The Recruiter's Guide to Archiving Candidate Profiles
Technical sourcing is a high-speed game. You're scanning hundreds of profiles across LinkedIn, GitHub, Stack Overflow, and portfolio sites.
The traditional workflow involves keeping a messy spreadsheet with links to profiles. But this method has a fatal flaw: profiles change.
A candidate might update their profile to "Not Open to Work," remove their contact info, or completely overhaul their skills section. If you only saved the link, you've lost the context of why you sourced them in the first place.
Why You Need a "Candidate Archive"
Archiving candidate profiles using web clipping creates a permanent snapshot of talent pools.
1. Preserve the "Why"
You found a candidate because of a specific repository on GitHub or a project on their portfolio. Six months later, that project might be moved or deleted. Clipping the page preserves the evidence of their skills.
2. Bypass Connection Limits
Viewing LinkedIn profiles often requires using InMail credits or hitting search limits. Once you've clipped a profile to your private workspace, you can review it as many times as you want without visiting the live site and triggering "viewed by" notifications.
3. Search Across Platforms
A candidate's story is spread across the web.
- LinkedIn: Work history
- GitHub: Code quality
- Medium/Dev.to: Communication skills
- Twitter/X: Cultural fit
Web clipping allows you to aggregate all these diverse sources into a single folder named Candidate: Jane Doe.
Boolean Search + Web Clipping = Superpowers
Advanced sourcers use Boolean strings to find hidden talent. When you find a goldmine of results, don't just bookmark the search result page (which changes dynamically).
Clip the search results. This allows you to work through the list methodically, highlighting promising candidates and striking through ones you've disqualified, directly on your saved copy.
Best Practices for Talent Pipelines
Tagging System
Organize your clips with a standardized tagging system:
- Role:
#frontend,#devops,#product-manager - Status:
#sourced,#contacted,#interviewing - Source:
#linkedin,#github,#referral
Notes & Annotations
Use the annotation features in your web clipper to highlight:
- Gaps in employment to ask about.
- Specific skills that match the job description.
- Mutual connections to leverage for intros.
Compliance & Privacy
Note: Always ensure your data collection practices comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other local privacy regulations. Web clipping for internal hiring processes is generally standard, but ensure you are not holding data longer than necessary.
Upgrade Your Sourcing Stack
Spreadsheets are for numbers, not people. PageStash gives you a visual, searchable database of the talent you've discovered.
- One-Click Capture: Save profiles from any platform instantly.
- Full-Text Search: Remember a candidate who knew "Rust" and "healthcare"? Type it in and find them instantly, even if you didn't tag them perfectly.
- Team Sharing: Share a folder of clipped profiles with the hiring manager for quick feedback without sending 10 separate links.
Streamline your recruitment workflow with PageStash.
