Before you begin a search, ask yourself this question:
“ When a keyword matches a profile, where on that profile did it match? “
On most platforms you will never know.
Does "Kubernetes" live in a job the candidate left in 2016? Or in a skills list they padded, or in a summary written by ChatGPT?
Search fields let you decide where the match must occur, which changes how precise your search can be. Provenbase gives you 28 fields, and these seven earn most of your attention.
TL;DR
- Every field prefix answers one question: where on the profile should this term match? Precision comes from picking the narrowest field that still captures the truth.
- Seven fields do disproportionate work: Job.title.last2Job.desc.currentTitle.profileJob.company.currentCertificationHc.taxonomyLicense.agency
- Each of the above gets ten use cases below.
1. Sixty Second Syntax
- Operators: AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and "exact phrases". The default operator between terms is AND.
- Dots or underscores: job.title and job_title are the same. Use whichever your is easiest for your setup.
- No field means “include everything”: bare keywords search the whole profile (all_text). Fine for discovery, sloppy for delivery.
- Scope beats cleverness: the same term used in a .current field like Job.desc.current produces fewer results versus the broader Job.desc. This could both benefit or block results, so choose mindfully.
2. Seven Fields Win The Day
All 28 fields were scored against four criteria:
- Distinctiveness (capability other platforms lack)
- Specialization (serves high-difficulty search types)
- Compounding (collapsed multiple steps)
- Clarity (instantly visible value)
These fields earned a ten-use-case extension only by winning convincingly on at least two.
Field | Why |
|---|
job.title.last2 | Recency-scoped title search + zero date math. Nearly unique in the market. |
job.desc.current | Kills stale-keyword false positives. Pairs perfectly with signal-phrases. |
title.profile | Self-identity layer, isolated. Finds people the way they describe themselves. |
job.company.current | Devastating in compound plays (org maps, layoffs, boomerangs). |
certification | Separates verified capability from skill claims. High value in regulated work. |
hc.taxonomy | NPI taxonomy search. The single most differentiated field in the platform. |
license.agency | Jurisdiction-level sourcing for licensed professions. Chronically hard elsewhere. |
3. Ten Use Cases
3.1 job.title.last2
Wins on: Distinct + Compound
Most platforms confuse you with three bad choices: current title only (misses recent movers), past title only (missed current matches) or any title ever (drowns you in people who did the job a decade ago, or only for the last month). This field is the missing middle: the two most recent roles. It is a recency filter that requires no date filters at all.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Fresh-experience gate | Require the target title within the last two roles so the skill is still warm, without touching a date filter. | job.title.last2:("clinical research associate" OR CRA) |
2 | Recently promoted past the role | Catch people one step above the req who did the exact job last role. They can hire, coach, and still do the work. | job.title.last2:"product manager" AND job.title.current:(senior OR group OR lead) |
3 | Boomerang to craft | Leaders who recently managed the function and may want to return to hands-on work. A pool nobody else is courting. | job.title.last2:"data scientist" AND job.title.current:(director OR manager) AND NOT job.title.current:"data scientist" |
4 | Adjacent-title switchers | People who just crossed from a neighboring title into your target function. Recent converts are often the most motivated. | job.title.last2:("financial analyst" OR "FP&A analyst") AND job.title.current:"finance manager" |
5 | Title-drift rescue | Layoffs push real specialists into stopgap titles. Their last two roles tell the truth their current title hides. | job.title.last2:"UX researcher" AND job.title.current:(consultant OR freelance OR independent) |
6 | Back-to-back specialists | Require the title recently AND earlier in the career to find people who keep choosing this work. | job.title.last2:"site reliability engineer" AND job.title:(SRE OR "site reliability") |
7 | Succession progression scans | Map natural ladders (Recruiter to Senior Recruiter to Manager) to build promote-from-market pipelines. | job.title.last2:"senior recruiter" AND job.title:(recruiter OR "talent sourcer") |
8 | Stale-skill exclusion | Flip the logic: someone whose only match is ancient history fails this search. The field does your recency screening. | job.title.last2:"embedded software engineer" AND skill:(RTOS OR "bare metal") |
