Copilot can search your whole candidate database for you. Describe the kind of person you're looking for in plain English, and it will find them, tell you what it found, and help you act on it without leaving the conversation.
It's designed for sourcing, which mostly means rediscovering people you already have. Someone who applied for a different role eighteen months ago, a near-miss from your last hiring round, or a candidate whose CV happens to mention the tool you've just started using. Copilot looks across every candidate you have, on every job and application.
Getting started
Open Copilot and describe who you're looking for, the way you'd describe it to a colleague:
"Find candidates who've worked in fintech"
"Show me candidates in the UK with Python and Kubernetes"
"Who applied to the backend role and got to interview stage?"
"Find candidates I haven't contacted in the last 30 days"
There's no syntax to learn and no particular way to phrase things. Just ask for what you want.
What a search looks like
What Copilot searches
When you describe who you're after, Copilot searches everything your candidates gave you:
CV and résumé text, meaning the full body of the document rather than just the file name
Cover letters
Application answers, including anything written in response to your screening questions
Skills
Previous job titles
Names, email addresses and locations
AI-extracted fields, if you have AI matching set up
The CV text tends to make the biggest difference. Your search can reach into what a candidate said about their own experience, instead of only matching the fields someone remembered to fill in.
Narrowing things down
Copilot combines your description with filters, and works out which filters to apply from the way you phrase your request. It can narrow by:
Skills
Country
Whether they applied to a particular job
The stage they reached on any previous application: applied, review, interview, offer, hired or rejected
How recently they were active
You can combine these in a single sentence. Ask for "candidates who reached interview stage on any role last year but weren't hired, who know Kubernetes" and Copilot works out that it needs a search for Kubernetes, a stage filter and a date range, then applies all three.
If you don't give it a description or any filters, you'll get your most recently active candidates, which is a reasonable place to start browsing.
How results are shown
Copilot tells you about the results rather than listing them out: how many there are, what they have in common, and the one or two most worth your attention.
A wall of fifty names isn't much use in a conversation, and the candidate search screens in Pinpoint handle that better. Copilot's job is to tell you what's there and give you a way in. Ask about anyone who catches your eye and it'll bring up their profile, CV, previous applications, scorecards and comments.
Finding more people like someone
Once you've found someone good, you can ask Copilot for more people like them. It compares that person's CV and application content against everyone else in your database and brings back the closest matches. Those results can be narrowed in all the same ways as any other search.
Tips for better results
Use the words your candidates would use. Job titles, tools, technologies and skills are the things that actually appear on a CV, so they're what searches best.
Keep the description short and lean on filters. "Python, UK, active in the last 90 days" will serve you better than one long sentence trying to capture everything at once.
Asking for several skills means all of them. "Python and Go" finds people who have both, not either. If you're seeing fewer results than you expected, try asking for the skill that matters most on its own.
Follow up instead of starting again. Copilot remembers the conversation, so "now just the ones in Manchester" works fine, and saves rewriting the whole search.
Start broad and narrow down. Cutting a large result set down is easier than trying to write the perfect search first time.
Copilot respects your permissions
Copilot only finds candidates you can already see. Every search is filtered to your account, and then to your own permissions. It won't show you anything you couldn't find by clicking around Pinpoint yourself.
If you use blind screening, Copilot respects it. Concealed applications are left out of what it searches, and concealed names won't appear in your results.
Frequently asked questions
Does Copilot search inside CVs?
Yes, the full text of the CV document, along with cover letters and application answers.
Will a candidate who's just applied show up?
Yes. New candidates can be searched straight away.
Can Copilot see candidates I'm not allowed to see?
No. Every search is filtered to your own permissions, and blind screening is respected.
Can I use it to work through a long list of candidates?
Copilot is best at finding people and pointing you towards the ones worth a look. To work systematically through a large list, use the candidate search screens in Pinpoint.