Eightfold Chrome extension and publicly available data
Purpose
The Eightfold Chrome extension lets you add and update candidate profiles to your talent pool from publicly available data sources. This document explains how the Chrome extension works with publicly available profiles from LinkedIn.
For more information on how Eightfold handles candidate data, refer to Eightfold’s Privacy Policy.
Audience
This article is directed toward users of the TA product, specifically sourcers and sourcing leads, as well as Eightfold employees.
Public candidate data
The Eightfold Chrome extension searches the URL of a publicly available LinkedIn profile and allows a customer:
- to add that candidate to the customer’s talent pool; and
- if a matching profile already exists in the customer’s Eightfold database, to update and enrich the candidate’s profile with up-to-date information made publicly available online.
The extension's functionality involves parsing HTML pages through multiple API calls, which includes creating an Eightfold profile if no match is found in the existing database and merging profiles with candidates' ATS information if such data exists. Candidates are linked to an application profile in Eightfold primarily based on their LinkedIn profile public URL.
For more details on updating existing candidate profiles, refer to the Updating existing candidate profiles section of this article.
Fetching candidate data
The extension fetches candidate data from LinkedIn URLs of public profiles and other public data sources. Public data sources may include, for example, Google Search API to search for people using the information provided in the public candidate profile. The extension merges the datasets to create a unified candidate profile in Eightfold. Public LinkedIn profiles provide insight into job-related activities and skills and are not used to collect contact information, such as email and phone number.
The extension requires permissions to read the URLs of websites allowed by the user and to send and parse the HTML of recruiting websites allowed by the user. The data read by the extension is specifically the profile HTML in the browser.
Note: Eightfold maintains a policy of only consuming information from third-party tools and does not sync or write any data back to them.
Updating existing candidate profiles
When you make new candidate data available to your Eightfold account, after it is ingested, Eightfold attempts to refresh the data. For existing candidate data in your Eightfold account, we attempt to refresh periodically, usually within 60 days. To see the update attempts and actual updates made, refer to the Integrations Health section in the Admin Console: Go to Admin Console > Integrations Health > Data Quality > Candidate tab, and scroll to the Candidates with Public Profile URL refreshed in last 60 days metric in the Metric Name column. The latest title and employer going forward can be updated but historical gaps in experiences cannot be updated.
As a reminder, the data in a candidate profile in Eightfold might not be current due to several reasons, such as the following:
- The candidate data is not publicly available.
- The candidate has not publicly updated their information, such as their new job.
- Our data sources, as described in this article, have not obtained the new data about the candidate or have not made it available publicly or to Eightfold.
The initial check for duplicates involves the LinkedIn URL. Subsequently, the system assesses if a new profile is a duplicate based on multiple checks involving a combination of Name, email, and mobile number.
Recruiter use and configuration
When sourcing a candidate from LinkedIn, if the candidate is already a part of the talent pool, you can see information on previous recruiting activity on the extension. Recruiting activity on the extension displays the positions the candidate was contacted for earlier and any past applications. To view recruiting activity, you must be part of the hiring team for the positions that the user applied to or was contacted about. The Chrome extension is an optional functionality that can be turned off to suit customer configurations.
Note:
- All actions on the Chrome extension, such as viewing or acting on a position or Community, are dependent on the permissions of the 'logged-in user'.
- 'Saved' Leads refer to candidates saved to a position through the Chrome Extension and are always in the context of a position. 'Imported' Leads are candidates created using the ‘Import Resume’ feature and are not initially associated with a position. However, if an imported candidate later becomes a Lead for any position, they will appear in the 'Imported' step under Leads, even if subsequently saved via the Chrome Extension.
URLs in an ATS
The Eightfold Chrome extension may be best compatible if your ATS includes the candidate’s LinkedIn URL, so the extension can recognize which profiles may already exist in your talent pool.