Boolean Strings
Boolean Strings
If I have your attention, then let’s talk about Boolean search in recruitment.
3. NOT: when a user dos not want a specific search term to appear in the
results, he/she writes NOT after the preferred search term. This will prevent the
terms from coming up.
4. Quotation marks “”: when users want to search for an exact phrase, they
use quotation marks around that phrase.
Here are the basic operators for Boolean search strings for recruiters:
AND
When you want to include two (or more) criteria in your search, the operator
AND narrows down your search. For example, a Boolean search string for
OR
The OR operator, on the other hand, allows us to expand our Boolean search
results. People might use different words to say the same thing. OR is
particularly useful for synonyms, like ‘bank OR finance OR financial.’
NOT
The NOT operator excludes unwanted terms from your Google sourcing search.
Instead of NOT, you could also use the minus symbol followed by your
unwanted term without leaving a space (e.g. ‘NOT recruiter’ or ‘-recruiter.’)
Brackets ()
You can use brackets to group multiple search strings and set your priorities.
This will come in handy, as most candidate searches are complex and combine
different keywords. For example, ‘(developer OR designer) AND Java’
Quotation marks “”
If you want Google to consider the phrase you’re searching for as a complete
phrase, you should put it in quotation marks. For example, leaving a blank space
between ‘customer’ and ‘service’ will provide pages that contain both of the
words ‘customer’ and ‘service,’ but not necessarily together. You should type
“customer service” to get more relevant results when sourcing passive
candidates.
How to find candidate resumes with Boolean search strings?
When sourcing professionals online, social profiles alone may not provide a
well-rounded view of someone’s skills and experience. Sourcing resumes with
Boolean search helps you better evaluate passive candidates. And, if you
already have a candidate in mind, use Boolean search strings to discover their
resume on various platforms.
To begin your search for professionals who have posted their resumes, craft
parts of a generic search string to use in every search. This string should:
Exclude irrelevant results. When looking for passive candidates, you may
often stumble upon pages with job ads, sample resumes or resume services. All
these are irrelevant to your search (false positives) and can be excluded using
2. OR
Using OR in your search string indicates that you want to see multiple entries
or variables in your results. This operator acts to expand your search results to
include a wider range of information.
OR can be used when different words or job titles say the same thing, and can
be used alongside AND to refine your results.
For example, you can use this string to refine your marketing manager search.
marketing AND manager OR leader
Again, this logic leads to the next operator: NOT.
3. NOT
As you probably guessed, NOT is used when you want to exclude specific
terms or requirements.
For example, if you’re looking for a mid-level manager, you’ll want to exclude
executive titles that might be caught up in the above search strings. You can do
so like this:
4. BRACKETS ()
If your math brain is going off and asking: “wait a minute: how is the search
engine supposed to know which operator takes priority,” then you’re ready to
hear about BRACKETS. Brackets in Boolean search work in a similar way as
the BODMAS principle in math, which dictates which parts of an equation are
calculated in what order.
BRACKET operators are used to specify which parts of the search
take priority over other elements. They specify which sections you want to
emphasize, compare, or exclude.
So, if you’re looking for someone who is a marketing manager OR leader, but
not an executive, your string would look something like this:
marketing AND (manager OR leader) -executive
As your strings get more complex, brackets will become your best friend that
keeps thing organized and logical.
5. QUOTATIONS “”
The next basic Boolean operator – and one you likely use often – is
QUOTATIONS. This operator is used to search for an exact phrase that you’re
looking for. This is a good option if you know exactly what search result you’re
hoping to find, and want to exclude anything that doesn’t include that term.
6. ASTERISK *
ASTERISK is used to widen your search to include variations on your
keywords or phrases. Think of this operator as a tool for finding a pool of
candidates who use a variety of different words to describe similar tasks or
skills.
By placing an ASTERISK next to the root of the word you’re searching for, the
search results will be expanded to include any possible word containing that
beginning.
For example, the search string:
admin* … would bring up results for administrator, administration,
administer, etc.
ASTERISK is a great operator to add onto a search string to find
complementary skills. For example, a marketing manager with administration
skills:
“marketing manager” AND admin*
These 6 basic operators are a powerful introduction to Boolean search in
recruitment and can be used for the majority of your candidate sourcing needs.
