When you are searching for candidates, there are certain types of pages that consistently will show up that you don’t want to see, unless you take the time to exclude them.
When you think about it, we are searching for job titles and skills…so we are going to come up with a lot of job postings. We will also see lots of sites giving tips on how to write a resume by giving examples.
Here are some terms that I typically make a point to exclude when doing searches:
- Example – as in a page that lists a resume as an “example”
- Apply – a page job posting page that says something like “apply here”
- Jobs – a jobs board that lists “jobs”
- Template – another resume tip page that provides a resume “template”
With Boolean searches, the way you remove pages from showing in your search results is the NOT operator, typically expressed by just putting a minus “-” in front of the word you want to exclude…without a space.
So here is how I would structure this exclusions section:
-example -apply -jobs -template
This will save you a ton of time so you don’t have to sift through junk results that aren’t relevant.
It is also helpful when doing other boolean searches…lets say you want to search for a “senior manager” or “supervisor”, that hasn’t made the career move to the next step of a “director” level role? This way, you are more likely to find candidates that are going to already be over-qualified for your role…the hiring manager wants someone who is more likely to stay with their company and grow their skills, not simply settling for a lateral move or even a role that is beneath the candidate.
Here you would simply go with a search like: (supervisor OR “senior manager”) -director
Next…let’s put this all together into one search string!
Part 7 – Putting it all together
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