The Beginner’s Guide to Boolean Search Terms

Boolean search terms are some of the essential tools a recruiter has at their disposal. By understanding how to use boolean search terms, recruiters can more efficiently find candidates that are a good fit for the position they are trying to fill. Additionally, boolean search terms can be used to discover candidates that might not be found through traditional search methods. As a result, boolean search terms should be an integral part of any recruitment training program. By training interviewers with the skills they need to use boolean search terms, you can ensure that they can find the best people for the job.

Boolean search is based on the work of prominent British mathematician George Boole. His legacy was Boolean logic, a theory of mathematics in which all variables are either “true” or “false”, or “on” or “off”. This logic still underpins all digital devices to this day, existing in almost every line of computer code. Boolean search writing is a skill that top recruiters need to know in order to get meaningful candidate search results from a wide range of software, including LinkedIn, various job portals and Google. However, fully constructed Boolean search strings can look both confusing and complex, and may seem difficult to write. But never fear! We’re here to teach you some of the tricks of the trade.

What is Boolean Search?

Boolean Search uses a combination of keywords and the three main Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) to organize and sift through your searches. It produces more accurate and relevant results, allowing you to navigate through appropriate candidates, while disregarding the unrelated. The first important thing to appreciate about Boolean is that there are only five elements of syntax to understand. These are: AND OR NOT () “” By applying these appropriately, along with the keywords you wish to consider, you can create a huge range of search operations. There is no limit to how often you can use any of these elements in a search, so you can create very specific search strings, which will save you a lot of time in filtering the results.

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The AND Operator

Take these two groups. In the first group are all the people who have the keyword “recruitment” somewhere in their LinkedIn profile and in the second, all those who have the keyword “HR”. But let’s see what happens when we use the following Boolean string: Recruitment AND HR We are now asking the LinkedIn database to search for all of the people who include both the word “Recruitment” and the word “HR” on their LinkedIn profile. We have filtered out the excess and are left with the more specific candidates who fall in the cross section of the Venn diagram.

The more criteria we add using the AND operator, the less people we will find with our search. It sounds like an oxymoron, but as we narrow our search using this method, we are finding the people who are most relevant for the position.

The OR Operator

In this example, one group of people have the keyword “Recruitment” in their LinkedIn profile, while the other have the keyword “Recruiting”. Both words mean the same thing in terms of a skillset, but to an electronic database, they are completely separate terms. Let’s use the following Boolean string to help rectify this: Recruitment OR Recruiting Now we are asking the database to search for candidates who include either of the two terms in their LinkedIn profile, or both terms simultaneously. It makes sure that the potential right candidate doesn’t fall through the net because of semantics!

Using OR broadens the search to encompass the entire Venn diagram. It enables us to find hidden talent e.g. people who have expressed their skills and experience in a different way than you might normally search e.g. banking OR bank OR finance OR financial.

The NOT Operator

The next example will help you narrow your search results by omitting unwanted criteria. Let’s take the first elements used again with “Recruitment” and “HR” keywords on a LinkedIn profile and use the following Boolean string: Recruitment NOT HR We are asking the database to search for candidates who have the word “Recruitment” in their profile, but to exclude any that also have the word “HR” in their profile and those who just have the word “HR” in their profile. This means we are looking to find candidates who fall just on the left-hand side of the Venn diagram:

Using NOT enables us to remove false positives from our candidate searches by eliminating irrelevant results. REMEMBER: Each of the three above Boolean operators should always be written in UPPER CASE. If not, they will not work.

Brackets ()

When using Boolean search, there is no way to determine how the computer will solve our equation. This means that in order to get the most relevant result for us, we have to use parentheses to tell the computer what to solve first. This is where using brackets comes into play. Brackets are essential for writing complex search strings, but their application often causes the most confusion amongst recruiters. Essentially, a clause within brackets is given priority over other elements around it. For example, if I was given the following search: talent OR hr AND recruitment Do I mean to say I want to find someone who has either the keyword “talent” or the keyword “HR” on their profile, and has the word “recruitment” too? Or do I mean that they have to have “talent” or the combination of “HR” and “recruitment”? You see, the absence of brackets makes it impossible for the database to know what you mean. Watch how things change when you add brackets. In the following example, I have told the database that I need to find someone who has either “talent” or “HR” or both, and that they also need to have “recruitment”: (talent OR hr) AND recruitment But in the following example, I have told the database that I need to find someone who has “talent” or a combination of “recruitment” and “HR”: talent OR (hr AND recruitment) The most common place that brackets are applied by recruiters is in the use of OR strings. Basically, if you’ve written OR somewhere in your search, think about where the brackets will go because their placement will affect how the computer solves your Boolean search query, which will affect search results you receive back.

