What's the Difference Between a Must-Have Skill and a Nice-to-Have Skill?

When reviewing your search parameters for the ideal candidate, you'll have the option to assign a filter as either "Must Have" or "Nice-To-Have". Within each filter you're able to assign multiple criteria, all of which will be subject to the behavior of this toggle.

But what is the logic going on behind the scenes that determines candidate filtering based on these parameters? 

Must Have

A Must Have is just that; when you select a criteria as a Must Have, you're making them required. Therefore, Copilot's search will automatically filter out any candidates who do not meet that criteria in their profile. The more Must Have skills you add, the lower number of results you'll receive. If you begin your search with three Must Have criteria define, then edit the filter to have seven Must Haves, the talent pool will likely decrease by a lot, because each candidate shown will need to have all seven skills in their profile.

| Must Haves shrink the pool of candidates

Best practice with Must Haves is to limit the amount you add to any given search. For example, if you have both "JavaScript" and "JS" marked as Must Have skills, you may not receive many, or any results, because these terms mean the same thing, and the likelihood that a candidate will have both written in their profile is slim. Similarly, if you have five or more coding languages marked as Must Haves, you'll once again likely not receive many results, as many candidates do not list each coding language written out on their profile. 

Nice-To-Have

When a section is marked as Nice-To-Have, the Search results are going to recommend candidates stack-ranked by the number of criteria they have that match the Nice-To-Haves in their profile. For example, if a you've marked four skills as Nice-To-Have, the top rated candidates that appear might have all four of those skills in their profile. While candidates lower in your list may only have three or two, or potentially even non of the Nice-To-Haves.

Example:

Jane Doe has 5 out of 5 matching Nice-To-Have skills on her profile. John Smith only has 4 out of 5 matching skills. Therefore, Jane's profile will rank higher and as a better fit than John Smith's based on that logic.

Highlight filter option

With skills and attributes, you have the option to "highlight" any given value when editing your search parameters, effectively turning it into a Must Have. By highlighting a certain attribute, you're filtering only candidates who have a profile containing that exact attribute. For example, if you highlight a specific company, like Google, for instance, only candidates who have Google included at a company they've worked at will show up in the results. This highlight attribute feature is a way to zoom in on a particular subgroup of your results.