9 | Competitor role-for-role, with recency | Poach the exact role from named competitors, but only if they held it recently. | job.title.last2:"solutions architect" AND job.company.current:(Snowflake OR Databricks) |
10 | Return-to-industry campaigns | Find professionals who recently left the field (nursing, teaching, trades) for re-entry and return-to-practice programs. | job.title.last2:("registered nurse" OR RN) AND NOT job.title.current:(nurse OR RN) |
3.2 job.desc.current
Wins on: Distinct + Compound
Titles lie by omission; descriptions confess. Scoping keywords to the current role's description answers the only question that matters for a first screen: is this person doing the work right now? This is where corpus analysis pays off: take the signal phrases and collocations from your job requirements analysis and run them here as exact phrases.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Hands-on vs oversight | Builder verbs in the current description separate practitioners from people who merely supervise the function. | job.title.current:architect AND job.desc.current:(designed OR implemented OR built) |
2 | Current ownership | Find who owns the platform, territory, or program today, not who inherited a mention of it years ago. | job.desc.current:("product owner" OR "responsible for") AND job.desc.current:"payments platform" |
3 | Present-day tech stack | Match your environment against what they use now. A 2018 Terraform mention is trivia; a current one is a signal. | job.desc.current:(Terraform AND AWS AND Kubernetes) |
4 | Scale markers | Search for scope indicators recruiters usually only learn on a screen call: team size, revenue, quota, volume. | job.title.current:"sales director" AND job.desc.current:("P&L" OR quota OR "team of") |
5 | Decoding ambiguous titles | Member of Technical Staff, Consultant, Associate: the description reveals what the title conceals. | job.title.current:"member of technical staff" AND job.desc.current:("machine learning" OR LLM) |
6 | Regulated duties, any title | GMP, batch records, validation protocols: regulated work leaves fingerprints in descriptions regardless of title. | job.desc.current:(GMP AND ("batch records" OR "deviation investigations")) |
7 | Clearance and program signals | Cleared talent rarely titles itself. Program language and clearance mentions in current work do the finding. | job.desc.current:("TS/SCI" OR cleared OR SCIF) AND location:("Huntsville" OR "Colorado Springs") |
8 | Customer-segment fit | A seller's current motion matters more than their title. Search the segment language directly. | job.title.current:"account executive" AND job.desc.current:("enterprise accounts" OR "Fortune 500") |
9 | Signal-phrase sourcing | Run your JD corpus collocations (PMI > 3.0) as exact phrases against current descriptions. Highest-precision search you can build. | job.desc.current:("process development" AND "cell culture" AND "tech transfer") |
10 | Manager exclusion at scale | Need pure ICs? Exclude people whose current description reveals people management, whatever the title says. | job.title.current:engineer AND NOT job.desc.current:("direct reports" OR "manage a team") |
Variant: swap in job.desc.last2 for any play above when you want recent-but-not-necessarily-current evidence, e.g. skills used in the prior role that the current role does not exercise.
3.3 title.profile
Wins on: Distinct + Popular
The headline (on LinkedIn) is the one line a candidate writes about themselves for the market. Formal titles are assigned; headlines are chosen. That gap between assigned and chosen identity is searchable here, and it is exactly the JD-versus-profile terminology gap that vocabulary expansion exists to close.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Self-declared specialists | New disciplines appear in headlines years before HR systems catch up. Search the identity, not the org chart. | title.profile:("prompt engineer" OR "AI safety" OR "LLM evaluation") |
2 | Fractional and interim executives | Their current job title is often Owner or Principal. Their headline says what they actually sell. | title.profile:(fractional OR interim) AND title.profile:(CFO OR CMO OR CTO) |
3 | Consultants behind vague titles | Independent experts hide behind LLC titles. The headline carries the specialty their job record buries. | title.profile:"Salesforce consultant" AND job.title.current:(owner OR principal OR founder) |
4 | Availability signals | Open to work, seeking, available: candidates broadcast intent in headlines. Cheapest warm list you will ever build. | title.profile:("open to" OR seeking OR available) AND skill:"revenue operations" |
5 | Credential-forward identities | People who lead with a certification treat it as identity. Strong signal of currency and pride in the craft. | title.profile:(CISSP OR CISM OR "PMP") |
