The top geeks at Google are a bunch of sneaky devils.  They hold in their hands the most powerful search engine on the planet, yet low-key don’t bother explaining its advanced features. Luckily a different group of cats at hireEZ (formerly Hiretual) unwound all of those advanced boolean building features and crammed them into a steamroller of a search tool.

Boolean building
Example of what Google has been working on for the past decade

Any good Sourcer worth their salt knows exactly how to search with intent. Nobody’s gonna give you a gold medal to the clout contest for getting the most C++ developers in one search. It’s about narrowing that search down until you get a couple hundred people that exactly meet your criteria.

 

Let’s get to the point of all this: searching more effectively on Google. We want all these advanced search features, so whats next?

  • Step 1: Learn Boolean and Regular Expressions.
  • Step 3: Profit.

Well first off, what the heck is a Boolean Expression? Well, kind of like a Goosebumps: You Choose The Scare novels, if you don’t know Boolean you’re not gonna make it too far. Boolean is pretty much a required mastery if you plan on doing Sourcing for a living.

Unfortunately for the casual audience, theres more to Boolean Expressions than a pamphlet read. Boolean statements have quotation marks, parentheses, and other database-looking jargon that shares a lot in common with database languages like SQL.

If you put all these brackets, minus signs, and other quirky characters together, you can turn your dud search into a solar powered, pavement ant scorching beam of a magnifying glass. These expressions, while tedious to learn, unlock the full power of Google’s search features.

Okay, but we have ONE teensy problem. Nobody wants to learn a laundry list of wingdings and nonsense just to talk to Siri’s older brother better! Well, if you plan to be sourcing with the big dogs, you kind of have to.

BUT, LEARNING BOOLEAN IS HARD!

Open up a spot in your bookmarks (or chrome extension dock), because we have an essential searching freebie that’s gonna make your transition into becoming a Boolean master a whole lot easier.

Until you spread your wings and fly, the HireEZ Boolean Builder should be your success crutch. This tool, available as both a webpage and also a neat chrome extension, sets the standard for both ease-of-use as well as functionality.

With HireEZ’s Boolean Builder, you don’t need to know all of those special characters or picky phrasing nuances that Regular Expressions and Boolean demands from you. To get your query as specific as you need it to, simply fill out the applicable search parameters. Let’s quickly run through how to ride this dragon and you’ll be sky sailing far above the search engine clouds in no time.

The Good, Great, and Not So Ugly of HireEZ Boolean Builder

The search parameters are fairly straightforward, we have:

  • Job Title(s)
  • Skills (AND, OR, NOT)
  • Location(s)

One beautiful feature that the HireEZ tech wizards implemented is predictive topics.  The tool generates a comprehensive list of other job titles and skills you might want to search for, letting you blast through filling out this form. Thoughtful and effective ways to save time makes me want to happy cry, so well done, HireEZ.

So you clicked “Generate Boolean” and got this big chonk of spaghetti text, now what? Paste it into Google, right?  You’re welcome to stop learning here and repeatedly revenge query Google to get back at it for all those times it hurt you, but there’s some more fun to be had if you’re willing to go one step further down the rabbit hole.

googleception

Effects of Boolean on my brain

A search layer on top of a search layer…This is the unnecessarily complicated world we live in. Before long our couches will have sassy AI’s that begrudgingly help you achieve maximum comfort, and our dogs will have translator collars so we can ghost write dog romance novels for them about the one stick who got away. This next level technique that Dean does might either cure your migraines permanently or make your head explode so you’ve been warned.

You can use Google to plug those parameters into a specific site. You may or may not know this, but you can narrow searches to a specific URL. Say you have this arbitrary search I made with HireEZ’s tool:

(“software engineer”) c# c++ (c) (“Portland, OR”) -java

Now say I want to only search these parameters on LinkedIn, how would I do that?

site:LinkedIn.com (“software engineer”) c# c++ (c) (“Portland, OR”) -java

It’s that easy! You can search whatever site is indexed by Google, which is pretty much all of them. Using this for LinkedIn is great since their built in search bar is notorious for being near-useless.

CONCLUSIONS

If you plan on casually using Boolean expressions, I’d stick with the HireEZ Boolean Builder Bookmark. If this is gonna be a long term relationship then perhaps you could try out their google chrome extension. Just for clarity’s sake the extension requires setting up a free HireEZ account.

If you’re interested in learning advanced searching techniques, building search engines, and turning your searching techniques into spells, check out this 4 hour long Master Class lead by the Godfather of Sourcing Shally Steckerl. For all things Dean Da Costa, check out here!


Authors
Noel Cocca

CEO/Founder RecruitingDaily and avid skier, coach and avid father of two trying to keep up with my altruistic wife. Producing at the sweet spot talent acquisition to create great content for the living breathing human beings in recruiting and hiring. I try to ease the biggest to smallest problems from start-ups to enterprise. Founder of RecruitingDaily and our merry band of rabble-rousers.

Dean Da Costa

Dean Da Costa is a highly experienced and decorated staffing professional, recruiter, sourcer and manager, who also boasts outstanding experience and skills in Human Resources, Project Management, Training, and Process Improvement. He is best known for his work in the highly difficult security and mobile arena's, and the gold star winning numbers he produced. His keen insight and creation of ground breaking tools and processes, to enhance and change staffing as we know it, have proven he is a true "Staffing Thought Leader". Despite all this he remains first and foremost one of the top sourcers, staffing managers and full cycle recruiters in the industry and a true "Search Authority"