Beamery offers two features that leverage a bias-free smart matching engine to increase productivity: Suggested Contacts and Find Similar Contacts. These features serve different purposes and fit different use cases. 

This article will help you to understand the difference between Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts, understand when to  use each feature, and how you can use them together to combine their power.

If you’re new to Find Similar Contacts, you may wish to begin by checking out this article, and if you’re new to Suggested Contacts, you may wish to start with this article. 

Table of Contents

What’s the Difference Between Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts?
When to use Find Similar Contacts
When to use Suggested Contacts
When and How to use Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts Together

What’s the Difference Between Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts? 

Put simply, Find Similar Contacts allows you to leverage a single Beamery Profile to find others that have similar attributes, whereas Suggested Contacts uses all of the profiles in a Pool (up to 2,000) to suggest other profiles in the CRM that may be relevant to that Pool. 

The table below outlines the key components of each feature. 

When to use Find Similar Contacts 

Find Similar Contacts allows you to use a single Beamery Profile as a jumping off point to find other similar profiles in your CRM. In general, you should use Find Similar Contacts any time you have an ideal profile and wish to find more profiles that are like it. 

Here are some specific examples of when you’d want to use Find Similar Contacts:

• Do you have a really great employee who is already in a role at your organization? When you’re next sourcing for that role, use Find Similar Contacts from that employee’s profile to begin your sourcing process. 
• Do you have a list of the ideal attributes of a role you’re sourcing for? Instead of creating a boolean search or filter combination, create a Beamery profile for what an ideal candidate would look like, and input those attributes into the relevant fields. For example, if you’re sourcing for a role that requires javascript knowledge, add javascript into the skills area on this profile. Then, use Find Similar Contacts to find the real candidates in your CRM who are most similar to your ideal candidate. 
• Did you  find your ideal candidate while sourcing, but learn that they’re unfortunately not looking for a new role? Add them to Beamery and use Find Similar Contacts to surface other candidates in your CRM who have similar attributes. 

The parallel between these examples is that they all use a single candidate profile to jumpstart sourcing.  

When to use Suggested Contacts 

With Suggested Contacts, you will begin with a Pool of candidates in Beamery, and let the tool assess the common characteristics across those profiles to find more profiles that fit that pool. 

Here are some specific examples of when you’d want to use Suggested Contacts:

• Have you already built Pools for specific roles or job families? Great! Use Suggested Contacts to capitalize on that work and find even more great candidates for your Pool. 
• Have you built a pipeline for a role that you frequently source for? Combine a Beamery Recipe automation and Suggested Contacts to let Beamery do the work of continually adding great candidates to your pipeline. Find out more on this here! 

How to Use Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts Together to Maximize their Power

As you’ve come to understand, there are different individual uses for both Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts. But, excitingly, you can also combine the power of both features and use them together to give your sourcing workflow a huge boost with very little effort. 

Follow these steps to leverage both Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts to build your pipeline and fill a Pool. 

1. Begin with one fantastic Beamery profile for the role or job family for which you’re sourcing. This profile could be one of the examples here, or any other profile in Beamery  that gives you an ideal starting point. For example, if I was trying to fill a pipeline for Sales Engineers in London, I might use the Beamery Profile of the best performing SE in my organization’s London office. 
2. Launch Find Similar Contacts from the profile you just identified, and review the presented list of similar contacts. Each time you find a profile that matches what you’re looking for, add them to a Pool. For example, as I reviewed the profiles that are similar to the Sales Engineer I started with, I would add other great Sales Engineers in London to a Sourcing Pool that I’m using to build pipeline for this kind of role. 
3. Then, once you’ve found a handful of really strong profiles and added them to your Pool, navigate to the Pool and begin using Suggested Contacts. The Suggested Contacts smart matching will use the information on all of the great profiles you already added to the Pool when using Find Similar Contacts to find even more profiles in Beamery that will match what you’re looking for. You’ll have plenty of fantastic candidates for your pipeline in no time at all! 

In Summary…

Both Find Similar Contacts and Suggested Contacts leverage Beamery’s bias-free smart matching engine to help you boost your sourcing process. Each feature suits a variety of uses, and they can also be used together for great results!

Additional Resources

Find Similar Contacts: How it Works
An Overview of Suggested Contacts
An Overview of Find Similar Contacts