torestars.blogg.se - Boolean search language

For example, “with ZoomInfo you don’t have to capitalize the Boolean operators, but in LinkedIn you do or it won’t understand you,” Shamaeva said. Once you understand the basics, it’s important to learn the quirks of whatever database you are using. Quotation marks are used to search for exact phrases of more than one word, for example, “head of people” search results for head of people without quotation marks will include irrelevant matches based on the words “head” and “people.” For example, asking for pharmacist AND NOT manager would bring up results for people who had “pharmacist” in their resume, and automatically exclude those resumes or profiles that also included the word “manager.”Īfter running an initial search, sourcers can add on additional keywords with AND to get more-targeted results, remove keywords using NOT to exclude results that aren’t desired, or vary the search results by using OR.

NOT (also, AND NOT) searches exclude specific terms from the results.

An example would be asking for engineer OR engineering, which would result in people with either “engineer” or “engineering” listed somewhere in their resume or on their profile.

OR searches are used to broaden a search these kinds of searches look for any one of the terms that are entered.

For example, typing in design AND html would bring up everyone who had both the words “design” and “html” in their resumes or on their profile page. These kinds of searches should be used for targeting specific skills, technologies and titles that are essential to the job.

AND searches mean that a candidate’s documents must include all of the terms listed in order for the candidate to be included in the search results.

But sourcers run into problems when their search string’s syntax is incorrect or when it doesn’t apply to the rules of the particular database, she added. “The basic concept of AND, OR and NOT is pretty clear,” Shamaeva said. “Sourcers and recruiters can ask to find a job title, to include the word ‘senior’ and also include the phrase ‘software developer’ in quotations, and not include the words ‘manager’ or ‘recruiter.’ ” This awkward “almost English” is Boolean logic, said Irina Shamaeva, chief sourcer at Brain Gain Recruiting, an executive search firm based in the San Francisco area, owner of the popular sourcing blog Boolean Strings and founder of the global People Sourcing Certification Program, a training and certification resource for talent sleuths. Though the technique has been around for decades, new tips and tricks are evolving as job sites and social media platforms change.īoolean operators (the words AND, OR and NOT-typically written in capital letters) are primarily used for structured database queries, such as when searching resume storage sites like Monster and ZoomInfo, and professional profile sites like LinkedIn. Using Boolean search logic for talent acquisition-that is, searching for people who have particular keywords within their resumes and professional profiles-is a core skill set for candidate search.

Sourcers and recruiters can net the most meaningful candidate search results across the Internet, and even within their own applicant tracking systems, by learning to write basic Boolean search strings.