What
In Mercury Legacy Search there is a column known as Score. It's a dynamic value that updates whenever a query runs. This feature is a great way of identifying Candidates who best match a certain criteria which can then be used in conjunction with the Boost facility to streamline results even further. The key benefit of understanding this value and how it adapts on every search, is that users can rest assured that only relevant Candidates will be displayed, therefore saving time in manually searching for the ideal Candidate to fit a certain role.
Where
This column is only found within Mercury Legacy Search. If the column is not in your view, then Score can be added via the + icon.
How
1. If the Score column is not shown in the table, it can be added via the + icon as shown below:
2. Once the + icon has been clicked, a menu window will open where users can scroll down to the Score option where they will be able to add it, and then it will display back in the first window:
The Basics
Most modern search engines utilise a similar system to return websites that are most relevant to a user's search query. The same concept applies when using the Score feature - the closer the value shown in the table is to the whole number of 1, then the more meaningful that Candidate is. See below for an example:
1. This first step shows a blank search where everyone's Score is 1.0000 as there are no search terms in the Search bar:
2. Now that we have a search term of Project as a Job Title, the Search has returned us records where it has discovered Candidates who best fit that search query. All of the Candidates seen below have the word Project mentioned in their Candidate profile at some stage:
3. To evidence how dynamic this column is, by adding another search term to our query of Project, we can see how the results are affected:
4. By adding a search term of Senior, the Score has updated to now only show 2 Candidates who best fit our search term of finding Candidates who have a Job Title of Project and Senior within their profile. The below screenshots show evidence how Mercury Search is such a powerful tool! The search is able to cast a wide net and only returns relevant Candidates. The Score then provides a numerical identifier as to how valid a Candidate is:
Conclusion > The main things to understand how the Score function works
Whenever you use Mercury Search, the system is doing all the hard work behind the scenes by returning only the most valid Candidates.
When combining search terms together, the Score will always take this into consideration and update accordingly.
The closer the Score is to the whole number of 1, then the most prominent that Candidate is.
Even if a Score returned is not close to 1, the Candidate(s) still have some relevance.
There can be scenarios where the Score can be larger than 1, and this tends to occur when a search term is made up of more than 1 singular section. In the event that this occurs, the ruling is that the higher the score is (can be 1 to infinity) on a Candidate, then the more relevant that individual is.
Authored by Arden Shaw - Digital Adoption Consultant @ Mercury