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Using Boolean Search to search files for information
Using Boolean Search to search files for information

Curating your search results to find the best information you need

Amogh Balikai avatar
Written by Amogh Balikai
Updated over 7 months ago

Boolean search is a powerful tool used in information retrieval to refine and narrow down search results by employing logical operators such as AND, OR, and NOT. This method enables users to formulate complex queries, specifying exactly what they're looking for and excluding what they're not interested in.

Boolean search is enabled for files added on the Candidates and Contacts profile and can be accessed via our Advanced Search Page. Below are the different elements that we support:

Different Elements of Boolean Search

The Boolean Search in Recruiterflow offers you five different operators to accurately filter the search results you desire. Here are the five elements:

  1. Quoted searches [””]: Quoted search helps you search for the exact phrase inside the file. So say if you want to search for the phrase Sales Manager inside your files you should write it like "Sales Manager". If you use a phrase without a quotation mark it will search for any of the words in the phrase across files.

  2. NOT searches: The NOT operator can be used to eliminate any results that have the keyword mentioned after the operator.
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    For example, when you search for manager, you will be shown results that have manager listed on them. This could include product manager, program manager, marketing manager, etc. However if you do not wish to have the results around marketing manager you can simply use the search phrase - manager NOT marketing.


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  3. OR searches: The OR operator helps you broaden your search results by including results that either have one or more search phrases or words.
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    For example, when you search for engineer OR developer, you will be shown results that have either engineer or developer listed in them.

  4. AND searches: AND searches limit your search results by curating them to include every term you searched for.

    For example, if you are looking for people having skills in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can use the search phrase - HTML AND CSS AND JavaScript.

  5. Parenthetical searches [()]: You can use Parenthetical searches if you have a complicated search term that combines multiple terms. For example, when you use the search term - “Director” NOT (associate OR senior), the results will be curated to files having just director and do not include the terms associate and senior.
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Also, when you are using a complex search term involving multiple boolean operators, the precedence is as follows:

  1. Quotes [""]

  2. Parentheses [()]

  3. NOT

  4. OR

  5. AND

You can watch the video below to get a better understanding of how these operators work:

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