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Screening7 min read

Build your candidate pool

Search the talent pool in plain language, capture profiles with the Chrome extension, upload resumes in bulk, share the referral link, and put an owner on every record.

Before you start

  • An Expert Hire workspace with Candidates in the left sidebar.
  • Resumes, profile links, or a list of names and email addresses to start the pool with.
  • The Chrome extension installed if you source from LinkedIn, Naukri or Monster. It unlocks on Explorer and up.
Steps

7 steps, in order.

1

Open Candidates and read what is already there

Click Candidates in the sidebar. The page is headed Talent pool, and the table under it carries Candidate, Email, Added by, Assigned to, Status and Added, with a View action on each row and a sortable Added column. Tabs above the table are All and Starred, and the footer reads Showing 1 to 6 of 6 with a Per page control. A candidate who has been captured but not worked on yet shows the status Sourced. Read this page before you source anything new. A candidate rejected for one role is often right for the next.

2

Search in plain language, not just by name

The search box takes a description rather than a string. Try Go engineer in Bengaluru. The AI match toggle beside the box ranks the pool against what you typed instead of matching text, the All roles dropdown narrows the table to one open role, Refresh re-runs the query and Reset clears everything back. Star the people worth keeping and the Starred tab becomes your working shortlist.

  • Search the pool before every new search you start. It is the cheapest sourcing you will do all week.
3

Capture profiles with the Chrome extension

The extension captures candidates into this pool from LinkedIn, Naukri and Monster without leaving the profile, and the same extension masks the name, contact details and photo on a resume before you send it to a client. Everything it captures rolls up into the Sourcing panel at the top of Candidates, which breaks the count down by source and shows a trend line once there is enough history to draw one. Installation and permissions are on the Chrome extension page.

  • Masking a resume counts as one Hire Credit, the same as a resume scan.
  • Captures from some sites come back with no email address. Add one on the profile before you invite that candidate to an interview.
4

Upload resumes in bulk, or paste names and emails

Upload resumes sits in the page header. Drop the whole pile in one action rather than one file at a time, or paste a list of names and email addresses if you have no files to hand. Uploading puts people in the pool. Scoring them against a specific job is a Resume Screening round on that job, which is 1 Hire Credit per resume scanned.

Back|Dashboard > Clients > Stripe
Full-Stack Developer, AI-Native
Add candidates
Round 1Round 2
Search candidates
Candidate Score Actions
Hannah Reed
75
Andre Whitlock
70
Cara Donnelly
65
Owen Fletcher
65
Talia Bergman
55
Marcus Bell
55
Maya Ellison
55
Kofi Mensah
55
Dana Whitfield
52
Elliot Vance
48
Claire Bennett
45
Grant Whitley
41
Devon Marsh
38
Callum Reid
35

Bulk upload, then per-candidate scores and status in one table once the pool is screened against a job.

5

Share the resume referral link

Copy referral link sits next to Upload resumes in the header. It is a link on the form work.experthire.io/resume-share/your-username, and every resume submitted through it drops straight into this pool. Send it when someone asks how to apply speculatively instead of forwarding CVs to yourself. The same link, and your personal instant meeting link, live under Settings then Profile, where the username is editable.

  • Set the username before you put the link on a job post or anywhere else public.
6

Assign an owner and fill in the record

Open a candidate with View. The header holds their title, email, phone, a LinkedIn chip, Favorite and an Assigned to dropdown, and Get suggested roles matches them against your open roles. Tabs run Profile, Timeline, Resumes, Interviews, Roles and Clients. Profile holds Details, Compensation, Experience, Education and Certifications, each with its own Add or Edit, and the right rail holds the resume on file with Attach resume, plus Technical skills and Soft skills. Set Assigned to on every record you intend to work. Unowned candidates are the ones nobody follows up.

  • Fill in compensation as soon as you know it. It is the most common reason a late-stage process collapses.
  • Auto-updates from new resumes and screening calls can overwrite manual edits on the profile.
7

Move people from the pool onto the pipeline

The pool is a list, not a process. Add a candidate to a job from their record, or put them straight onto the ATS board with Add candidate. The board is a column per stage, in the order your workspace has set up, with Pre-contact fixed at the start and the Started and Rejected outcomes fixed at the end. Each card carries the candidate's name, the role title, the client and the owner's avatar, and clicking one opens a drawer holding contact details, the resume, interviews, activity and comments. Filter it by role, client, date range or search, and drag cards between columns to move a stage.

Back|Dashboard > ATS
Pipeline
ATS
Search name or email
Pre-contact7
Dana WhitfieldRW
Appointment Setter
Marcus BellRW
Next.js Developer
Iris KavanaghKB
Sales Development
Tomas FerreiraRW
React Developer
Elena RossKB
Data Engineer
Grant WhitleyRW
Platform Engineer
Simone OkaforKB
QA Engineer
Add a card
Contacted7
Naomi WintersRW
Software Engineer
Elliot VanceRW
Backend Engineer
Hana SatoKB
Product Designer
Devon MarshRW
Data Analyst
Ruth AdeyemiKB
SDE-1
Callum ReidRW
DevOps Engineer
Jonas WeberRW
Solutions Architect
Add a card

The pipeline board, a column per stage with a live count and the candidates in play in each one.

What you get

At the end of this guide.

A searchable talent pool with a status, a source and an owner on every row.

Plain-language search plus an AI match toggle that ranks the pool against what you typed.

A capture route from LinkedIn, Naukri and Monster that needs no copy and paste.

A referral link that drops resumes into the pool without you collecting files.

Candidate records carrying compensation, work history, skills and a timeline of who touched them.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong, and the fix.

Sourcing new candidates before searching the pool you already have.

Search first. A candidate rejected for one role is often right for the next one.

Leaving Assigned to blank.

Put an owner on the record. Unowned candidates are the ones nobody follows up.

Inviting a captured profile that has no email address.

Captures from some sites carry no address. Add one on the profile before the invite goes out.

Forwarding CVs to yourself so they end up in the pool.

Send the referral link instead. Anything submitted through it lands in the pool already.

Leaving compensation empty until the offer stage.

Fill it in as soon as you know it. It is the most common reason a late-stage process collapses.

FAQ

Questions people ask on this one.

Still stuck? Talk to us and we will walk through your setup.

Read next

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All guides

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