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Issues with Find People Search for UK Companies Database

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I have this table of more than 3000 companies, but when I run a find people search, the amount it pulls back seems way too low. These are all UK companies with over 50 employees, and when I did the find people search with the filters for managers and above, it returned 200 people. I appreciate some profiles will be private but looks like something isn't working

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    If I add founder, owner, CEO, and Managing Director it pulls back 4 results!

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Okay, so it seems to now be working—very strange. I do have a quick question, though. If I want to get everyone, is it better to first search companies and find people rather than find people with a company filter? The difference I can see is that with the Find People, it looks for people based on matching domains, and the Find People, looking from a company's table uses the LinkedIn URL. Any advice to maximize coverage would be much appreciated.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    Hello Callum! We apologize for the previous delays in enrichment. Both of those methods should yield identical results, as they do the same in the backend. Both methods will match to a company's linkedin url. On that note, if you input a domain, we map the domain to a linkedin url and then do the search, so it is always better to use linkedin urls. For other general tips, I recommend airing on the side of broad search filters, particularly in job titles. Also, make sure to put all the potential titles someone could have that match what you are looking for. For example if you are looking for decision makers, you should add 'CEO' and 'Chief Executive Officer', as well as 'co-founder' and 'co-owner'. In the case above, you might want to try searching just 'director' as well, since some people might have a title equivalent to managing director but under a different name.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Interesting it seems to be getting slightly different results. I tried doing a find people adding the same company filters as I did when starting with companies and the number of people it's returning is different. I'm not using any exact roles just the seniority filters in the Clay interface. Might be worth you doing some experiments to see if it returns exactly the same number of results for you.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    This is the people search with the same company filters - https://app.clay.com/workspaces/304087/tables/t_jxHoFBBytUaw/views/gv_U8exeoxugTjp

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    Hm, I see. Do you mind sending the link to the table where the companies are? I'll go in and take a look.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    This is the company table for doing the following people search - https://app.clay.com/workspaces/304087/tables/t_JZQWDgtpJsrC/views/gv_Mn8a95DTSHjc

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Less than half the results from what should be the same

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    did you find anything?

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    I am looking into definitive details, but I think what happens here is the following: When you make a company table and use the company identifiers there to find people, you are using 25k (max) companies as identifiers. However if you put the company attributes in the people search filter, you are not subject to this limit since the search happens entirely in the back end.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    I don't thnk thats the case as there are only 17,000 and something in the company table. Are you saying the company table hit the limit?

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    And because the company table hit the limit it has limited the number of people, maybe i'm not understanding what you're saying.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    Ok I just got some proof of what I said earlier. Here's what I mean: If the companies you are using as input for a people search are populated in a table, you are subject to the number constraints for that table. In this case, 25k. However if you use the companies as input without having them in a table (which is what putting the same filters under company attributes in a people search does), then you are not held back by the 25k limit and can use more companies as input. If you go into your people tables, notice I added a lookup enrichment in both tables. The lookup enrichment compare the company domains in one table to the other. The people search based on the company table find that almost all of its company domains are also in the direct people search table. However, the direct people search table finds that a lot of its company domains are not in the search table based on the company table. This is indicative that one of the used more companies as input than the other.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Ok so the question is why is one pulling from more companies when the filters are exactly the same and the company table hasn't hit the 25,000 Limit. It makes sense when you do a lookup from the find people not from the companies table that they don't match as there is obviously way more. But if you look at that find people's source you will see at a company level the filters are exactly the same as what I used to generate the companies table. So my question is why is it pulling from more companies in the find people not from companies, it should in theory be exactly the same.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    This is the source from the just find people

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    This is the source from the companies table

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Unless i'm missing something really obvious (very possible), your theory only makes sense if the find companies had hit the 25,000 company limit. This would then indicate potential missing companies that the find people search would be pulling from to increase the overall lead number.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    No no you're right, I replicated the company search earlier and thought I saw more than 25k companies. I just did it again and saw the number you are seeingI'm going to take this case to eng to figure out exactly what's going on. I think for practical purposes, the answer on which is better practice is putting the filters in the company attributes section of a people search. However, I recognize this can be inconvenient sometimes.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    Ok cool, glad I'm not loosing my mind on a Friday afternoon/ evening 🙂. I guess the main advantage of the find company is it also pulls back company LinkedIn and other useful data. If you could keep me in the loop, in general I'm trying to get to the bottom of the LinkedIn search, I have a very small TAM so if people are being missed outside of public profiles it can have a big effect on my performance. I actually was told previously that you get more results finding people if you start from a LinkedIn URL rather than a domain because of linking, any information would be much appreciated.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    Ok I think I got the answer now, the difference is in location filtering. When you got the companies first, you filtered for the companies to be in the UK. When finding the people from these companies, you also filtered from them to be in the UK. However, when finding people, the location filter refers to the people, not the companies. In this scenario, you got people in the UK from companies whose profiles do not have their location in the UK. You can see this in the bigger table: I ran some enrich companies on the domains that were not found in the small table, and those companies do not have location data that puts them in the UK.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    It looks like a lot of them have GB as their country data which should be counted under UK, but it might not be doing so currently.

  • Avatar of Tomi F.
    Tomi F.
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    Also I am adding a bunch of credits to your account for these runs.

  • Avatar of Callum S.
    Callum S.
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    You’re a legend, that makes complete sense, thanks for persisting and spotting what I couldn’t.

  • Avatar of Channeled
    Channeled
    APP
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    Hi Callum S.! This thread was recently closed by our Support team. If you have a moment, please share your feedback:

  • Avatar of Channeled
    Channeled
    APP
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    Thank you so much for sharing your feedback Callum S.!