What a load of Boolean

An even better search?

TLDR - this is a long email on optimising your CV and candidate searches.

In the early days of Jobsite.co.uk, I ran a search on software developers who specialised in C.

That’s the kind of 19-year-old I was.

The results were highly skewiff.

If you searched on C by itself you’d get anything from “CV” to “tragic” in your results.

Hardly helpful.

So you’d have to search on “ c,” AND “ c “ and “/c,” and so on to get every relevant permutation of C as a skill.

Working out how to get around the limitations of the search engine became imperative.

Over time Jobsite has developed its search functionality and results became much better.

Indeed that’s how all job boards have developed their CV databases, through finding their own fixes and trying to make things easier for their subscribers.

As a result, while they are based on the same principles, they have platform-specific nuances.

It goes to follow that there’s little point in me boring the pants off you with details of how to use AND NOT NEAR etc optimally.

You’re better off reading the reader guides of the systems you subscribe to.

And there’s no question that any service that provides access to a CV database will continue to evolve its offering, which you should keep on top of.

Word on the ground is that LinkedIn is moving towards Semantic search in their Recruiter services.

Semantic meaning guessing your intent.

I expect the next step change in online searches will be something like ChatGPT, integrating natural language processing to better give you what you want:

“Show me a list of candidates with React experience, within 20 minutes of The Grafton Centre, that started a new role 12 months ago”

But the thing is, everyone has the same access to these systems, and if everyone uses them in the way you are trained to, you’ll get similar search results.

So to have a differentiated set of results, you should try different approaches.

Geographical tweaks

You probably know that increasing your search radius from 10 miles to 15 miles will get 2.25 times as many results across an even population.

This can be imbalanced if this search extends into a large population centre.

What’s worse, assuming you are recruiting in a rural location, it’s likely your salary won’t compete with the big city, so candidates based there may be immediately unsuitable.

In this situation, pick a postcode 15 miles in the opposite direction from the population centre, and run searches from there.

You may need to pick a few different postcodes to capture every viable candidate pool outside of the metropolis.

That’s assuming you can’t go remote.

Date tweaks

If you find you have a vacancy that is skills short, you may lose active candidates in a competitive marketplace. If active is your only strategy, it’s a high-risk one, and your tactic is probably to run the same search every day and jump on the phone the second you see a new candidate.

“Oh, you’re the fourth recruiter I’ve spoken to today!”

Instead, look for people who were active previously.

3 – 6 months ago may find you active candidates who aren’t getting so many enquiries from recruiters.

Go further.

Search on candidates from 1-2 years or more ago.

They may have secured a role and be ready for a change, or have stayed where they were… and be ready for a change.

Better yet, if that’s the case, you may be the only person contacting them.

Consider the trajectory of your role and how someone might grow into it.

For a Senior React Developer, they may have been a mid-level Jquery Developer 2 years ago, and not come up in React searches at all.

I placed a senior Front End Developer whose CV was a six years out of date junior developer.

His parents had just died when he tried to withdraw, but fortunately they came back to life again and he ended up working with that e-Commerce company for 8 years.

LinkedIn is great for passive searches but is entirely reliant on populated profiles.

Find a candidate through other CV databases that has only updated their job title on LinkedIn, and it could be an easy win.

Skills thesaurus

As you map your vacancy, build a list of equivalent skills (e.g. S&OP or SIOP or IBP or…), skills that are platforms for your required skill (Jquery into React), or common job titles.

Abbreviations and fully spelt out: (CRO AND “conversion rate optim*”)

My recent placement of a People Director had an ongoing search of

*CIPD and (“of People” or “of HR” or “of Human Resources” or “of personnel” or “People Director” or “HR Director” or “Human Resources Director”)… actually it was a lot longer than that.

Might seem cumbersome, but once you’ve saved a search you can use it for future reference.

If you come across a relevant candidate with a weird job title, add that to your search. You never know who else uses weird job titles!

The added benefit here is that you will develop your understanding of what good may look like, helping you assess applicants and previously dismissed candidates differently.

Find the tpyo

Who doesn’t have a typo in their CV? Normally it’s “good attneton to detail” where people fall short.

But occasionally, great candidates hide themselves by misspelling the wrong word.

It can even be down to spell check: optimisation vs optimization.

While it’s an onerous task writing out iterations of every misspelt skill or job title - you need only do it once and save it for future reference.

Or you can use the wildcard operator *, if a search engine allows it.

Instead of (Engineer or Engineering) use Engin* to capture every word that starts with Engin. “Human Resourc*”. “Financ*.

Company names

Certain employers are great incubators for careers with you. Whether it's how they recruit, what success looks like or that they work with specific tech stacks - searching by company name can be effective. 

Both for a targeted search and as a door to referrals.

Company names are the most misspelt high-importance terms used too, so developing iterations of what those typos might be is a great way to find mystery candidates.

Candidate names

If you have a potential candidate in view, but they just won't respond to you, it might be the medium that's at fault rather than your message.

(You’re a rare person if you don’t get regular irrelevant messages on LinkedIn)

Search on their name, with an unlimited date range, across all the platforms you use.

You may find a different phone number or email to that in general use. Check out their job board profiles, as well as their CV, which may hold different information.

______________

If this all sounds like a lot of tedious work, you’d be right.

If you aren’t struggling to find candidates, you needn’t bother.

But if candidates are hard to find, or you absolutely, rigorously, need the right person for a specific job, these are useful tools to employ.

And there are many more tweaks you can make for effective, unusual searches, just by thinking outside of the Boolean.

Automation helps, of course, if you have the budget, such as integrating your ATS into a job board.

Or off-shelf software packages specifically for searching.

These can all help you find candidates better.

That’s the end of this bumper edition.

The next, shorter, edition is on putting the inter back into interviews, to make it easier to hire the right people.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:

- commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies)

- manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client

- recruitment coaching and mentoring (one place available at £200/hr + VAT)

- recruitment strategy setting

- outplacement support

Just hit reply to check if my approach is right for you.