Keyword Expansion

Keyword Expansion is a feature of Bullhorn Search & Match. Bullhorn Search & Match is a premium add-on. If you are interested in enabling Bullhorn Search & Match, please reach out to your Account Manager.

To learn more about Bullhorn Search & Match, check out our Bullhorn Launch Course.

The Keyword Expansion feature supercharges your keyword field inputs. When you enter a keyword into the Keywords field when building an Advanced Candidate Search, Bullhorn will automatically search for a pre-defined group of related keywords.

For example, entering “Software Engineer” as a keyword will also search for “SW Engineer”, “Software Developer”, “Software Coder”, and other similar terms. You can drag and drop keywords within your search to behave as a Boolean search.

Using Keyword Expansion

To use Keyword Expansion, simply type into the Keywords field and press Enter to add a keyword group.

Click on a keyword to see the other keywords included in the keyword group.

You can remove unwanted keywords from a group by clicking the X next to a keyword.

Merging Keyword Groups

Each new keyword group you add will enter the search string as an “AND” (meaning the search will look for records containing all of those keyword groups). Everything within a keyword group will be entered as an “OR” (meaning the search will look for records that contain at least one of the keywords in that group).

You can merge keyword groups by dragging one group on top of the other. Merging keyword groups turns the “AND” between the two groups into an “OR”.

Excluding Keyword Groups

You can exclude keyword groups to prevent any candidates containing those keywords from appearing in the search results. To exclude a keyword group, click on the keyword group and set the switch at the top of the group to Exclude.

Keyword groups that you exclude will be indicated with a red icon ():

Adding and Removing Keywords

You can customize keyword groups by adding and removing individual keywords.

If you have the Manage Keyword Groups user entitlement, you can save your changes so that they apply company-wide. Without this entitlement, you can still add and remove keywords for a single search, but you cannot save changes company-wide.

  1. Click on the keyword group you wish to customize.
  2. Add or remove keywords as required.
    • To add a keyword, enter it into the Type to add keyword to group field and click ADD +.
    • To remove a keyword, click the X icon () against the keyword you wish to remove.
  3. Click CONTINUE to apply these changes to the current search only, or click SAVE to save your changes to the keyword group permanently.

Saved changes to keyword groups will apply company-wide. If you don't have the Manage Keyword Groups user entitlement, you will not see a SAVE option.