Setting up a Project

Table of Contents

Starting a New Project

Understanding the Overview Dashboard

Candidate Mapping

Using Filters to Refine Candidates

Reviewing Candidates

Candidate Pipeline Tab

Campaigns Tab

Activity Tab

Collaboration and Notes

Tips and Tricks

Insights

Troubleshooting

This guide will walk you through the key steps to set up a project, map candidates, and use advanced features in the Executive Search platform. The goal is to enable efficient and effective project creation and management.

Starting a New Project

Open your web browser and navigate to https://exec.findem.ai/my-apps. You'll land on the ESP landing page, where you'll see all the apps available to you.

The App Catalog allows you to customize your landing page by adding the apps you frequently use. To get started with a new search, click Projects.

There are a few ways you can kick off a project. Let's start with the most basic:

1. Click New Project from the main landing page.
   
   • Fill in the following fields (note that any of the fields you input here can be changed later on):
     • Project Name:(e.g., Onboarding CMO Search)
     • Linking to an Assignment: Optionally, you can link an existing assignment if using a supported ATS
       
     • Job Description (JD) URL: If the JD is hosted on a website, link it here.
     • Client Name: Enter the client company name.
     • Website: If there's a specific company website, add it here. Findem will suggest the company match, then automatically link to the URL. On the next page, any applicable company information from the website will populate.
     • Role: Specify the position title (e.g., Chief Marketing Officer).
     • Reports To: Input the role title that the role you're searching for would be reporting to if applicable.
     • Project Owner: Select from the dropdown of team members for collaboration.
     • Hiring Manager or Recruiter: This is optional.
   • Use the Share With option to allow your team access to the project if applicable.
     

You can also utilize a few other methods to set up your project, including:

• AI Assistant for natural language queries. Describe the search you want to build in a few sentences with key words (e.g., "Find me a Chief Marketing Officer with 10 years experience in the SaaS industry").
  • Lookalike Profile: Add up to three LinkedIn profiles of desired candidates. The system will analyze them and generate relevant searches based on those profiles.
  • Job Description: Paste or upload an existing job description, and the system will extract keywords to create a search.
  • Role: Choose from a list of existing roles populated by Findem.
    

Understanding the Overview Dashboard

Once a project is created, you'll land on the Overview dashboard. Here, you can see:

• Project Details: This section includes the information you filled out when creating the project.
• Client Details: These are details about the specific client/company you input.
• Key Metrics: Track the number of candidates added to the pipeline, contacted, replied, and those interested in the role.
• Pipeline Overview: A summary view of all pipeline activity.
• Candidate Mapping: Start building a Candidate Map (explained below).

You can attach job descriptions or relevant documents directly to the dashboard for team reference.

Candidate Mapping

Candidate mapping allows you to define search criteria to find the right candidates. Exec Search offers simple mapping and advanced mapping.

Candidate mapping is our recommended method of finding the exact ideal candidate based on your queries. For example, while we offer manually attribute mapping, you may see different and noisier results. Let's take a look at an example:

Candidate Mapping

I'm looking for a VP of Sales at Google. With candidate mapping, I will receive only specified results that include candidates who currently hold VP of Sales title at Google, or, if the example is past, we can use "held" the position of VP of Sales at Google.

When you type a specific title, the system may auto-populate a broader or more generic variant (for example, automatically adding Vice President). This behavior expands the mapping and broadens your results beyond the exact title you entered.

• If your results look broader than expected, review the Executive Role or title fields and remove any auto-added generic variants you don't want included.
• Re-run the mapping after adjusting titles to narrow the candidate pool back to your intended scope.

Findem Magic:

• Use this feature to access hundreds of additional filters like founder experience, revenue, or funding history.
• It scrapes data from over 100,000 sources (e.g., Crunchbase, PitchBook) for comprehensive insights.

Searching with Attributes

I'm looking for a VP of Sales at Google. If I manually add attributes from the attribute list (see image below), and I input the role "VP of Sales" into the Job Title field, and "Google" into the Company field, I will receive results that include VP of Sales at Amazon (for example) and Head of Marketing at Google. This method may surface more results, but will typically muddy up your requirements.

Note:

You cannot combine simple and advanced mapping in the same project. You can have multiple simple maps OR multiple advanced maps within the same project.

 

Simple Search Mapping

1. From the project overview page, go to the Candidate Mapping tab and click Add Mapping. Toggle Simple on.
2. Name the mapping (e.g., "CMO - Simple"). This can be titled whatever you'd like; just ensure it's named to the key persona or archetype you're searching for.
3. Input the Employee Timeframe. This defines the recency of the role your candidate held (i.e., recent, current).
4. Executive Role: Type and select the role (e.g., Chief Marketing Officer). Use curated titles to include variations like "Head of Marketing". A Findem Curated role title will compile and aggregate all different iterations of "Chief Marketing Officer" titles, including adjacencies. For a more specific search, use the Standard options from the dropdown list. There will be a number of choices depending on what you input here.
5. Companies and Company Lists: You can create a custom list by pasting company names. The system will find and link them. You can also import an existing list of companies from a CSV or Excel file. For more on company lists, click here.

• Example: For a marketing role, create a list of Canva competitors. Once input, your company list will search for only those who hold/held the role you input at the companies you input.
  

Advanced Search Mapping

Click Advanced in the mapping section for more granular search capabilities.

