As a recruiter, I have access to dedicated resume databases such as Monster, CareerBuilder and Indeed.
However, in today’s competitive market, it turns out that not only are these candidates inundated with other recruiters contacting them about open roles, but I have found amazing candidates that don’t have their resumes on these job boards.
Many are passive, but are open to hearing about an opportunity. If you have an attractive role, you can have a much better chance of landing a great candidate by searching and finding their resume on Google and don’t have to compete with a single recruiter!
There are many ways to find resumes on the internet with Google and I’m going to highlight the major ways I customize my searches to find resumes.
Tip 1: Finding the word “resume” in the page title or url
It is resumes we are searching for and using the following too Boolean search operators, it is resumes we will find!
- inurl:resume
- intitle:resume
The easiest way to add this to your searches is to add it within the parentheses of an OR statement, just like this: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume)
What these two searches are doing is finding the word “resume” in the url of a web page (meaning the person who created the page used that word in their file location and naming structure.
Here is an example of the word “resume” appearing in a URL:
Notice where I highlighted in yellow, the word resume that is appearing in the URL. There might not be a single other instance of the word “resume” on this page, except for within the URL.
Below is an example of the word “resume” appearing in a title:
You can see again where I highlighted the word “resume”…which appears in the title of the page. Also, take a look at the URL in this case. Do you see the word “resume” there? NOPE.
By combining the inurl: and intitle: when searching Google for resumes, you are casting a wider net without adding any “junk” results.
Tip 2: Searching for “local” resumes
I will say that one benefit of Covid over the last two years as a recruiter, is the increased adoption of companies that do not require a candidate to be local. They are much more open now than they were before to have a candidate work 100% remotely. Covid taught many firms that productivity did not drop as a result of their employees working remotely…as a matter of fact, it is quite common for productivity to increase for remote workers.
But if we are searching for resumes within a specific location, the best way I have found to do that is by searching for:
- Phone number’s area code
- The zip code
- The state (in the USA)
When searching for resumes, you can include all of three of these criteria or just one at a time. this is because perhaps someone only lists one of these three. If you require all to be present on a resume that you find, you are missing candidates that might not list their phone number (for instance).
Here is how I search for local resumes using the phone number’s area code:
I live in Maryland. The area codes in Maryland are: 301, 240, 443, 571 and 667
We want to find any resume that contains those numbers on the page. To do this, simply use that “OR” Boolean search operator, contained within a parentheses ().
(301 OR 240 OR 443 OR 571 OR 667)
Here is how I search for local resumes by using Zip codes:
We have two options when searching for resumes using Zip codes and it is a bit of a pain in the a*s.
That is because there are a ton more Zip codes to search for than area codes.
When I say a ton more…check out what I mean:
Take a look at Maryland’s Zip codes
That’s a freaking lot of Zip codes. They also aren’t consecutive and seem to jump around without any rhyme or reason.
First, here are two sites I like to use when doing the Zip code search when location is important:
- Unitedstateszipcodes.org – can search by counties or cities
- Zip-codes.com – can search by a radius, of let’s say 10 miles
One could list out the Zip codes using the Boolean “OR” operator, within a parentheses (), such as: (20896 OR 20701 OR 21791), but that is a huge pain.
A better option is to simply take the highest and lowest Zip code numbers and put them into a range using the “..”
For example, this is a 20 mile radius around Baltimore that I pulled from Zip-codes.com:
20701..21791
Much easier, right?
Here is how I search for local resumes by state:
This one is easy…
When I search for a resume that references a state, I simply use the Boolean operator “OR” statement enclosed within parentheses ().
In the case of Maryland again, this is simply (maryland OR md)
Tip 3: Clean up your resume search by removing “false positives”
When running a search for resumes, you will find that you are going to get websites that have sample resumes. You will get job postings. You will get resume writing services. If you don’t eliminate these false positives, you will find yourself taking valuable time wading through non-relevant results. Even you don’t click on a URL in the Google search results, you will still have to concentrate by scrolling past all of the junk you don’t want to see.
How do you get rid of most of this crap? By using the Boolean “NOT” operator, which is expressed by using the minus sign (or dash) “-“
Simply put that dash in front of a word that you want to eliminate from your resume search results.
Here are the main keywords that I use to eliminate false positives from my resume search results:
- job
- jobs
- apply
- example
- examples
- sample
- samples
- submit
Expressed as a Boolean Google search string it would simply look like this:
-job -jobs -apply -example -examples -sample -samples -submit
If I didn’t do this, here is what I might find in my search results a “Cyber Security Engineer“:
These are the top 3 results. HORRIBLE!
Let’s run the same resume search string, but add the words that we want to eliminate that would typically include resume sample sites, job posts, etc…
Viola!
Top 3 results this time are quite clearly resumes, right?
Tip 4: Searching for resumes by searching for filetype, such as Word and PDF
I don’t use this search as much as I used to. After all, when searching for resumes on the internet, I often come across all sorts of file types. Many are personal blogs and could be HTML or asp pages, etc.
However, if you are looking for Excel spreadsheets…maybe you can focus on finding conference attendee spreadsheets that could be great candidate prospects, this is a great parameter to try. I also find “resume books” for upcoming or recent college graduates since many are in pdf format but again, don’t have the word resume appear in the url or page title.
Also, I do find resumes this way where the word “resume” never appears in the page title or in the url.
Take this search for a “java developer”
Clearly this is a resume in the search results but that word never appears in either the URL or the page title. I highlighted the filetype here…a Word document.
Is searching for resumes on Google going to give perfect results? Nope.
Let’s face it. We are not searching for resumes within a resume database such as Indeed or Monster. There, you have fields that are clearly mapped. When the candidate registers with these sites, they are entering all of their info that are mapped to database fields such as Zip code and job titles. The search results are generally perfect and super clean.
When searching the internet for resumes using Google, you have to balance the desire to be super-restrictive and specific with the tradeoff being having hardly any resumes in your search results.
You will still find “false positives” no matter how much you try to eliminate them from your resume search results.
There will be a page that contains your phone number area code or Zip code number in a context that clearly isn’t either a phone area code or zip code! This happens quite a bit.
But the results are worth it.
SUMMARY: Searching for resumes on the internet using Google
These tips I’ve outlined are meant to get you started. Try them today and customize them for your searches.
I will bet that you can take what I’ve outlined here and will immediately come across relevant candidate resumes that you can take action with and contact right away.
As a recruiter, I have found that these candidates are often not getting the sheer number of calls that candidates who post their resumes on job boards are getting.
Also, even if the candidate you contact replies back to you that they are not interested in a new opportunity, they are great for referrals. I have made many placements over the years doing exactly that…asking them “Is there anyone in your network that you think would be interested in hearing about an opportunity like this?”