We often receive feedback from companies hiring onsite or hybrid who want to be able to more effectively search for candidates based on proximity.

Before, users were limited to guessing potential locations candidates might be based - relying on their own geographical knowledge, which may have led to missing out on suitable candidates. For example, a company hiring hybrid Leeds previously might add ‘Leeds’ ‘Manchester’ ‘Sheffield’ to their stream filters, which was time-consuming and wouldn’t catch absolutely all candidates who might be suitable - anyone within a commutable distance of Leeds.

The new search by radius feature addresses the problem outlined above directly: by allowing the user to input a radius when searching by location.

When adding a location filter to a stream, the user can set a specific distance from a city to find candidates within that radius. It simplifies the search process, elimating the need for multiple manual location entries. Note: this feature works for cities currently.

It works by applying the radius filter selected to all location entries on a stream. The radius is calculated from the central point of the city/cities. Checking the ‘Include people looking to relocate’ box will include anyone willing to relocate to that area if they fall within the specified radius.

Hasan, who built the back end for this feature, has provided a more technical explanation of how it works here:

Companies can search by radius; this works for all locations which are not a country or region (e.g. United Kingdom or Western, USA).

When radius search is used, we still perform the same logic as before with regards to location i.e. searching for candidates that have the same location. Radius search is used to complement this.

For example, if searching by London with radius of 20km, the logic will be:

This means that results will never be reduced because of the radius search than if it wasn’t used at all.

If companies toggle Include people looking to relocate then we perform a radius search on candidate’s location preferences.

Note

The radius starts from the centre of the location being searched e.g. London will be the central point in London City, therefore running a search for London with a radius of 10km will not significantly increase the results, because a radius of 10km does not go beyond London’s borders. This approach was taken, instead of starting from the border of location boundary. Because of data, it would be difficult to get and maintain the borders for every single locality, town, city etc. for UK and Europe.

To Hasan (Back End), Jiyeon (Front End) and Katerina (Design) for their work on this feature - everyone was involved from pre-design stage to product testing to release! 👏🏼