At a glance: When you look at the people on a job or in a Network search, the order and the role categories aren’t random. SeeVee scores each contact for how close they are to the hiring decision for the role you’re pursuing—the small group at the top tagged Recommended is the high-confidence subset. Categories are plain‑language: likely manager, leadership, recruiter, peer, or other.
The five role categories
Likely manager — our best guess at the person who would manage the role. Highest signal for direct outreach about a specific posting.
Leadership — senior people in the org or the function. Useful when you want a referral or an exec-level intro.
Recruiter — talent and sourcing roles for the company or function. Good first email if you want to formally signal interest.
Peer — people doing similar work at the same level. Great for an honest read on the team and the role.
Other — useful contacts that don’t fit the above neatly (cross-functional collaborators, ex-employees, etc.).
What “Recommended” means
A small subset of contacts get a Recommended badge. These are the highest-relevance picks for the specific role and title you’re looking at—based on title similarity, seniority, function, and team signals. Start there if you’re only going to reach out to one or two people.
What signals we use
We compare the contact’s current title, team, and recent history to the role you’re pursuing and the role’s job description when we have it. Keeping your Resume and Settings job titles accurate also helps—the system learns what kinds of contacts are useful for someone with your profile.
Why a contact might be marked wrong
Two main reasons:
The person changed roles recently and our cache hasn’t caught up.
The role title is ambiguous (every company defines “Manager of X” differently).
If something looks badly off, email [email protected] with the contact ID—we use those reports to tune the model.
Filtering by category
On Network search and on a job’s people panel, the Filter by role chips let you focus on a subset (just recruiters, or just likely managers and leadership). Counts next to each chip reflect the current result set so you always know how many people you’d see.
Ordering inside a category
Within a category we sort by overall relevance to the role you typed. The recommended picks always float to the top regardless of category, so a strong peer match can outrank a weaker likely manager—that’s by design.
Related articles
See also: People and contacts on a job, Search contacts for any role you’re pursuing, Reveal a contact and what unlocks, Build your professional profile and upload a resume, Update job search and disclosure preferences.