

For example, “human resources” would be a good starting keyword when trying to hire an HR manager. Hiring keywords could include position names, skills, location, education and more. The first part of a Boolean search is the keywords you’re using. You can use all of these elements as many times as you want, as long as you use them correctly.

There are only a few parts of a Boolean search that you can use in any combination when looking for the perfect hire. Related: Job Sourcing 101: A Guide for Small Businesses

It also produces consistent results every time you search. Instead of sifting through dozens of hundreds of resumes, you can use Boolean searches to automatically show you the most relevant resumes. A Boolean search can identify which results aren’t relevant and filter them out, allowing you to save time by focusing on results that have already been preliminarily vetted by the search engine itself.

It adds specificity and context to the words you search for. For example, if you wanted to find resumes where the candidate had healthcare experience, you could search “hospital OR clinic” to pull up resumes of anyone who worked at a hospital or medical clinic.īoolean searching exists to give people more relevant results to whatever they are searching for. It uses a combination of punctuation and conjunctions, read left to right, to indicate to a search engine that you want a specific result. With Boolean searching, you can extend this concept to search engines when selecting the best job candidate based on what requirements you’re looking for.Ī Boolean search is a way of looking for specific search results by using a combination of modifiers to organize content. You can use Boolean logic to decide what combination of variables produces a “true result,” or a drink the speaker wants. “I want a cold, non-dairy coffee drink or a hot, caffeinated drink with no sugar but I don’t want green tea” combines multiple conditions. Finally, “I want a drink that is not dairy-based” makes any drink with milk “false” or unacceptable based on the terms.īoolean logic can become infinitely complicated to produce a more specific result. An iced latte would be “true” because it fits both requirements, while a hot coffee would be “false” because it isn’t cold. “I want a cold and caffeinated drink,” indicates a completely different set of acceptable beverages. For example, “I want coffee, tea or a smoothie,” indicates that any of those three variables is an acceptable drink, or a “true” variable, according to Boolean logic. You can apply Boolean logic to math and to real-world scenarios. Boolean logic comes from a mathematician named George Boole, who created a theory that every variable piece of data can be fit into one of two categories: either “true” or “false.” Just like algebra has a set order of operations for solving equations, search engines interpret Boolean searches according to a set of rules known as Boolean logic, allowing for consistent search results. To use Boolean searching effectively, you should first understand the basics of Boolean logic.
