Part of my day job is research. I read a lot about sourcing and the problems recruiters are facing with it. And one of the biggest problems I’m seeing? This idea that you can throw every keyword known to mankind into a search string and it will yield the results you need.
Let’s review a couple of things to eliminate Sloppy Sourcing.
Boolean logic boils down to three primary commands: AND, OR, and NOT. Things have changed in the 12 years that I’ve been dedicated to sourcing online. For one thing, no longer do we need to write AND or NOT in all capital letters when using any of the primary search engines. AND is implied by a space on search engines and NOT is the “-”. OR, well you can write capital “OR” or you can use the Pipe symbol. (Look at the key above your enter key, it’s this “|”). You’ll find I prefer “OR”. I also prefer to use Parentheses (i.e. brackets for you Brits) to open and close my OR statements. Do I have to? No. But I prefer to because I think it makes more sense and when I proof search strings, it’s easier to discern errors. And I can admit it, I make typos just like the best of them.
Now let’s talk about keywords. If I want biographical documents, I can generate several different keywords to accommodate that need. Same goes for the names of people (think roster, directory, attendee, etc). If I am looking for skill sets, I can create those keyword lists as well. What I should not do… and this is where I see confusion… is combine the lists. Here’s what I mean – in a very basic Boolean context, this is how you can construct search strings:
Biographical documents: (resume OR cv OR vitae)
Lists: (directory OR roster OR list)
Skillsets: (java OR j2ee OR javascript OR jsp)
Let’s take that one step further. If ideally you need a java developer, and the candidate could have the title programmer or analyst instead of developer, then what you don’t want to do, is this:
(java OR programmer OR developer)
You do want to do this:
(java OR j2ee OR javascript OR jsp) (developer OR programmer OR analyst)
Keep your like terms together. Go back to that logical thinking.
Now your search can get more complex as you start to integrate “field operators”, aka intitle: or inurl:. They’re great for focusing a search because they search the title of a document and the url of a document. And you need to think logically here as well. More often than not, your Java Developer is going to name his resume a resume, his profile a profile, his “about me” page on his blog “about me”. He is not going to name it “javascript”. So writing this search string:
(intitle:javascript OR inurl:javascript)
is not the best use of your time. Instead, try this:
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) (java OR j2ee OR javascript OR jsp)
See the difference? Now I know we can take all of those searches further. But let’s not put the cart before the horse. Work on understanding your search strings, make sure they make sense, that you’re comparing apples to apples and not apples to asparagus.
