Ideal candidate search ranking

In an example embodiment, one or more ideal candidate member profiles in a social networking service are obtained. Then a search is performed on member profiles in the social networking service using a search query, returning one or more result member profiles. One or more query-based features are produced from the one or more result member profiles using the search query. One or more ideal candidate-based features are produced from the one or more result member profiles using the one or more ideal candidate member profiles. The one or more query-based features and the one or more ideal candidate-based features are input to a combined ranking model trained by a machine learning algorithm to output a ranking score for each of the one or more result member profiles. The one or more result member profiles are then ranked based on the ranking scores.