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Field Notes · Issue 014 · 11 March 2026 · 6 min read

Reading a candidate profile in 90 seconds

The specialist's shortcut: what to look at first, what to ignore, and how Holi's capture layer does the same read at machine speed.

Updated 12 Jul 2026

The recruiters we sit next to look at four things on a candidate profile before deciding to engage. In order:

1. The most recent move

Not the whole history. The last one. Who did they leave, who did they join, when, and does the pattern suggest they are open again soon. Everything before that is context for the interview, not the outreach.

2. The stated specialism

Not the job title. The specialism they name for themselves, in their own words, in the summary or the header. "Consultant paediatric radiologist with a subspecialty interest in neuro" is a different person from "consultant radiologist" even if the job title matches.

3. Tools named

The specific vocabulary of the craft. Frameworks, systems, methodologies, brand names. Specialists know their tools; generalists list role responsibilities. The tools tell you which conversation to open with.

4. One recent signal

A post, a comment, a talk, a repost. Something that shows this person is present in their profession right now, and gives you a specific hook for the first message.

What Holi's capture layer does with the same profile

Structurally, the same read. Paste the URL, capture reads the profile, pulls the most recent move, pulls the self-named specialism, extracts the tool vocabulary, and finds the most recent public signal. Every one of those is stored with a source line back to the exact paragraph or post it came from.

The result is a two-line summary you can act on in seconds, and a full structured entry that repurpose and outreach can quote from later, without you having to re-read the profile every time.

The 90-second read is not a shortcut. It is the discipline that makes a specialist desk work. Holi just runs it at machine speed and remembers the answer.

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Asked, and answered

Is 90 seconds really enough to read a profile?
For a first pass, yes. You are deciding whether to engage, not whether to hire. The 90-second read tells you enough to make that decision honestly.
What if the profile is thin?
Then capture pulls in the adjacent signal: recent posts, comments, external bylines. A thin LinkedIn does not mean a thin candidate; it means the signal lives somewhere else.

About the author

James Doyle

Founder, HOLI

James founded HOLI to build a partner for specialist recruiters — the kind that captures the intelligence you gather and turns it into the action that wins the role. Twenty years in specialist search across healthcare, behavioural health, and creative.

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Cite this piece

James Doyle (2026). Reading a candidate profile in 90 seconds. Field Notes, HOLI. https://hey-holi.com/field-notes/reading-a-candidate-profile-in-90-seconds

Published 11 March 2026.

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