A recommender engine for recommending content items to a user comprises a profile generation unit having a pre-profile input unit, which is configured to receive pre-profile data comprising pre-profile text data suitable for identifying entities of interest to a given user, and having a pre-profile analysis unit, the entities of interest and to generate an initial user profile data set for the given user from the extracted identification data; a query generation unit, to generate at least two queries semantically different from each other to be directed to at least one content repository; a content retrieval unit, to issue the generated queries to the content repository and to receive in response to the queries, content-related response data comprising respective hit lists and an interleaver unit to generate from the different hit lists a single recommendation list.