How do I search my candidate database by skills instead of job title?
Reenal Rawal
Senior TA Specialist, HR MBA
With 5+ years of experience refining recruitment and hiring, I ensure every answer is clear, accurate, and actionable, helping HR leaders and hiring teams trust and apply what they read.
Use a natural language search instead of your ATS's keyword or job-title filters. Most ATS search bars match exact text strings, so a search for "product manager" misses a strong candidate whose resume says "product lead" or "product owner." Skills-based search looks at what a person can do rather than what their last title was.
AI search tools let you type your requirements in plain language. Instead of building a Boolean query, you describe what you need. For example: "5 years of experience in Python, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, based in the US." The system then scans every resume in your database against those criteria.
Skima AI's AI search works this way. You type your requirements into the search bar on any page, press Enter, and the system scans your full candidate database. Each candidate receives an AI Matching Score based on how closely their skills, experience, and location match your prompt. The system ranks results from highest to lowest fit.
Every candidate card in the results shows which skills the resume confirms and which it does not, so you can see the fit at a glance. You can also expand a result to view the candidate's full profile, experience breakdown, education, and tags.
To refine results, edit the generated summary on the left panel: add a skill, adjust the experience range, or change the location, then click Search Again. The system repeats the scan with updated criteria and returns a refreshed ranked list.
This approach finds candidates your ATS keyword search would miss, because it understands context rather than matching exact words.