Become good with the operators and get creative to find candidates in places that you’ve never been before. You can use Boolean search strings to search any website you want, as long as they do not have no-index pages as you’d be unable to find those. They want their pages to be found when someone is searching with a search engine, thereby also enabling X-ray searching on their websites.

Many job boards work this way to keep their candidate databases for members only, but platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn cannot do this. If they do this, you will be unable to get results with your X-ray. Websites can decide not to index a page if they don’t want it to be findable by search engines. However, that’s only if the pages on these websites are indexed by search engines. Here’s an example, finding the word referral on You could do this for almost every website. For example, you could even X-ray our website if you’d like to. Almost every website can be searched with X-ray. You can simply do this by entering “site: nameofwebsite + your boolean search string” in a search engine. Or you can find even more candidates on a website you’re already searching on. As a recruiter, you can use this technique to find candidates on websites that are otherwise difficult to search. Actually, scientists and researchers have been using it for years to find relevant sources and research concerning their research topic on websites featuring other academic research.īasically, you enter Boolean search strings in a search engine to find results on a specific website. Online databases can be phone directories, job boards, social media channels such as LinkedIn or Facebook and every other website on the web. That sounds difficult, but it really isn’t. X-ray searching refers to the technique of using search engines such as Google or Bing to find information, usually candidates, in online databases. As if you can see through everything with your search, and frankly, you kind of do. X-ray search sounds awesome, right?! It sounds quite powerful. If you want to find out what the real power of Boolean search is, consider reading this blog post about Boolean search for recruitment.If you’re already familiar with Boolean search, continue reading to find out more about X-ray search. This way, you will only see profiles that match your search. If a keyword matches, it gives a ‘1’, if it doesn’t match it gives a ‘0’. This technique makes searching for good profiles easier, as it compares the search string to the profile it is searching. A “boolean” is simply one of the two binary digits: ‘0’ or ‘1’. One of the most popular ways to find great candidates is by using Boolean search strings. X-Ray Search: How you’ll get 10 times better at sourcing 29 April 2019

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