big5hire’s Google search is not the greatest. If you need another way to do that I do like referyes.com/sourcer however the number of searches you can do there is limited, while big5hire is unlimited.

Things to try
1. use the NOT operator, since big5hire is a custom google search you can write this like this: Python Unix -jobs -submit
This did not work for me as my search got the same results on big5hire as on Google, a mess of tutorials.

2. However click on “Resumes in PDF” or “Resumes in Doc” and it brings up pages and pages of resumes.

3. Put (resume |CV) in front of every big5hire search you do. Or (intitle:resume | inurl:resume). This approach has pros and cons.

Limitations: a. not a one stop shop, it will not catch the html resumes which using Google will
b. The craigslist search relies on Google to find(spider) the resume on craigslist before you can find it, which does not happen instantly. If you prefer a local candidate using the craigslist’s search is going to be more complete.

I second the recommendation of the now famous Boolean Black Belt blog. Glen Cathey is great! He gives precise, detailed, easy-to-read advice and covers a lot of ground in his posts.

A few things in response to the article.

Boolean logic is implemented by pretty much all online sources. The search *syntax*, however, differs between them. Tim, you are right that Google wouldn’t recognize the NOT operator. Google does recognize the NOT logic though; one just needs to use “-” (minus) instead of NOT. Knowing about the syntax differences between various sites makes a BIG difference for a sourcer. For those who are in doubt about syntax, using the *advanced search dialog* helps. As an example, if you play with the advanced dialog on Google you will notice a few things: AND is implied; parenthesis are not needed in most cases; NOT must be written as the minus; quotation marks are not required around single words.

Custom search engines like the big5hire that search resumes on the web, are, of course, nice tools. There is a good number of other “preset” web searches similar to big5hire, that are either free or paid. If you know the search syntax you can find lots of resumes on Google itself, or can even build a custom engine of your own. Saying that the web is the largest CV database may be a bit misleading for a beginner though. No web search will return over 1,000 results at a time; this is true of custom search engines as well. In this sense, strangely, your resume database (if it’s large) may return more results than a search on the web in “one shot”. To dig out more resumes out of web searching you will need to manipulate your strings, for example, add or remove keywords, based on the results. Parsing large numbers of resumes found on the web is another critical skill. There are tools to help with that.

From what I have seen, the hardest part of sourcing on the web is, for most, the specific search operators and special characters that are used along with the Boolean logic. To search productively, one needs to learn to use a few of them, perhaps 3 or 4 “of each” on Google. The Boolean logic covered in the article is the basis of any search, of course.

In addition to the search composition, we also generate a query cloud for you based on your search terms to help identify other required or optional terms that you might not have otherwise thought of.

It is really easy to use, and the results are amazing.

One thing that BrightMove does, that not all other search engines do, is weighting of the optional terms. All things being equal, and optional term is just that. However, we place more importance on the first optional term than the last optional term.

For example.

(Java AND “Software Design”) AND (“Oracle 10g” OR “Oracle 9i”)

In this example, 2 candidates with Java and “Software Design” could be returned. But the one with “Oracle 10g” would score better and be returned higher becuase “Oracle 10g” is before “Oracle 9i”, even though they are optional.

This give you the power to not limit your search too much, while bubbling the best resumes to the top of your results.

Great Article! I would love for recruiters to know there is a great boolean tool out there for internal and external searching. We have been told it is the best on the market.

http://referyes.com/source_people.htm

This tool automates Boolean search strings to find
resumes and candidate profiles on top social networks and search engines.