If you speak with a recruiter in any industry, you may have heard the term “boolean” come up in conversation. It’d usually be mentioned when a recruiter is giving advice to another recruiter or HR/IT professional. So what is a boolean?
Boolean is an algebraic notation used to represent logical propositions. Simply put – it’s a way for Recruiters to search for candidates on the internet and job forums. You may be wondering, “if a boolean search is a tool for recruiters, how can it help me in my job search?” Well, I’m here to share with you how a boolean search can be used to the job seeker’s advantage! The same tool recruiters use to find top-talent can be used to search for opportunities more closely related to your skill-set.
Boolean Basics
There are a few basic boolean search commands that you will need to know to be successful in creating your next job search in Google or LinkedIn. Please note boolean searches are not case-sensitive.
Now that you have the basics, let’s discover how to utilize boolean to your advantage in these 3 steps.
Create a list of Job Titles and/or Companies that you want to search for
For this search, let’s say you are looking for Office Administrator positions. Your list may look like the following:
Example: (“office administrator” OR “senior office administrator” OR administrator OR admin) AND (Amazon OR Microsoft OR Starbucks) AND (Seattle OR Bellevue OR Redmond OR “Mountlake Terrace”)
AnotContent AND (Video) AND (create OR edit OR design) AND (CMS OR “Content Management System” OR WordPress OR WordPress OR Drupal OR Joomla OR SquareSpace OR magento OR AEM OR “Adobe Experience Manager”) AND (Event OR Show OR program OR brochure OR flashe OR promotion OR advertis OR campaigns)
Notice I included a separate AND statement specifically for the location of the job at the end of my string. You can do the same depending on your metropolitan-statistical area.
Create a list of websites that you would like to search for jobs
Think of every job search site that has been spamming your email. Common ones are Indeed, Monster, or Dice. Once you have your list together, phrase your OR statement like so:
Example: (site:indeed.com OR site:monster.com OR site:careerbuilder.com OR site:dice.com OR site:linkedin.com)
While you can search with a whole string of sites you’ve put together, my personal preference is to go through the sites individually to more thoroughly search for the roles I am interested in – starting with LinkedIn
Example: (site:linkedin.com)
Copy your search string into Google and search
Now you’re ready! You’ve created a search string for your specified job titles and the companies you are interested in and you’ve built a list of sites you want to search for these roles on! All that’s left is to cut/paste your website string in front of your job search string, open Google, and begin your search! For the example below, I am searching LinkedIn with the Office Admin search string.
Example: (site:linkedin.com) AND (“office administrator” OR “senior office administrator” OR “administrator” OR “admin”) AND (Amazon OR Microsoft OR Starbucks) AND (Seattle OR Bellevue OR Redmond OR “Mountlake Terrace”) AND (“Customer service”)
(site:linkedin.com) AND Content AND (Video) AND (create OR edit OR design) AND (CMS OR “Content Management System” OR WordPress OR WordPress OR Drupal OR Joomla OR SquareSpace OR magento OR AEM OR “Adobe Experience Manager”) AND (Event OR Show OR program OR brochure OR flashe OR promotion OR advertis OR campaigns)
Here are my results:
As you can see, there are quite a few results relating to the Office Administrator position. Play around with your boolean string and see if you can filter the role more specifically to you. I added AND (“customer service”) to the end of my string and the results filtered to 245,000.
Kip Brookbank, B.A. in Fine Arts, is a Technical Recruiter with Beyondsoft based in Bellevue, Washington. He has an interest in helping candidates get placed in their dream roles, supporting the LGTBQIA+ community, and assisting where he can.
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