6 | Emerging-title arbitrage | When a market renames itself (DevOps, RevOps, GenAI), headlines move first. Source the early adopters before titles standardize. | title.profile:("platform engineering" OR "developer experience") AND NOT job.title.current:"platform engineer" |
7 | Community authority | Speakers, authors, MVPs, GDEs: headline-visible authority is a shortcut for DevRel, evangelism, and field-CTO hires. | title.profile:(speaker OR author OR "Microsoft MVP" OR "Google Developer Expert") |
8 | Military transition pipelines | Transitioning service members self-identify in headlines long before their first civilian title exists. | title.profile:(transitioning AND (veteran OR military)) AND skill:(logistics OR intelligence) |
9 | Hybrid-identity clinicians and technologists | Nurse informaticists, physician builders, teacher-turned-LD: dual identities live in headlines, not title fields. | title.profile:(nurse AND informatics) OR title.profile:(physician AND (informatics OR "digital health")) |
10 | Readiness-to-move detector | Headline outranks current title? That is ambition in writing. A senior engineer headlined as an engineering leader is telling you something. | title.profile:"engineering leader" AND job.title.current:("senior engineer" OR "staff engineer") |
3.4 job.company.current
Wins on: Compound + Popular
Alone, current job and current company each filters every platform has. Combined, this becomes market intelligence: who works where right now, doing what, holding which credentials. Every play below is a compound search that would take multiple passes elsewhere.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Competitor org mapping | Employer plus title plus location approximates an org chart. Run it per function and you have their team on one page. | job.company.current:"Acme Robotics" AND job.title.current:(engineer OR scientist) AND location:Boston |
2 | Layoff and restructuring harvests | When a company announces cuts, its current employees become the market's warmest pool. Be first and be kind. | job.company.current:"Struggling Co" AND title.profile:("open to" OR seeking) |
3 | M&A flight-risk pools | Acquisitions shake talent loose for 18 months. Current employees of the acquired entity are your quiet pipeline. | job.company.current:"Recently Acquired Inc" AND job.title.current:(director OR principal OR staff) |
4 | Customer and partner ecosystems | People at your customers already know the domain and the tooling. Adjacent hires with built-in context. | job.company.current:("Customer A" OR "Partner B") AND job.desc.current:"supply chain planning" |
5 | Bench-depth check before the req | Before committing to a search, count who actually holds this role at peer companies. Feed the numbers into your TATM sizing. | job.company.current:(Peer1 OR Peer2 OR Peer3) AND job.title.current:"machine learning engineer" |
6 | Partner-certified talent pools | SI and consultancy staff carrying vendor certifications: pre-trained, client-hardened, and used to deadlines. | job.company.current:(Accenture OR Deloitte OR Slalom) AND certification:"Workday" |
7 | Geo-expansion seeding | Opening a market? Find people at target-caliber companies already living there. Relocation risk: zero. | job.company.current:(Stripe OR Adyen OR Checkout.com) AND location:(Austin OR "Dallas") |
8 | Anti-pedigree sourcing | Exclude the over-fished employers and find equivalent talent everyone else scrolls past. | job.title.current:"staff engineer" AND NOT job.company.current:(Google OR Meta OR Amazon OR Microsoft) |
9 | Alumni boomerang lists | Ever worked for you, currently elsewhere: the highest-conversion outreach list in recruiting. | job.company:"Your Company" AND NOT job.company.current:"Your Company" |
10 | Regulated-environment currency | Current employment at named regulated manufacturers plus regulated duties in the current description: compliance-ready on day one. | job.company.current:(Pfizer OR Amgen OR "Thermo Fisher") AND job.desc.current:(GMP OR "aseptic") |
3.5 certification
Wins on: Specialized + Popular
A skills list is a claim; a certification is evidence someone else verified. In regulated, contractual, and safety-critical work, this field is not a nice-to-have, it is the gate. It also powers one of the sharpest triage moves in sourcing: separating the certified from the self-declared.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Hard compliance gates | DoD 8570/8140, PCI, HIPAA-adjacent roles: contracts name the certification, so your search should too. | certification:(CISSP OR "Security+" OR CISM) AND job.desc.current:(federal OR DoD) |
2 | Cert stacks as seniority signals | Certain combinations only exist in senior professionals. Two flags beat one. | certification:(CPA AND CFA) OR certification:(CISSP AND CCSP) |
