Boolean search is your best friend for finding passive candidates, but most recruiters stop at the basics. They search for job titles and wonder why they're seeing the same candidates as everyone else.

Advanced Boolean operators let you find candidates your competitors miss—people with the right skills but different job titles, people transitioning from adjacent industries, and hidden gems who don't fit standard search patterns.

Here's how to actually use Boolean search to win.

The Advanced Operators Most Recruiters Ignore

Proximity Search: Finding Skills That Appear Together

Standard search: "machine learning" AND Python This finds profiles mentioning both terms anywhere on the page.

Proximity search: "machine learning" AROUND(5) Python This finds profiles where "machine learning" appears within 5 words of "Python"—indicating they actually use them together, not just mentioning both somewhere on their profile.

Use this to find candidates with specific skill combinations, not just people who mentioned both skills somewhere.

Wildcard Search: Catching Variations

Standard search: "product manager" This only finds the exact phrase "product manager."

Wildcard search: "product manage*" This finds product manager, product management, product managing—catching different variations of the same concept.

Use wildcards for roles with common variations or skills that can be phrased multiple ways.

NOT Operator: Excluding Overqualified or Wrong Candidates

Standard search: Python developer This returns everyone from junior devs to CTOs.

Exclusion search: Python AND developer NOT (CTO OR "Chief Technology Officer" OR VP OR Director) This filters out senior leadership when you need individual contributors.

Use NOT operators to exclude candidates who are clearly job hunting or overqualified:

Python developer NOT ("open to opportunities" OR "actively looking" OR "available immediately" OR "seeking new role")

Building Skill-Based Searches That Go Beyond Job Titles

Most recruiters search by job title. Problem: great candidates often have non-standard titles, especially at startups or companies with creative naming.

Instead of searching for titles, search for skill clusters:

Finding senior product managers:

(product OR roadmap OR "user stories" OR backlog) AND (strategy OR vision OR "market research") AND (prioritization OR "stakeholder management") AND (agile OR scrum) NOT intern NOT junior

This finds people doing product management work regardless of their actual title.

Finding data engineers (not data analysts):

(ETL OR "data pipeline" OR "data warehouse") AND (Airflow OR Spark OR Kafka OR Databricks) AND (Python OR Scala OR Java) NOT analyst NOT scientist

This separates data engineers from data analysts and data scientists—different roles that often get lumped together.

Location Searches That Actually Work

Finding remote-ready candidates anywhere:

"software engineer" AND (remote OR "distributed team" OR "work from home" OR WFH OR "location independent")

Finding people willing to relocate:

"product designer" AND ("open to relocation" OR "willing to relocate" OR "flexible location")

Targeting specific cities without filtering by current location:

"sales executive" AND (Chicago OR "Chi-town" OR "Windy City") NOT "currently based"

This finds people mentioning Chicago in their profile (maybe they're from there, went to school there, or have connections) without requiring current residence.

Finding Candidates Transitioning Between Industries

The best hires often come from adjacent industries. Here's how to find them:

Finding tech candidates from non-tech backgrounds:

(bootcamp OR "career change" OR transition OR "switching careers") AND (developer OR engineer OR programmer) AND (Python OR JavaScript OR React)

Finding sales candidates from customer success:

("customer success" OR "customer support" OR "account management") AND (quota OR revenue OR "closed deals" OR sales OR "revenue generation")

This finds customer-facing people with sales DNA who might be ready to transition to quota-carrying roles.

Company Targeting Without Being Obvious

Finding candidates from specific competitors:

("software engineer" OR developer OR programmer) AND (Google OR Meta OR Amazon OR Microsoft OR Apple)

Finding candidates from funded startups:

"product manager" AND (Series A OR Series B OR "venture backed" OR "recently raised")

Finding people from companies that are struggling:

developer AND (layoff OR "affected by layoffs" OR "looking for new opportunity" OR "open to work")

Be respectful here—these candidates are going through transitions. Don't be opportunistic; be empathetic.

Education Searches That Find Hidden Talent

Finding candidates from specific programs:

engineer AND ("Stanford CS" OR "MIT EECS" OR "Carnegie Mellon" OR "UC Berkeley CS")

Finding bootcamp grads who are job-ready:

developer AND (bootcamp OR "coding bootcamp" OR "immersive program") AND (portfolio OR projects OR GitHub) NOT student

Finding candidates with relevant certifications:

"cloud architect" AND (AWS OR Azure OR GCP) AND (certified OR certification)

Time-Saving Boolean Templates You Can Customize

Senior Full-Stack Engineer:

(senior OR lead OR principal) AND (full-stack OR "full stack") AND (React OR Vue OR Angular) AND (Node.js OR Python OR Ruby) AND (PostgreSQL OR MySQL OR MongoDB) NOT manager NOT director

Sales Development Representative (SDR):

(SDR OR "sales development" OR "business development rep") AND (Salesforce OR HubSpot OR Outreach) AND (cold calling OR "cold outreach" OR prospecting) AND (quota OR "above quota" OR "quota attainment")

DevOps Engineer:

(DevOps OR "site reliability" OR SRE OR "infrastructure engineer") AND (Kubernetes OR Docker OR Terraform) AND (AWS OR Azure OR GCP) AND (Python OR Go OR Bash) NOT intern

Content Marketing Manager:

("content marketing" OR "content strategy") AND (SEO OR "search engine optimization") AND ("editorial calendar" OR "content calendar") AND (B2B OR SaaS OR enterprise) AND (analytics OR metrics OR "content performance")

Common Boolean Mistakes That Kill Your Search Results

Mistake 1: Too many OR operators

software engineer AND (Python OR Java OR JavaScript OR C++ OR Go OR Ruby OR PHP OR...)

This becomes so broad it's useless. Limit OR operators to 3-5 max.

Mistake 2: Not using parentheses for order of operations

product manager AND remote OR hybrid

This searches for: (product manager AND remote) OR (anyone mentioning hybrid)

Correct:

product manager AND (remote OR hybrid)

Mistake 3: Searching for too many skills at once If you require 15 different skills, you'll find zero candidates. Focus on the 3-5 must-have skills.

Mistake 4: Forgetting to exclude irrelevant results Always exclude terms that bring in wrong candidates:

developer NOT (intern OR student OR "seeking internship")

Quick Reference: Boolean Operators Cheat Sheet

• AND: Both terms must appear (narrows results)
• OR: Either term can appear (broadens results)
• NOT: Excludes term (filters out irrelevant results)
• " ": Exact phrase must appear together
• ( ): Groups terms for order of operations
• *: Wildcard for word variations (manage* = manager, management, managing)

The Bottom Line

Basic Boolean finds who everyone else finds. Advanced Boolean finds who everyone else missed.

Stop searching by job title alone—search by skills, achievements, and signals of what candidates actually do.

Use proximity operators to find real skill combinations. Use NOT operators to filter out wrong candidates. Use parentheses to control search logic.

The candidates you want are out there. You just need better search strings to find them.

Quick wins to implement today:

1. Replace job title searches with skill cluster searches
2. Add NOT operators to exclude overqualified or wrong candidates
3. Use wildcards to catch variations (develop*, manage*, engineer*)
4. Group OR operators with parentheses for clean logic

That's the tip. Use it.

Sources:

• Boolean Search Techniques for Recruiters
• Boolean Search for Passive Candidates