Search only works on data that is still true
Your database search matches on job title, employer and location. Those were true on the day the record was created. Three years on, the Finance Manager you interviewed is a Finance Director somewhere else, and your search for Finance Directors does not find her. The database has not lost people. It has lost the ability to find them.
That is why this play comes before the others. Matching a live role to your own candidates, or filling in missing emails, both lean on the title and the employer being current. Run them on stale records and you get confident answers about where people worked years ago.
What you get back
A review list for your segment, as a file. Per record: the title and employer you hold, the title and employer on the live profile, and whether they differ. The LinkedIn URL, marked as held or found, with how sure the match is. A duplicate pair id and the reason for the pairing. And a flag where one applies: looks retired, left the market, no profile found.
Nothing has changed in your CRM at that point. After you approve rows, those rows are written back and you get a change log.
Variations worth knowing
Movers as a lead list. Everyone whose employer changed has moved, may be a hiring manager today, and has left a seat behind them. Sort the review list on that column before you do anything else.
Check the addresses you hold. A deliverability check on the emails already in the segment tells you which are dead. It is billed per address checked, so point it at records you intend to contact.
Then fill the gaps. With employers current, fill missing contact data in your CRM has the right company to look each person up against.
Then match. A refreshed segment is what makes finding candidates in your own ATS worth running.
Where this goes wrong
A common name and no LinkedIn URL. A common name with a last known employer of acme matches several people, or the wrong one. These come back marked low confidence. Leave them unless you can confirm.
Profiles nobody updates. An unchanged title means the profile has not changed. It does not mean the person has not. Treat unchanged as unknown for anyone you have not spoken to in years.
Treating a flag as a deletion. A retired flag is an inference from a public profile. Review it before you archive anyone. The agent never removes a record.
Doing the whole database at once. It costs the most and returns the least. Pick the segment you would search this month, prove the review list is right on that, then widen.
