Struggling to find your perfect position?
If you have a good idea of exactly what kind of role you’re looking for, filtering through all the available opportunities to find the right one for you can be frustrating. Especially if your search results aren’t as specific as you’d like them to be.
To help ensure your results are as accurate as possible, here’s our quick guide on Boolean searching, and how it could help your job search:
What is Boolean searching?
Keyword searching (also known as Boolean searching) allows you to tailor searches to your own specific criteria – by using particular words and phrases (referred to as ‘operators’).
Why use Boolean searching?
Boolean searching gives you greater control over your search results.
If you get a lot of irrelevant suggestions, it will help to narrow down your options and make your search more efficient. And if you aren’t getting a good amount of results coming through, you can loosen the terms to increase the number.
And with over 250,000 vacancies live on reed.co.uk, Boolean searching can help make sure you find the perfect role for you.
Where can I use Boolean searching?
You can use keyword searching almost everywhere, ranging from big search engines through to search functions within smaller sites.
However, some sites (such as Google) may have their own specific rules when it comes to what you can search for, so it’s always worth checking specifics if you’re struggling.
You can also use Boolean searching on incredibly helpful and important job boards. Obviously…
So how does it work?
To start using Boolean, simply enter the following operators when conducting a job search.
For the ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators, we’ve also included their one-character version, to help keep your typing to a minimum:
AND / &
When to use – When you’re searching for a role and you want the job description to include multiple keywords.
Example – ‘I want a job as a Developer, which allows me to use Javascript’
Example search – Developer & Javascript
OR / |
When to use – When you want the job description to include one of a number of keywords, but they don’t all need to appear.
Example – ‘I want a job as a Software Developer, or Web Developer’
Example search – Software Developer | Web Developer
“ “ marks
When to use – When you want a job description to include an exact phrase.
Example – ‘I’m looking for Software Developer roles’
Example search – “Software Developer” (Searching Software Developer without quotations, for example, could bring back a number of other development roles).
*
When to use – When you want your search to start with a certain term.
Example – ‘I want to be an Administrator’
Example search – Admin* (This will return all words which begin with ‘Admin’, for example Administrators and Administrative Assistants)
( )
When to use – When you want to group two or more sets of conditions together.
Example – ‘I am looking for Web Developer roles, specialising in Python or Ruby’
Example search – “Web Developer” & (Python or Ruby)
Final thoughts
Although we’ve listed some of the most basic options above, there are more advanced variations you can use, which may help if you’re searching for different things.
However, if you’ve never used Boolean searching before, it’s always a good idea to get to grips with the basics first, before moving on to anything more complicated.
So try playing around with some of the options next time you start a search. Not only will your results be more specific, you’ll also waste less time looking at irrelevant results. You might even find a role you’d never have found without using the right keywords.
See, who said job searching couldn’t be fun?
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