Quotations “”

The use of quotations allows for even more specificity. If the keywords you’re searching for need to be considered as a whole (e.g. gas engineer), then they must be enclosed within quotation marks in the search string. If not, the database will view the space between the two words as an AND, resulting in larger search that covers both words (gas AND engineer). Not ideal! Use quotation marks whenever you have two or more words in a search that need to remain together like “Human Resources” or “Information Technology”. Quotations essentially define a number of words as one exact term, allowing you to pinpoint more accurately.   Today, we’ve explained the bread and butter of Boolean! We hope it helped you gain a better understanding of the fundamentals of Boolean search and made it less daunting to tackle in the future. There are, of course, several other Boolean modifiers you can use to further refine and improve your Boolean searches, as well as many more rules for the use of Boolean in various other search engines and databases beyond LinkedIn.

Taking Boolean to Google

Not every profile you want sits behind a LinkedIn login. The same operators work in Google, pointed at public pages instead of a member database. Recruiters call this X-ray search. The operator that makes it work is site:, which limits results to one domain. That asks Google for public LinkedIn profiles containing the exact phrase “software engineer” and at least one of the two skills. Change the domain and the same string works against GitHub, Stack Overflow or a professional body’s member directory. Two more Google operators are worth knowing. filetype:pdf turns up CVs people have uploaded to personal sites and university pages. intitle: and inurl: match words in the page title or the address rather than the body text, which helps when a job title appears in a profile headline. One caution. Google treats a space between two words as an AND, so you can leave the operator out. Its handling of brackets is less predictable than a recruitment database’s, so run a long string and check the first page of results before you trust it.

Five things that quietly break a search

1. Writing and, or, not in lower case. The database reads them as ordinary keywords and searches for the words themselves.
2. Leaving a two word job title unquoted. Without quotation marks, project manager becomes project AND manager, which returns anyone who has ever managed anything on a project.
3. Stacking AND until nothing comes back. Every term you add cuts the pool. When a search returns nothing, take out the least important term first rather than starting again.
4. Forgetting brackets around an OR group. The database resolves the ambiguity for you, and usually not the way you meant.
5. Searching the job title alone. Titles vary between companies, so a good candidate may never use yours. Search the skill or the tool alongside the title.

Building a string one line at a time

Long Boolean strings are easier to write in stages than in one go. Start with the title and its variants. Add the skill you will not compromise on. Narrow to the industry you are hiring for. Then strip out whatever you keep having to skip past. Every one of those lines is a working search. Run it, look at what comes back, then add the next condition. Writing the whole string first and then working out which part of it went wrong takes longer. If you would rather skip the syntax, our Boolean string generator builds the string for you from plain job requirements. For definitions of the terms used above, see Boolean search and Boolean string in our glossary.

For a complete and comprehensive guide to mastering the art of Boolean search, check out our dedicated recruiting training on SocialTalent. To learn more, get in-touch with us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Boolean search in recruiting?

Boolean search is a technique that combines keywords with the operators AND, OR, and NOT to organize and filter candidate searches on platforms like LinkedIn, job boards, and Google. Rooted in the logic of mathematician George Boole, it helps recruiters surface more accurate, relevant candidates while filtering out unrelated profiles.

What does the AND operator do in a Boolean search?

The AND operator narrows a search to only the candidates who have all the specified keywords in their profile; for example, “Recruitment AND HR” returns only people with both terms present. The more criteria joined with AND, the smaller and more targeted the resulting candidate pool becomes.

What does the OR operator do in a Boolean search?

The OR operator broadens a search to include candidates who have either of two or more keywords, such as “Recruitment OR Recruiting,” even though a database treats them as entirely separate terms. It helps catch candidates who describe the same skill or experience in different words, so good matches are not missed.

What does the NOT operator do in a Boolean search?

The NOT operator excludes candidates who contain a specified term; for example, “Recruitment NOT HR” finds people with “Recruitment” in their profile while filtering out anyone who also mentions “HR.” It is used to remove false positives and irrelevant profiles from a candidate search.

Why are brackets and quotation marks used in Boolean search strings?

Brackets tell the search engine which part of a Boolean string to evaluate first, since without them a query like “talent OR hr AND recruitment” is ambiguous about how the terms should be grouped. Quotation marks keep multi-word phrases, such as “Human Resources,” treated as one exact term instead of being split apart by an implied AND.

What is X-ray search and how is it different from Boolean search?

X-ray search applies Boolean operators in a general search engine such as Google rather than inside a recruitment database, using the site: operator to limit results to one domain. A string like site:linkedin.com/in “software engineer” AND (python OR django) returns public profiles on that domain. The operators are the same; only the place you run them changes.

Why does my Boolean search return no results?

The most common cause is stacking too many terms with AND, because every term you add makes the pool smaller. Remove the least important term first rather than rewriting the whole string. Lower case operators are the other frequent cause, since a database reads and, or and not as ordinary keywords rather than instructions.