Abstract: The disclosed embodiments provide a system for processing searches. During operation, the system determines features related to attributes of candidates and interactions of the candidates with an online system. Next, the system applies a static ranking machine learning model to the features to produce scores representing likelihoods of outcomes related to the candidates and stores rankings of the candidates by descending values of the scores in entries of an inverted index. During processing of a search of the candidates in the online system, the system retrieves a subset of the candidates with the values of the scores that exceed a threshold from a subset of the entries in the inverted index that match parameters of the search. Finally, the system aggregates the retrieved subset of candidates for use in subsequent ordering of the subset of candidates by one or more dynamic ranking models.