3 | Cert-vs-claim triage | Score candidates who list the skill AND hold the cert above those who only claim the skill. Evidence-weighted sourcing in one clause. | skill:kubernetes AND certification:(CKA OR "Certified Kubernetes Administrator") |
4 | Customer-mandated qualifications | When the client contract requires PMP or Six Sigma on named staff, this field is your compliance proof upstream of the submittal. | certification:(PMP AND ("Six Sigma" OR "Lean Six Sigma")) |
5 | Specialty-nursing shortcuts | CCRN, CNOR, CEN: specialty certs surface unit-ready nurses even when clinical fields are sparse or profiles are thin. | certification:(CCRN OR CNOR OR CEN) AND location:"Atlanta" |
6 | Vendor-ecosystem pools | Build talent maps around a platform's certification ladder: admins, developers, architects, in tiers. | certification:("Salesforce Certified Technical Architect" OR "Application Architect") |
7 | Skilled trades and safety | OSHA, NCCER, AWS welding certs: trades talent is thin online, and certifications are its most reliable digital trace. | certification:("OSHA 30" OR NCCER OR "CWI") AND location:(Texas OR Louisiana) |
8 | Upskilling-motivation signal | Recent, effortful certifications reveal trajectory. Someone investing personal time in a discipline is telling you where they are headed. | certification:("Certified Kubernetes Administrator" OR "AWS Solutions Architect Professional") |
9 | Career-changer readiness | Bootcamp and platform certificates paired with an unrelated degree equal a motivated switcher worth a conversation. | certification:"Google Data Analytics" AND NOT education.fos:("computer science" OR statistics) |
10 | Cert-license disambiguation | Certified is not licensed. Pair the fields when the role needs both, and stop advancing candidates who hold only one. | certification:CFP AND license.type:("Series 7" OR "Series 65") |
3.6 hc.taxonomy (healthcare only)
Wins on: Distinct + Specialized
This is the crown jewel. NPI taxonomy codes are standardized, government-anchored descriptions of exactly what kind of provider someone is. Titles and headlines in healthcare are chaos; taxonomy codes are order. No general-purpose sourcing platform offers this. If you recruit clinicians, this field alone can justify the tool.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Exact provider type, messy titles be damned | "Physician" tells you almost nothing. A Family Medicine taxonomy code tells you everything the title omits. | hc.taxonomy:207Q00000X AND location:(Phoenix OR Tucson) |
2 | Subspecialty precision | Interventional cardiology is not general cardiology. Taxonomy separates them where titles and profiles blur. | hc.taxonomy:207RI0011X AND license.agency:"Texas Medical Board" |
3 | Advanced-practice scope separation | Psych NPs, FNPs, CRNAs: scope of practice is the hire. Taxonomy encodes it; job titles routinely do not. | hc.taxonomy:363LP0808X AND location:("New York" OR "New Jersey") |
4 | State-ready compound searches | Taxonomy plus issuing board equals a candidate who can start without a licensure delay. One search, two hard gates. | hc.taxonomy:207R00000X AND license.agency:"Medical Board of California" |
5 | Identity verification via NPI | Three clinicians named Maria Garcia? Match on hc.npi against the NPI Registry and stop guessing which one you found. | hc.npi:1234567890 |
6 | Telehealth panel building | A telehealth panel is a coverage map: one specialty, many jurisdictions. Taxonomy anchors the specialty; agencies list the states. | hc.taxonomy:2084P0800X AND license.agency:("Texas" OR "Florida" OR "Georgia") |
7 | Clinical TATM sizing | Count providers by taxonomy per metro before committing to a req. Real supply data beats a hiring manager's hunch. | hc.taxonomy:363L00000X AND location:"Kansas City" |
8 | Locum and per-diem pools | Flexible-workforce clinicians self-describe in headlines. Taxonomy keeps the specialty exact while the headline signals availability. | hc.taxonomy:207P00000X AND title.profile:(locum OR "per diem" OR PRN) |
9 | Rare-specialty searches | Pediatric electrophysiology, maternal-fetal medicine: for the rarest specialties, taxonomy is the only handle that reliably exists. | hc.taxonomy:207RE0101X |
10 | Credentialing pre-check | Pair credential and license number to pre-verify against credentialing databases before outreach. Fewer surprises at the offer stage. | hc.credential:(MD OR DO) AND hc.taxonomy:207T00000X AND hc.license.number:*known number* |
Supporting fields: use hc.specialization and hc.credential when you do not know the taxonomy code, then tighten to hc.taxonomy once you do. Common codes: 207Q Family Medicine, 207R Internal Medicine, 363L Nurse Practitioner, 363A Physician Assistant, 2084 Psychiatry and Neurology. Verify codes against the NUCC taxonomy list before building campaigns.
