Shortcomings of Boolean Search
for Recruiters

Shortcomings of Boolean Search for Recruiters

Recruiters need to find leads to grow. But finding those leads can be difficult, and the efficiency and effectiveness of your time is often directly correlated with the approach you use to find these clients – a process which, more and more, frequently takes place online.

So how are you finding those leads?

If you’re like most recruiters, you’re looking for leads manually, one by one, using what is known as a Boolean search. A Boolean search is a search for specific words or phrases. These searches may also include modifiers, such as:

• Quotation Marks
  This tells search engines to look for the exact phrase.
• Minus Symbols
  This tells search engines what words exclude a result.
• Parentheses
  This tells search engines to look for words grouped together.
• Site:website
  This tells search engines to look only at a specific website.
• “And” or “Or”
  This tells search engines when words need to both be present or when one is enough.

You probably use these in some form already in your day to day life when searching through websites like Google and Bing.

Recruiters also use Boolean search to find leads. They search for specific terms, or a set of terms, or a phrase, hoping to find job openings that fit their expertise. 

Typically, you’re also doing this search as though you’re a candidate, not a recruiter or employer. Some Boolean search examples for recruiters might look something like:

• SPSS and SAS
• “Network Engineer” -Windows
• Hiring (manager or coordinator) “Sydney”
• site:indeed.com “project manager” 

Search engines, including generic ones like Google and job-specific ones like Indeed, allow you to search for terms that are relevant to your applicant pool. Then you can look through the results for employers that are worth contacting and try to build a relationship from there.

Problems with Boolean Search Training for Recruiters

This method of looking for leads can seem like a useful one. But it suffers from a lot of problems. It’s slow. It misses a lot of jobs. It vastly limits the amount of information you receive, and tells you next to nothing about the needs or trends of the company. It’s also repetitive, often bringing up the same jobs over and over, and it doesn’t let you know what opportunities are available.

Sure, you might be able to find a lead or two, but if you ant to grow fast, recruiter Boolean searches are not going to be enough.

What is a Better Alternative?

There are some recruitment agencies that depend solely on Boolean strings for recruiters, and they can have some success. But what may recruitment agencies are finding is that, using Rover, they have access to vastly more data, more jobs, and more information than they can complete with Boolean search alone – all compiled for their perusal in seconds.

Why Rover is Simply Better Than a Recruitment Boolean Search

Rover is a data aggregation and analysis tool that collects job opening data from across the internet and compiles it into a database in the cloud that can be queried and analyzed. It allows recruiters, like you, to set parameters for a single search that will bring up a massive list of leads, any time you run a search.

For example, say you’re a recruiter for electrical engineers in Sydney. You can perform a query within the Rover database for, say, companies in Sydney that have more than one electrical engineer job opening and have had open positions for >15 days. You’ll then be given a complete list of every single employer in Sydney that meets these criteria. 

You can then run updates for new postings, alter the query as needed, and even see reports and dashboards that provide you with all the data you need, each and every day, without having to spend time performing a Boolean search again and again.

That’s just one way that Rover has helped recruiters find vastly more leads using far more effective data analysis tools.

Unlike Boolean search, Rover delivers you detailed results that can also be explored, parsed out, and otherwise evaluated in order to find the best leads AND have more information that you can use to contact them, such as “I noticed your company has seen a 50% increase in electrical engineering positions, and also seem to have those positions open for longer, on average. Would you be interested in…”

Finally, traditional Boolean search is likely to yield the same results for everyone that does the search. That means that your competitors are seeing the same things you are. Rover, then, not only gives you more (and better) results, but it also gives you a competitive advantage over other recruiters.

Try Rover Today

Boolean search may be one of the more common ways to find potential leads, but it is also a long-since obsolete one. Rover does all that work for you, and 100x more, so that you can focus on turning those leads into clients and generating business for your company.

Chat with us about Rover today by entering your name and email at the top of this page, or clicking below to start a free trial.