Stellar Boolean Search Tips for Job Seekers & Entrepreneurs

Boolean Search Tips can help you better target the information you seek!

Are you a job seeker or entrepreneur? Do you need some stellar Boolean search tips? Do you even know what that is or how to do it?

Are you wanting to do a targeted search for someone or something on LinkedIn or the Internet? These stellar Boolean search tips are sure to help!

George Boole lived in the 19th century, and he was a mathematician, philosopher, and logician who developed a form of logic.?

This tool uses the words (in caps)?AND,?OR, or?NOT?along with keywords like names, titles, and companies, and it can be used to search on the Internet in modern times, including LinkedIn.?

SEARCH ON LINKEDIN

If you want to glom together two or more words, make sure you keep them in quotes. Below are some examples.

“Sales Manager” AND “Real Estate”

“Sales Manager” AND Realtor

“Sales Manager” AND “Real Estate” OR Realtor

“Sales Manager” OR “Regional Manager” AND “Residential Real Estate NOT “New Construction”

SEARCH ON GOOGLE FOR SOMEONE ON LINKEDIN

LinkedIn currently has a limit of 100 searches per week, so you might have to resort to searching on Google for the site of LinkedIn. Below is a more complex search you can do on Google.

site:linkedin.com/in (“greater Philadelphia area” OR “greater New York City area”) AND (R&D AND VP OR “vice president” AND “johnson & johnson” OR “johnson and johnson” OR “j and j” OR “j & j” OR j&j)

TIPS FOR JOB SEEKERS – UNEMPLOYED OR EMPLOYED

If you are an unemployed job seeker, you can put the following in your About section. If you are employed but seeking a new opportunity, you can include the words below under a previous job.?

Seeking new opportunity. #opentowork #ONO?(which stands for open to new opportunity)

KEYWORDS ARE ESSENTIAL

LinkedIn is a database of information, so if you want to get found in searches, you need to ensure you have keywords in your profile.?

The sections I target for keywords are the headline, About section, and Skills section, and I also suggest?embellishing job titles?(up to 100 characters).?

Additionally, consider keywords in the Projects and Publications sections if you have them.??

THINK LIKE GOOGLE

What would you type in Google if you were looking for someone??

Would you type?Owner OR President of ABC Website Design,?or would you type?website design OR website developer?as general terms, basically since you have never heard of ABC Website Design before?

If you are a business owner, your title and company name should go in your experience section, but not your headline.

You want to use?keywords?in your headline, and add a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and then check it with a tool like Sharethrough, which you will find in my?LinkedIn newsletter article.

THINK LIKE A RECRUITER OR TALENT ACQUISITION

You might want to read these articles by?SHRM,?TalentLyft, and?Entelo?on how someone in talent acquisition searches for candidates. Then, you can reverse engineer your LinkedIn profile on how you want to be found.

THINK LIKE “YOU” AS A JOB SEEKER

Instead of visiting job boards or LinkedIn jobs, you can also Google terms to find jobs that match what you are seeking, like in the example below.

nonprofit AND “servant leadership” AND management jobs in and around Philadelphia, PA

OTHER BOOLEAN TERMS AND SYMBOLS

When using an asterisk (*), you can get different word forms, as the asterisk acts as a wild card. For example, “recruit*” might turn up recruit, recruiter, recruiters, recruiting, recruited

When using a double asterisk (**), it will turn up all forms of a particular word in different tenses. An example of “sell**” might turn up sell, selling, sold, etc.

There are other Boolean operators for computer scientists, but we will keep this topic focused on the average searcher.?

So hopefully, you will give these BOOlean search tips a BOO-yah and not?BOOhoo, and they will lead you to your BOOmtown!

DON'T MISS OUT ON AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN FROM SIX GLOBAL LINKEDIN EXPERTS ON SATURDAY, MAY 7TH!

On May 7th, I will be joining five other LinkedIn experts from the?Thought Leadership Branding Club?to help you boost your LinkedIn profile and maximize your results on the platform. Additional experts include?Bobby Umar,?Ilia Francis,?Melanie Mitchell-Wexler,?Leanne Calderwood,?and?Heather Epstein. I will be sharing some keyword tips and a couple of job seeker strategies on LinkedIn and I’m looking forward to sharing my best tips with you!

Sign up and learn more here:?https://bit.ly/BoostLinkedInMay7

NEXT STEPS

• Subscribe to my?newsletter on LinkedIn?for bright ideas to manage your career.
• Join as a member at?https://greatcareers.org/membership?of the #1 business networking association on the?Philadelphia Business Journal’s Book of Lists?two years in a row!?
• Register on the?events page?for these upcoming online events noted below.
• If you need a resume or LinkedIn profile to get you to your next step,?book a call?to chat!

AUTHOR BIO

Lynne M. Williams?is the Executive Director of the?Great Careers Groups, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides career education and networking connections for 1) job seekers in career transition, including veterans, and 2) employed and self-employed for career management. She is also the President of?ChemPharma.net?and runs a Clubhouse session every Friday at 11 AM ET in the?Thought Leadership Branding Club.?

Aside from writing keyword-focused content for ATS resumes and LinkedIn profiles, Lynne is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on LinkedIn for Job Seekers. She is a contributing author on “Applying to Positions” in?Find Your Fit: A Practical Guide to Landing the Job You Love?along with the late Dick Bolles, the author of What Color is Your Parachute? and is also a speaker on?career topics.

This article is also published on: Great Careers Group's blog, vista.today,?montco.today,?delco.today,?bucksco.today. A list of articles can also be found in a?Google doc.?