Boolean Searching of Resumes
The default Resume Search searches within the Regions that you have set in Settings minus the Archived and Deleted candidates.
Perform Zone allows you to create complex searches of words within your candidates documents by using Boolean search commands.
These operators are:
+ – && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ ” ~ * ? :
The following rules apply to the Keyword box in the Candidates Resume search area.
If this proves too tricky, try the Basic Search option on the same screen.
OR
The OR operator finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.
To search for documents that contain either “receptionist” or “assistant” use the query:
Receptionist OR Assistant
If there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the Perform Zone assumes that you mean OR.
The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.
AND
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
To search for documents that contain Receptionist and MYOB use the query:
Receptionist AND MYOB
The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
+
The “+” or required operator requires that the term after the “+” symbol exist somewhere in the document.
To search for documents that must contain “jakarta” and may contain “lucene” use the query:
+jakarta lucene
NOT
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT.
To search for documents that contain “jakarta apache” but not “Apache Lucene” use the query:
“jakarta apache” NOT “Apache Lucene”
The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.
The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term.
For example, the following search will return no results:
NOT “jakarta apache”
“-“
The “-” or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the “-” symbol.
To search for documents that contain “jakarta apache” but not “Apache Lucene” use the query:
“jakarta apache” -“Apache Lucene”
Phrases “”
If you want to find a document with either the phrases “Analyst Programmer” or “Software Developer”, you can enter:
“analyst programmer” or “software developer”
Brackets ()
Brackets or parenthesis can be used to refine your search.
For example, a search for all resumes that contain the word “legal” and either “executive” or “Personal Assistant” could be:
Legal AND (executive OR “personal assistant”)
You could drop the OR as it is defaulted it there is a space between words not in quotations
Wildcards “?”
To perform a single character wildcard search use the “?” symbol.
The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced.
For example, to search for “text” or “test” you can use the search:
te?t
To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the “*” or “%” symbol.
Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:
test* or test%
You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.
te*t or te%t
Note: The only wildcard search that works outside of the resume search is %. Also you cannot use a * ? or % symbol as the first character of a search.
Fuzzy Searches
A fuzzy search can operate like a spell checker and spelling-error corrector.
For example, if a user types “Misissippi” a list of hits is returned along with Mississippi.
To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, “~”, symbol at the end of a Single word Term.
For example to search for a term similar in spelling to “roam” use the fuzzy search:
roam~
This search will find terms like foam and roams.
You can rate the degree of “fuzzyness” you’d like to search on.
The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched.
For example:
roam~0.8
The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.
Words within a specific distance of each other
Perform Zone supports finding words are a within a specific distance away.
To do a proximity search use the tilde, “~”, symbol at the end of a Phrase.
For example to search for a “apache” and “jakarta” within 10 words of each other in a document use the search:
“jakarta apache”~10
Note: there is no space between the “~” and the 10
Boosting a Term
Perform Zone provides the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found.
To boost a term use the caret, “^”, symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching.
The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.
Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term.
For example, if you are searching for jakarta apache and you want the term “jakarta” to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term.
You would type:
jakarta^4 apache
This will make documents with the term jakarta appear more relevant.
You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:
“jakarta apache”^4 “Apache Lucene”
By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)