Boolean Search Secrets

For Becoming

a Sourcing Superhero

Search String Starters

Social Recruiting Tips

From Our Top Recruiters

Tim Collins,
Chief IT Recruiter 

www.Stafflink.ca
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Contents


About Stafflink …………………………………………………………………………………. 2

Boolean Search Refresher ………………………………………………………….……. 4

Basic Operators ……………………………………….………………………………… 4
Understanding AND, OR and NOT…………………………………….…..……. 5
Building the perfect search string ………………………..……………………. 6
1. X-ray search with the site: command ………………………….… 6
2. Target resumes with intitle:/inurl: ………………………….…… 7
3. Clean up your results with the minus sign …………………… 7
4. Use filetype: to target resume documents …………………… 8
5. Use nesting to combine search terms ……………..…………… 9
6. Starter search strings …….……………………………………………… 9
7. Sourcing on blogs, portfolios, Github and videos ………… 10
Recruit’em Writes Search Strings For You ….…………………………………. 11
Recruit’em Power Tip ……………………………………………………………….. 12

Boolean Search Cheatsheet ……………………..……………………………………. 13

Your IT Staffing Resource …….………………………..………………………………..14

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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About Sta!ink

Tim Collins, the guy in the middle, founded Stafflink in 2002. We

snapped this pic of our recruiting team at a company retreat in Blue
Mountains, Collingwood.

Stafflink is a staffing company located in Toronto, Ontario. We provide

staffing resources for technology, financial services and online
marketing roles.

Is this book for you?

• Do you have trouble finding job candidates with the skills you need?
• Are you looking for professionals with highly in-demand skills?
• Do you waste your time sorting through unqualified resumes?

Keep reading and discover the latest and greatest strategies for
sourcing talent.

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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Boolean Search Basics

• ALWAYS capitalize AND, OR and NOT

• Use quotes for search terms with more than one word
• Use brackets to group multiple search terms
• Use asterisk (*) as a wild card — for example finance* searches for
“finance”, “financial” and “finances”

• No space after the minus sign — for example -job -jobs

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
 Page 5 of 14

Understanding
AND, OR and NOT

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)


www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
 Page 6 of 14

Building the
perfect search string

1. X-ray search with the site: command

to search a particular site
A site: search is also known as an “x-ray” search.

Example 1: Search LinkedIn for developers with a niche skill

Example 2: Search LinkedIn for mobile developers in Toronto but don’t

show jobs.


www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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2. Target resumes with intitle: / inurl:

Examples: To search for resumes and CV’s of ETL developers in Toronto

3. Clean up your results with the

minus sign
If you get a bunch of search results that you don’t want, look for a
keyword that’s repeated in the unwanted results.

Put the minus sign (-) right before that keyword (no space) and add it
to the end of your search string. This eliminates those unwanted items
from your search results.

For example, put -job -jobs at the end of your search string to eliminate
job postings from your results.

IMPORTANT: NO space between the minus sign and the

search term -job

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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4. Use filetype: to target resume

documents


Example Search String:

Role: Business Analyst with Capital Markets experience

(inurl:resume OR cv OR vitae) (filetype:pdf OR docx OR doc OR txt)

“business analyst” “capital markets" “Toronto OR TO” -job -jobs

Use quotation marks to search for search terms with more than one
word, such as “business analyst” and “capital markets”

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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5. Use nesting to combine search

terms


Nesting is when you use brackets to nest search terms like this:


((intitle:resume OR cv OR vitae) OR (inurl:resume OR cv OR vitae))

6. Starter Search String Examples

Business Analyst with financial services background
(inurl:resume OR cv OR vitae) (filetype:pdf OR docx OR doc OR txt)
(“business analyst" financ*) Toronto -job -jobs

More keywords: “use cases”, “activity diagrams”, “business requirement

documents”, BRD, UML, “Rational Rose”, “documentation on process”

Mortgage Advisor
(inurl:resume OR cv OR vitae) (mortgage* advisor) Toronto -job -jobs -court

More keywords to try: “selling mortgages”, “mortgage sales”, remortgage,

“mortgage products”

Financial Planner
(inurl:resume OR cv OR vitae) (“financial planner” OR “wealth management” OR
“risk management”) Toronto -job -jobs

More keywords to try: “Financial Planning Standards Course”, investment,

“investment portfolio”, CFP, “Certified Financial Planner”


www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
 Page 10 of 14

Sourcing on Blogs,
Portfolios, Github and
Videos
Blogs, portfolios, Github and videos are gold mines for finding job
candidates. People who share their expertise online tend to be
creative, generous and passionate about their work.

Search strings to find blogs and portfolios

• inurl:blog python toronto

• (inurl:portfolio OR intitle:portfolio) iOS developer toronto -stocks -job
-jobs
• (inurl:portfolio OR inurl:blog) c# toronto -stocks -job -jobs

Search strings for sourcing candidates on Github

• site:github.com “Toronto” AND “C++”

• site:github.com “Toronto” AND “Javascript”

Search strings for Youtube

• site:youtube.com/user “mobile developer” Toronto

• site:youtube.com/user “iPhone developer” Toronto
• site:youtube.com/user “Android developer” Toronto

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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Recruit’em Writes Search

Strings For You
Recruit’em is a free recruiting app that writes complex Boolean search
strings for you. It enables you to search six of the top websites for
sourcing job candidates.

Go to recruitin.net, select a tab on the left, fill in the blanks and POW…
Recruit’em builds the search string for you.

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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Recruit’em Power Tip

Use the search string Recruit’em gives you to build an even stronger
search string that’s more targeted to your requirements.

Here’s how:

Recruit’em gives you two options: To save search string or to open the
search results in Google.

Click Open in Google to see the search results. Now you can tweak the
search string to get even better results.

Recruit’em doesn’t support the OR operator in their search boxes.

However, after you open the search in Google, you can add search
terms and use the OR operator if you want to make your search more
specific.

For more tips check out the Recruit’em User Guide.

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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Boolean Search Cheatsheet

Operator How It Works Example
AND (or a List each keyword “engineer developer”
space) followed by a space. is the same as “engineer
Putting AND between the AND developer.
words is optional
OR Search for either keyword (“java developer” OR “java
or both programmer”)
“exact Use quotation marks to “Production Application
phrase” search for an exact Support”
phrase
(brackets) Use brackets to group (“production application
search terms support” middleware)

-exclude Use a minus sign to -job -jobs

exclude a keyword
site: X-ray search within one site:twitter.com “java
website developer”
intitle: 
 Search for a certain word (intitle:resume OR
inurl: in the page title or URL inurl:resume)
file: Search for certain (filetype:pdf OR docx OR
filetypes doc OR txt)

*wildcard Use an asterisk as a financ* searches for

placeholder for unknown “finance”, “financial”, etc.
terms or letters

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300
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Your IT Staffing Resource

Stafflink Solutions is an IT staffing company in Toronto Canada. We can

help you hire developers, programmers, project managers, social media
marketing and community managers, business analysts, data
architects, financial analysts and many more roles.

For help with staffing, email Tim Collins at timc@stafflink.ca.

Find us on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/company/stafflink-solutions

www.stafflink.ca 416-364-2300