Boolean Tips

Use AND to find pages that contain all of the search terms

Use OR to find pages that contain either of the search terms or both of the search terms.

Use NOT (or a minus sign) to eliminate search terms and remove unwanted pages from your search results (-job -jobs removes job postings so you can find more resumes)

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 recruiting Android developers should include ‘developer AND android’. This will produce results that include both keywords.

Venn diagram of the Boolean AND operator A AND B | A ∩ B

Plus The Boolean search operator + (plus) symbol is equal to the and

Tilde ~: The ~ is a synonym operator which searches for all synonymous words or phrases. This operator is incredibly valuable for a number of reasons the first being bandwidth. Google, as with all search engines, has its limitations. But one of the coolest thing you can do is search for words or phrases easily and quickly through the ~ function.

Example: ~CV = Curriculum Vitae, Curriculum Vitaes, CV, C.V., Resume, Resumes, Portfolio, Portfolios and so forth.

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.’

Venn diagram of the Boolean OR operator A OR B | A ∪ B

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.’)

Venn diagram of the Boolean NOT operator A NOT B | A – B

Minus The Boolean search operator not is equal to the - (minus) symbol.

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.

Venn diagram of Boolean search examples: Brackets to group multiple search strings (A OR B) AND C | (A∪B) ∩ C

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.

Asterisk *: The asterisk can be used on most resume databases and non-Internet search engines as a root word/stem/truncation search. In other words, the search engine will return and highlight any word that begins with the root/stem of the word truncated by the asterisk.

LinkedIn does not support the asterisk, so you will have to construct large OR statements to search for all of the various ways someone could mention each term you’re searching for. For example: (configure OR configuring OR configured OR configures)