-5 years of Software Engineering experience, that’s role-specific. Type in the span of time and role you're looking for, or browse all options.

Industry Experience is similar to Role Exoperience, only applies to certain industries instead of roles. Type in the span of time and industry you're looking for, or browse all options.

Findem Magic Overview 

Findem Magic allows you to incorporate intangible attributes into your Findem searches. Some examples are 'actively looking for a new opportunity', 'any startup experience', 'has a portfolio', or 'is eligible to work in the US'. To understand what each attribute includes, hover over it, select the three dots, and click Definition.

For a Software Engineer position, you might target candidates with verified Python repositories and trailblazer engineers. These Findem Magic attributes could be set as Must Haves.

Consider what 'intangible attributes' your ideal candidates should have. Explore these options and let us know your thoughts!

Setting the Findem Magic section to Must Have turns the selected attributes into an OR statement. For instance, if your Findem Magic section contains:

• Quota Achiever
• Sales Award Winner

Findem will interpret it as 'Quota Achiever OR Sales Award Winner'. Highlighting an attribute designates it as a Must Have, which is treated as an AND statement. However, the other attributes in the section will still be treated as OR statements.

Making Attributes Nice to Haves vs. Must Haves

When selecting attributes, you have the option to categorize them as Must Haves or Nice to Haves based on the job description requirement.

When you categorize an attribute as a Must Have, you're indicating that this attribute is essential for the role. This means the search will only show candidates who meet all the Must Have criteria you've set. As a result, this narrows down the talent pool, focusing only on those who closely match the specified requirements. Conversely, marking an attribute as a Nice to Have does not impact the pool size. Prospects matching the selected attribute will appear at the top of the search list. The pool will include a wider range of candidates who may not meet every criterion but possess other valuable qualities.

Note that multiple attributes added to the Must Have section will be interpreted as OR statements. For instance, if the Findem Magic is set to Must Have, and the traits listed are 'Quota Achiever' and 'Early Stage Startup Experience', the logic will be, "Show me prospects who are either Quota Achievers OR Early Stage Startup Experience." We'll discuss how to create compounded AND statements later.

Highlighting and Excluding Attributes

To highlight an attribute in an OR statement and identify all prospects with that specific attribute, click the drop-down arrow next to the attribute and select the highlight option.

To specify an attribute you don't want to target, such as a specific location or company, click the plus sign next to the relevant category, select the attribute, and click the minus icon next to it. This will exclude all prospects with that attribute from the search. You can exclude multiple attributes.

For instance, if you don't want any prospects who have worked at Findem in the past 3 years, select the domain name, click exclude, and set this as a Must Have. (Do this under Companies > Recent Company.)

Using Boolean Operators in Projects

Boolean operators are useful for discovering desired candidates in projects. They allow you to quickly filter candidates by combining search terms with specific AND, OR, and NOT values.

Note: Boolean operators are supported for any attribute that has 'or boolean' next to it when values are cleared out.

Using AND, OR, and NOT operators

• Use AND in a query to narrow your candidate results
  • “blockchain and cloud computing” uncovers candidates who match all criteria
• Use OR in a query to broaden your candidate results
  • “software engineer or frontend developer” uncovers candidates who match any criteria
  • Alternatively, comma separated values will also combine the search terms as ORs (e.g. “software engineer, frontend developer”)
• Use NOT in a query to exclude candidates who match the search criteria
  • “not google.com” excludes candidates who currently work at Google

Steps for using Boolean operators

1. Choose an attribute section from the dropdown and apply your query.
2. Alternatively – choose Current Role or Must Have Skills from the dropdowns, or click + in the Attributes sidebar to apply Boolean queries.

Executive Condition Attributes

The Executive Condition filter allows you to refine your job candidate searches by focusing on specific executive roles and the companies where candidates have previously worked. This filter helps you narrow down your search to individuals with specific job titles and past work experiences at particular organizations, enabling more targeted and effective searches for high-level positions.

To learn more about using the Executive Condition attributes, check out this article. 

Clear All Attributes

You can clear the entire attribute sidebar, removing all attributes currently applied to the project with the Clear All option.

You will need to have AT LEAST ONE attribute in the sidebar to see the Clear All button, and 
there will be a warning before the action is executed.

Version history will retain prior attributes in case you need to get them back.