7. TILDE ~
The TILDE symbol is useful for expanding or reducing your search results,
depending on how you use it. That’s because it includes synonyms of the
keyword that you’re tagging with the TILDE symbol.
For the advanced Boolean operators, we’ll expand our Marketing Manager
search strings to include specific types of documents you may be looking for on
Google that belong to a candidate.
To find a resume, CV, curriculum vitae, etc. for a Marketing Manager, you
might type the following string:
~CV “marketing manager”
This will include all search results for marketing managers’ resume-type
documents.
Because synonyms of CV might include, for example, job descriptions – which,
as a recruiter, you don’t need to see – you can combine TILDE with your NOT
operator as well.
~CV “marketing manager” –job-description
This Google search string will give you results showing only actual CVs (and
their synonyms) for marketing managers. You can keep layering NOT operators
to further reduce unwanted results.
9. FILETYPE
A great tool for finding elusive CV documents on the web is the FILETYPE
Boolean operator. Often, when you search for candidates on Google or on a
social media platform, you’ll be directed to a web page containing incomplete
information. Being able to quickly find a full CV document on the web – if it
exists – is a great way to quickly see a complete overview of the candidate.
To do this, you can specify the type of file using the FILETYPE operator. For
example, to find PDF documents for marketing managers’ CVs, you could
search:
~CV “marketing manager” Filetype: pdf
1. AND: placing AND between search keywords will allow user's results to
include both (or all) of the keywords. The search terms that follow the AND
must appear in the search results.
2. OR: user writes OR when he/she wants to search for something that has
the possibility of including either set of search terms. All combination
possibilities will come up.
3. NOT: when a user dos not want a specific search term to appear in the
results, he/she writes NOT after the preferred search term. This will prevent the
terms from coming up.
4. Quotation marks “”: when users want to search for an exact phrase, they
use quotation marks around that phrase.
Here are the basic operators for Boolean search strings for recruiters:
OR
The OR operator, on the other hand, allows us to expand our Boolean search
results. People might use different words to say the same thing. OR is
particularly useful for synonyms, like ‘bank OR finance OR financial.’
NOT
The NOT operator excludes unwanted terms from your Google sourcing search.
Instead of NOT, you could also use the minus symbol followed by your
unwanted term without leaving a space (e.g. ‘NOT recruiter’ or ‘-recruiter.’)
Brackets ()
You can use brackets to group multiple search strings and set your priorities.
This will come in handy, as most candidate searches are complex and combine
different keywords. For example, ‘(developer OR designer) AND Java’
indicates that Java knowledge is a must-have both for developers and designers.
But, in a ‘designer OR (developer AND Java)’ search, Java knowledge is
important only for the developers you’re looking for – not the designers.
Quotation marks “”
System Admin
("Systems Administrator" OR "systems Admin" OR "system Administrator" OR
"system admin" or "unix admin" or "unix administrator" or "linux admin" or
"linux administrator" or "system engineer" or "systems engineer") AND
(install* or upgrad* or "sofwtare package" or "software packages") AND
(UNIX or Linux)
.Net Developer
.Net AND (VS OR "Visual Studio") AND (VB OR "Visual Basic" OR VB.net)
AND (ASP OR ASP.net) AND (C# OR C#.net ) AND "SQL Server"
Android Developer
Android AND SDK AND Java AND SQLite AND (SVN OR subversion)
Automation Tester