Note:

If you had previously set up simple mapping of any kind and you switch to Advanced, you will lose the simple maps you created for the project.

Step 1: Define Your Query Criteria in Advanced Search

1. Start with the basics:
   • Identify what you want to include in your search query. The Advanced Search tool allows you to build layered criteria to customize your search.
   • Remember, everything you add to the query will refine the results to match your exact needs.

2. Understand the flexibility of criteria:

   • Advanced mapping can filter candidates by:
     • Current and past companies
     • Custom company lists
     • Industries they have experience in
     • Job titles (you can include multiple)
     • Business models
     • Company stage

   This flexibility ensures that you can tailor your search to even the most complex executive search requirements.

Step 2: Build Your Query

Let's walk through an example scenario:

1. Job Title: Specify the title you're searching for.
   • Example: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
2. Industry: Select the industries relevant to your search.
   • Example: Digital Marketing and SaaS industries
   • Note, you can get a good idea of what industries to input here based on the Project Details menu; especially if you added a company name and website in Company Details when creating your project. To view your client's company, from the Overview dashboard of your project, scroll down to Industry and Subcategories to view applicable industries as classified by Findem.
3. Business Model: Define the business models you're targeting.
   • Example: Companies operating in both B2B and B2C business models
4. Additional Criteria: Add any other relevant filters, such as company size, funding stage, or geography, to further refine your search.

Step 3: Review and Adjust

Once your initial query is built, click View Candidates to review the list of results. Adjust or add additional criteria as necessary to better align with your specific requirements.

Refining and Adjusting Searches

Use the Exclude Titles or Exclude Companies options to remove irrelevant candidates or companies. To edit a mapping, click the three dots next to the map and select Edit.

Using Filters to Refine Candidates

Filters help tailor your candidate pool. There are a lot to choose from, including:

• Location: Specify regions (e.g., states, cities, or time zones)
• Experience:
  • Set total career experience (e.g., 10+ years)
  • Define current role experience (e.g., 2+ years in a CMO role)
  • Set Experience Thresholds:
    • Total career experience (e.g., 15+ years for executive leadership roles)
    • Relevant functional experience (e.g., 5+ years in a VP-level position)
• Seniority Level: Use filters like "C-Level Executive" or "Vice President"
• Company Attributes: Adjust based on:
  • Revenue, employee size, growth rate, or funding stage
  • Filters for IPO or acquisition experience
    

Reviewing Candidates

From the candidate list, click on a profile to view enriched information like:

• Work history, company details, and industry classifications
• Contact details: View emails (default is candidate's personal email) and phone numbers

Use the AI Assistant to evaluate a candidate's relevance for the role.

You can also add or edit key links in a candidate’s record, including their LinkedIn URL, so that your team can easily cross-reference their public profile from within the app.

Candidate Pipeline Tab

The Pipeline tab is where all your shortlisted candidates go. Here you can view various metrics on shortlisted candidates, including:

• Those who have replied
• Those interested and not interested

You can also see any action required on your part to take on the pipeline candidates.

Campaigns Tab

The Campaigns tab allows you to create and manage email campaigns for your shortlisted candidates. Click here to learn more about campaigns.

Activity Tab

The Activity tab allows you to view all your search activity, including candidates you've viewed replied to, and whom are interested as well as those you've added to your pipeline.

Collaboration and Notes

Located in the Candidate Profile, here, you're able to add notes and tags to candidates for better organization. You can also attach resumes or supplementary documents to candidate profiles for shared team access.

Insights

With the Insights tab, you can analyze the talent pool in your project. Understand demographic trends, location distributions, and industry composition.

You can also share insights with your team or clients to demonstrate search scope and progress.

Insights at a Glance and Custom Insights

From a candidate's enriched profile, you can see auto-summed insights into their profile, as well as add your own custom insight with the help of AI Assistant.

With Add a Custom Insight, you can enter a prompt asking for insight into the candidate's experience or qualifications. The AI Assistant will then get to work scraping the candidate's profile to find relevant information about your prompt.

Note that the AI Assistant here is not meant an open chat bot that searches the entire internet to find information on revenue, company business models, company sales information or activity; rather, it is meant to provide contextual insight into the candidate's history and qualifications to determine how well they match the role.

Tips and Tricks

• Findem Magic:
  • Use Findem Magic this feature to access hundreds of additional filters like founder experience, revenue, or funding history.
  • Findem Magic scrapes data from over 100,000 sources (e.g., Crunchbase, PitchBook) for comprehensive insights.
• LinkedIn Profile Cross-Referencing:
  While Findem doesn't directly sync with your LinkedIn projects, you can upload CSV files of LinkedIn candidates into Findem to cross-reference.
• Data Refresh:
  Profiles are updated every 28–30 days. Adding a candidate to your pipeline triggers an immediate refresh.
• Adding Candidates to Pipeline (Shift + F):
  When using the Shift + F shortcut to add candidates to your Project Pipeline:
  • If a profile doesn't appear in your pipeline, wait a moment and try the action again.
  • For persistent issues, contact Findem Support for assistance.

Troubleshooting and Enhancements

If you encounter missing attributes or filters, contact our team to request additions. For broader location searches, manually add overlapping cities or states to expand the range.

Take advantage of the training period to explore features without limits. Experiment with different mapping methods, filters, and AI tools to familiarize yourself with the platform.