3.7 license.agency
Wins on: Distinct + Specialized
For licensed professions, geography is not where someone lives; it is where they may legally practice. Searching by issuing authority turns licensure from a screening question at the end of your funnel into a filter at the front of it. That reordering saves weeks.
# | Use case | The play | Example |
|---|
1 | Immediate practice authority | Licensed by the destination-state board means no waiting on endorsement. Time-to-start drops from months to weeks. | license.agency:"California Board of Registered Nursing" AND job.title.last2:("ICU nurse" OR "critical care") |
2 | Compact-state leverage | Nurse Licensure Compact and IMLC holders can practice across member states. Search the agencies and unlock multi-state pools. | license.agency:("Texas Board of Nursing" OR "Arizona State Board of Nursing") |
3 | Telehealth coverage maps | License where the patient sits, not where the clinician does. Build panels state by state through issuing agencies. | hc.specialization:psychiatry AND license.agency:("Florida" OR "Georgia" OR "Alabama") |
4 | PE stamping authority | AEC firms need engineers who can stamp drawings in the project's state. The agency field is the whole search. | license.agency:"Texas Board of Professional Engineers" AND job.title:(civil OR structural) |
5 | Bar admission targeting | Attorneys barred in the jurisdiction of the matter. Practice area plus bar equals a shortlist, not a longlist. | license.agency:"State Bar of California" AND job.desc:("employment law" OR litigation) |
6 | CAT-response adjusters | Catastrophe season demands adjusters licensed in affected states before the storm makes landfall. Build the bench in advance. | license.type:"adjuster" AND license.agency:(Florida OR Louisiana OR Texas) |
7 | Licensed financial professionals | Series licenses plus state registration: search both and skip the candidates who would fail onboarding compliance. | license.type:("Series 65" OR "Series 7") AND license.agency:"Georgia" |
8 | Relocation-ready shortlists | A candidate already licensed in the destination state has removed the biggest barrier themselves. Rank them first. | license.agency:"Colorado" AND NOT location:Colorado |
9 | Resume-inflation checks | Wrong issuing authority for the claimed license is a red flag you can catch at search time, not at background check time. | license.type:"pharmacist" AND license.agency:"Ohio Board of Pharmacy" |
10 | Market-entry intelligence | Before opening a clinic, office, or practice group, size the licensed labor pool in-state. Supply data before real estate. | license.type:("physical therapist" OR PT) AND license.agency:"Tennessee" |
4. Where Fields Fit in the Sourcing Workflow
Fields are not interchangeable; they belong to different stages of a disciplined search. Discover wide. Search narrow. Verify hard.
Stage | What you are doing |
|---|
1. Discover | Corpus analysis of the JD and sample profiles; harvesting the vocabulary candidates actually use. |
2. Define | Title expansion, target companies, must-have vs nice-to-have keyword map. |
3. Search | Precision Boolean built from signal phrases and collocations, scoped to recency. |
4. Gate | Hard requirements: credentials, licenses, degrees, jurisdictions. |
5. Verify | Identity confirmation and dedupe before outreach and scoring. |
Precision is not a feature. It is a user habit.
Closing paragraph, choose one:
- "Implementation" Focus: "These seven power plays are designed to turn your search workflow from a manual chore into a strategic advantage. By prioritizing precision over breadth, you will not only reclaim hours of your day but also surface high-quality, relevant talent that remains invisible to your competitors. Start applying these field-specific queries to your next requisition and measure the improvement in your shortlists."
- "Impact" Focus: "Precision sourcing is your most significant competitive edge in a crowded talent market. By moving beyond 'include everything' searches and leveraging the specificity of Provenbase fields, you transform your ability to identify, verify, and engage the right candidates instantly. Treat each search as an opportunity to refine your craft, and use this resource to build a more efficient, evidence-based sourcing operation."
