Similarity Search
Similarity Search helps you find more people like your best people. Pick one or more employees you consider exemplary — your "baseline" — and the AI finds the closest look-alikes across your talent pool, ranked by education, work experience and skills.
Use it to build shortlists for hard-to-fill roles, discover hidden bench strength, and find people who resemble a proven high performer.
How It Works
Similarity Search builds a profile from the people in your baseline, then scores every eligible employee against it. Each match gets a similarity score from 0 to 100.
- Education comes from the employee's HR record.
- Work experience and skills come mainly from LinkedIn enrichment. People without enriched profiles usually score lower, because there is less to compare.
Who can appear as a match:
- Only active employees in the business units you are authorized to see.
- Your baseline people never appear as their own matches.
- A small number of very senior leaders are always excluded from results.
💡 Tip: If many of your matches are missing LinkedIn data, enrich them first — see Data Enrichment.
The Page Layout
| Area | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Search History (left) | Your past runs. You can hide it to give the results more room. |
| Find Look-alikes (centre) | Your baseline people, the optional filters, Compare with Workable, and the Find Similar People button. |
| Results (right) | The look-alike matches, or a short explanation before your first run. |
Step 1 — Build Your Baseline
The baseline is the group of people you want to find look-alikes for. You can add 1 to 10 people. The counter next to Baseline People shows how many you have, for example 3/10.
- Open Similarity Search from the navigation sidebar.
- Click Add People (it reads Add More once you have someone).
- In the Add Baseline People window, search by name, position or personnel number. Results update as you type and show each person's position, business unit and talent class.
- Click a person to tick them. Click again to untick. Once you reach 10, the rest of the list is greyed out.
- Your picks appear at the top of the window under Selected. Use the × on a name to remove it, or Clear all to start again.
- Click Done.
Your baseline stays selected between runs, so you can change the filters and run again without rebuilding it. To remove someone, click the × next to their name in the baseline list. Click Clear to remove everyone.
💡 Tip: You don't need 10 people. One strong exemplar works well. Adding more broadens the profile the AI looks for.
Step 2 — Narrow the Candidate Pool (Optional)
Click Candidate Filters in the centre panel to open the filters. A number on the section shows how many filters are active.
| Filter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Age Range | Limits matches to one or more age bands: < 20, 20 - 29, 30 - 39, 40 - 49, 50 - 59, >= 60 |
| Layer | Limits matches to one or more job layers, from Staff up to Board Commissioner |
- Filters apply to the candidates, not to your baseline people.
- Click a band or layer again to remove it, or click Clear filters to remove them all.
- Leave the filters empty to search everyone you have access to.
Step 3 — Compare with Workable (Optional)
If your organization uses the Workable integration, a Compare with Workable section appears below the filters. It adds a second column of job applicants from Workable, ranked against the same baseline.
There is no vacancy to choose. It searches every applicant whose profile has been synced from Workable.
- Click Compare with Workable to open the section.
- Tick Search all ATS applicants.
Before you run, the section tells you how many applicants can be ranked — in the form "X of Y people in Workable have a synced profile and can be ranked." Applicants a recruiter has moved past "Applied" are synced first.
If no profiles have been synced yet, the option is greyed out and the section asks you to contact an admin.
Note: This section only appears when the Workable integration is switched on for your organization.
Step 4 — Find Similar People
Once your baseline has at least one person, the Find Similar People button becomes active. Click it.
While the search runs you will see "Searching for look-alikes…". The AI returns up to the top 50 people most similar to your baseline.
Reading the Results
Results header
The header reads Look-alike Matches and shows how many look-alikes were found and how many employees they were matched against, for example "50 look-alikes · matched against 1,240 employees". A label on the right shows how many baseline people you used.
Baseline Signature
Under the header, the Baseline Signature summarizes the common profile the AI built from your baseline:
- How many exemplars it used
- Their main job families
- Their layers
- Up to 8 skills they share
This tells you what the search is matching on, so you can sanity-check the results.
Notices you may see
| Notice | What it means |
|---|---|
| People skipped | Some baseline people are outside your authorized business units, so they were left out of the search. |
| Shallow Candidate Pool | Fewer than 5 matches scored 60 or above. Try adding more baseline people or loosening the filters. |
| Missing LinkedIn data | Some listed matches have no LinkedIn work experience or skills on file. Click Enrich Data to see who, then click a name to open Data Enrichment with that person already selected. |
Match cards
Each match is a card showing:
| Element | What it means |
|---|---|
| Rank | Position in the list (#01, #02, …) |
| Name and position | Who the person is and their current job |
| Similarity score | 0 to 100%. The bar under the card turns green for the closest matches, then cyan, amber and red as the match weakens. |
| Badges | Talent class and layer |
Match detail
Click a card to open the detail view. It shows:
- The person's name, position, business unit, similarity score and rank.
- Their layer and talent class.
- Similarity Breakdown — separate scores for Experience Match, Education Match and Skills Match. Skills Match only appears when skills data is available.
- Why Similar — the AI's written explanation of what this person shares with your baseline.
Click View Career Path to open the person in Career Navigator, with the similarity scores carried over. Click ← Back to results to return to the list.
Workable applicants
If you turned on Compare with Workable, the results split into two columns: Internal employees and Workable applicants.
- The applicant column says how many applicants it ranked from.
- Each applicant card shows a Workable badge, and may also show Thin profile or Capped at 60.
- Capped at 60 means Workable holds no work history and no skills for that person, so their score is based on degree and years of experience only and cannot go above 60. It reflects how little we know, not how good they are. Compare applicants with each other, not with the internal column.
- Applicants with nothing at all to score are listed separately under Show N applicants with no profile data, with a link to their Workable profile.
- Clicking an applicant opens their detail view with an Open Workable profile link instead of a career path.
Search History
- Every run is saved to your account and listed in Search History, with the baseline names, the number of look-alikes and how long ago it ran.
- Your last 50 runs are kept. Because they are saved to your account, they follow you to any computer you sign in on. Only you can see them.
- Click an entry to reload it, including the baseline, filters and results.
- Hover over an entry and click × to delete it, or click Clear All to delete everything.
- Click + New Search to clear the page and start again.
- Hide the panel with the panel icon in its header. Click Show history at the top of the page to bring it back.
If Something Goes Wrong
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| "No other active employees match the selected filters." | Widen the age or layer filters. |
| "None of the selected baseline employees are within your authorized business units." | Pick baseline people from your own business units. |
| "Failed to find similar people." or another error | Try again in a moment. |
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Expecting strong matches for people without enriched profiles. Without LinkedIn work history and skills, there is little to compare.
- Over-filtering. A narrow Layer and Age Range combination can leave few or no candidates.
- Confusing the baseline with the results. Filters shrink the candidate pool, not the baseline you selected.
- Reading a capped applicant score as a weak candidate. Open their Workable profile before ruling them out.