("qa" OR "quality assurance" OR "quality analyst" OR "automation tester")
AND "sql" AND agile AND scrum AND rest AND soap AND "java" AND
(cucumber OR "jet brains" OR gherkin OR "cmm" OR "cmmi" OR "cast" OR
"cste" OR "cmst" OR certified OR certification OR Certi*)
Database Administrator
Java Developer
Java AND SQL AND ("object oriented" OR object-oriented OR "OO" OR
"OOP" OR "OOAD" OR EJB OR J2EE OR Linux OR Hibernate OR Jidesoft
OR MySQL OR Subversion OR SVN)
Microstrategy Consultant
(MicroStrategy OR "Business Objects" OR OBIEE OR Cognos) AND
(Informatica OR "Ab Initio" OR SSIS OR Websphere OR "SQL Server
Integration Services") AND (RDBMS OR oracle OR "SQL Server" OR
Teradata OR Netezza OR DB2) AND SQL AND (BI OR "business
intelligence" OR "data warehousing" OR DW)
PHP Developer
PHP AND SQL AND (PostgreSQL OR "Pervasive SQL" OR Intranet OR
Linux OR Apache OR Javascript OR HTML OR CSS)
Project Manager
(pm OR "project manager" OR "project management" OR PMP)
Python Developer
SharePoint Developer
("SharePoint Designer" OR "SharePoint Developer") AND (html OR css OR
xsl OR xslt OR javascript OR jquery OR ajax) AND .net AND (asp.net OR C#
OR vb.net) AND (Silverlight OR "SQL Server" OR SSRS OR SSAS OR
"reporting services" OR "analysis services")
Systems Engineer
Windows AND Exchange AND Cisco AND switch* AND rout* AND IIS
AND (Voip OR Citrix OR AIX OR Linux OR MCSE OR CCNA OR CCNP
OR CNNA OR "Systems Engineer") AND TCP/IP AND "Active Directory"
AND DNS
Technical Account Manager
("account manager" OR "project manager" OR "program manager") AND
software AND develop* AND "sql server" AND "data warehousing" AND
technical AND marketing
Telecommunications Specialist
(Telecommunications OR Telecom) AND (network OR networking) AND IP
AND telephony AND PBX AND (voicemail OR voice-mail OR "voice mail")
AND Cisco AND Avaya
Web Designer
html AND javascript AND css AND (photoshop OR illustrator OR adobe)
AND (flash OR actionscript OR macromedia) AND ("Java Server Pages" OR
JSP OR Java OR "Active Server Pages" OR ASP OR "Google Web Toolkit"
OR XML OR oracle OR IIS) AND SQL
Web Developer
(html OR html5) AND (css3 OR css) AND javascript AND ("Web Developer"
OR "Web Design" OR xml OR jquery OR ajax)
Telecom Clients
(ERICSSON or sprint or virgin or verizon or at&t or "t-mobile" or SAC or cox
or ATT or "Goodman Networks" or "Glass and Wire" or "Nortel Networks" or
Lightbridge or "Progressive Communications")
Telecom Clients
(Avaya or ERICSSON or sprint or virgin or verizon or at&t or "t-mobile" or
SAC or cox or ATT or "Goodman Networks" or "Glass and Wire" or "Nortel
Networks" or Lightbridge or "Progressive Communications" or "cellular" or
"ABS Telecom LLC" or ABS or "Axcent Networks Inc" or "Axcent Networks"
or "Multiple Access Technologies" or Kodiak or "tw telecom" or "brosna
communications" or "ally tech*" or HXP or mitel or "telecom gateway" or
"intele media" or ipro or onecloud or "one cloud" or tekvizion)
RF Consultant
("Rf Engineer" Or "Rf Lead" Or "Rf Manager" Or "Rf Technician") And ("Rf
Design") And ("Rf Optimization") And Umts And (3g or 4g or 5g or lte or volte
or cdma or wcdma)
8427:
("QA Specialist" OR "Quality Specialist" OR "QA Supervisor" OR "Quality
Supervisor" OR "Quality Analyst" OR "QA Analyst") AND (Gxp OR GMP OR
cGMP OR "Good Manufacturing Practices") AND (Manufactur* OR
Complian* OR "Downstream" OR Upstream) AND (SAP OR Trackwise OR
LIMS OR Sharepoint) AND (Pharma* OR Biotec*)
("Quality Assurance Specialist" OR "QA Specialist" OR "Quality Analyst" OR
"QA Analyst" OR "Quality Supervisor" OR "QA Supervisor" OR "Quality
Specialist" OR "Sr.QA Specialist" OR "Senior Quality Specialist" OR "Senior
Quality Assurance Specialist" OR "Senior Quality") AND (cGMP OR GMP OR
"Good Manufacturing Practice" OR SOPs) AND (CAPA OR Trending OR
"Data Analysis" OR QMP OR KPIs OR "Trending Review" OR "Deviation