By Irina Shamaeva, Chief Sourcer, Brain Gain Recruiting
Founder, People Sourcing Certification Program
http://sourcingcertification.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva http://twitter.com/braingain
Blog http://booleanstrings.com
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Today’s topic is:
Searching
with easy, readable
syntax
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Lots can be found simply searching for
English words and phrases: • “Passive” candidates
• Potential clients
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Google is “the” search engine • It has indexed the largest number of Internet
pages
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Settings • No instant results
• 100 results/page
• No personal results
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Example 1.
Example 2.
Example 3.
The Core Principle of Searching
How-To Tips for Types of Pages
Brief Notes on Syntax
How-To Tips for Types of Info
Fun Stuff: Image Search
Setting the Right Expectations
Q&A
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“What are we going to find?”
Suppose we have landed on an
interesting, relevant page as the result of
a search… • What will the words and phrases be like there?
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Search for some of the words and phrases
you expect to see on the relevant results
page
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Social Profiles (LinkedIn)
Associations
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Expect to find • The word LinkedIn
• Geography words
• Job title(s)
• Certification(s)
• Keywords
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Expect to find: • Association
• Location words
• Industry keywords
• A pointer to a member directory or member
search
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AND
Quotation Marks
OR • Best practices for using OR
Parentheses
Excluding terms • Best practices for excluding
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There’s no operator AND • Do not use it!
Google tries to find pages that have all
the words you have listed
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To try and find the exact word, or words
together (a “phrase”), use the quotation
marks: • "manager"
• "she"
• "registered nurse"
• "please contact me at"
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Caution: watch for MS Office-changed
quotes. Google understands straight "",
not curly “”
OR is a Boolean operator. It helps to use
it in cases you’d really need one or more
of the words to be found in the results
Syntax:
Deloitte OR Accenture OR Gartner
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You can avoid using OR simply by
searching for the words in turn: 1. Search for Deloitte
2. Search for Accenture
3. Search for Gartner
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Google completely ignores parentheses.
Period.
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If you want to exclude a word from the
search results, you can use the minus in
front of a word (no spaces in-between)
For best practices, consider using it less
rather than more, and never upfront
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How to express in key words and
phrases: • Terminology
• Contact Information
Email Addresses
Phone Numbers
• Geography
• Degrees
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What are we going to find?
Imagine words that a person’s profile
page (or a site) would use, not what the
job description necessarily says
To come up with keywords, explore some
examples of “ideal” profiles
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Get quick help in figuring out
terminology
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What are we going to find? • Generic (free) email addresses
• Phrases
• Company emails
Including these in a search may help to
find profiles with contact info, as well as
lists
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Example • "gmail.com" OR "yahoo.com" OR "aol.com"
No need to use long lists
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“Email me at”
“Email me on”
“My email is”
“Contact me at”
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linkedin Melbourne Australia sales
"email me at" "people you know"
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What are we going to find?
• Area codes
• Phrases
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02 Central east region (New South Wales,
Australian Capital Territory)
03 South east region (Victoria, Tasmania)
04 Mobile telephones (Australia-wide)
07 North east region (Queensland)
08 Central and west region (Western
Australia, South Australia and Northern
Territory)
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“call me at”
“call me on”
“my phone is”
“my mobile phone number is”
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Country calling codes and area codes
• http://countrycode.org
• http://www.countrycallingcodes.com
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What are we going to find?
Use the location names the way the
pages may use them
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Postal codes
http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/ • Note: these numbers have a better chance to be
useful if they are longer and are combined with
other “local” keywords
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Drop the terms with too many synonyms: • You will always
review the results
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Drag an image to Google’s image search
to look for it across the web
LOTs can be found by using English
words and phrases without complex
Boolean operators
By searching using English (vs. Boolean)
you are giving up some control over
search results and may miss some results • But you may gain productivity spending time on
processing the results and reaching out to the
people you find
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After you have mastered searching in
“plain English” you may feel more
comfortable learning to use some
advanced search operators, to gain
better control of search results
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We can only find web pages if they are out
there
Some info is behind a log into a site with a
password
Some info is wrong or obsolete
Blog http://booleanstrings.com
Largest Sourcers’ Online Community • "Boolean Strings" Group on LinkedIn
• Boolean Strings Network
People Sourcing Certifications • http://sourcingcertification.com
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