Sourcing, headhunting and Boolean search
Have you ever been in a situation when you have an open vacancy and don’t know how to find candidates that are the best match? One of the options is, of course, receiving applications due to your job post, but usually that may not be enough.
Sourcing is the use of one or more strategies to attract or identify candidates to fill job vacancies. It may involve internal and/or external recruitment advertising, using appropriate media, such as job portals, social media, specialist recruitment media, etc. Alternatively, employers may use recruitment consultancies or agencies to find otherwise scarce candidates.
Professionals specializing in sourcing are known primarily as sourcers but also as recruiters or talent scouts. Several recruiters can rely on the same sourcer to generate leads and fill their pipelines with pre-screened candidates. They are often the initial point of contact with a candidate and are uniquely positioned to sell or “pre-close” candidates before the rest of the recruitment process.
Yet, even the most advanced technology can’t deliver the candidates you need if you are not searching for them in the right way. That’s where Boolean search comes in. The right use of Boolean search strings can help you better identify the right candidates — and hire them quickly.
What is a Boolean search?
A type of search that uses key operator words and symbols to achieve the best results. Boolean is helpful for sourcing because it refines candidate searching by combining or listing items. Think of it as a mathematical equation that helps you find the candidates that fit your search the best. Databases take your search string parameters and scan all content for the exact word or phrase matches, and serve up relevant results that meet specific search criteria.
Boolean is effective if you have a deep understanding of boolean logic and know what types of positions to search for.
Boolean operators
AND narrows a search by telling the database that all keywords used must be found in order for it to appear in your results list. For instance, if you are interested in candidates that are developer and programmer, you can search for developer AND programmer and the results that include both keywords will appear.
OR broadens a search by telling the database that any of the words it connects are acceptable. So, if you type a programmer OR developer, your results will include candidates with either term, but not necessarily both.
NOT narrows your search by telling the database to eliminate all terms that follow it from your search results. Use NOT with caution as good items can be eliminated from the results retrieved.
Brackets () are used to get the most relevant results. They are essential for writing complex search strings. A clause within brackets is given priority over other elements around it.
Quotation marks “” are used if the keyword you’re searching for needs to be considered as a whole word, such as phrases like Human resources as quotations define a number of words as one exact term.
Let’s say that you need a developer that has experience with mobile you will search for:
(developer OR “software engineer”) AND (mobile OR Android OR iOS)
If you need to design your web page but have specific needs, depending on the need you will search for:
(“web designer” OR “UX designer”) NOT “UI designer”
But some positions are very specific like:
(“Quality Assurance” OR QA OR SQA) AND test* AND software AND (“test cases” OR Automated OR scripting) AND agile AND (ruby OR java OR javascript OR sql OR plsql OR pl-sql OR pl/sql OR selenium)
Headhunting (also known as Executive Search) is the process of recruiting individuals to fill senior positions in organizations and corporations. This style of recruiting may be undertaken by an organization’s board of directors, or HR executives, or by external executive recruitment representatives known as headhunters.
Not to be mistaken, headhunters are not exactly recruiters, since recruiters approach a wide audience, headhunters approach a selected few. Recruiters are there to serve both the candidates and clients and headhunters are there only to fulfill their client’s wishes.
In the headhunting industry, specific industry knowledge of a client’s target market is far more important than in traditional recruitment. As such, headhunters are much more likely to specialize in one industry sector or sub-sector.
If an employer has a hard-to-fill vacancy at a high level, or their ideal candidate is currently employed by someone else and may not actively be looking for a change, hiring a headhunter might be the best option.
Start hiring with a new approach to talent acquisition — get your free trial now at ozOn
