Booleans for a Senior Tax or Audit Lead/Manager
One of my blog readers recently reached out to me and asked me for help with a search for a Senior Tax or Audit Lead/Manager in a location that’s not in the most populated area of the United States (to put it nicely). They informed me they did not have access to any of the major job boards, but they did have an internal resume database that supported basic Boolean logic queries.
I advised the reader that their database may simply not have a large number of people from the particular area in it – internal databases can only have in them what others have put in them.
I was not provided a full job description, so with only a title to work with, here’s my first pass at a search for the internal database:
(”Tax Manager” or “Manager of Tax” or “Audit Manager” or “Audit Lead”) and (”certified public” or CPA or “C.P.A”) and (tax* or audit*)
I tested that simple search on several databases I have access to and I found that it returns highly relevant results. That search works on all major job boards as well.
For those interested in extended Boolean - if you have access to a database that enables configurable proximity, you could avoid the limitations of exact title searching with something like this:
(Tax* or Audit*) w/5 (Manager or Lead or Director or Senior) and (”certified public” or CPA or “C.P.A”) and (tax* or audit*)
That search will ONLY return results of candidates that mention any variation of tax or audit within 5 words of (Manager or Lead or Director or Senior) – and of those words are mentioned in such close proximity, they are most likely a title or a statement of responsibility. This kind of search allows us to break free of trying to think of every possible title companies and candidates can come up with, while keeping the semantic relevance high.
Moving back to basic Boolean, for subsequent searches, I also made note of these additional, broader titles:
(”Sr. Tax” or “Senior Tax” or “Sr. Audit” or “Senior Audit” or “Lead Audit” or “Lead Auditor” or “Senior Auditor”)
I then recommended they could try going higher in the food chain and target Directors to network and referral recruit:
(”Director of Tax” or “Tax Director” or “Audit Director” or “Director of Audit”) and (”certified public” or CPA or “C.P.A”) and (tax* or audit*)
And here’s a Big 4 search to add and try, if desired:
(”big 4″ or “big 5″ or deloitte or Andersen or Accenture or PWC or KPMG or coopers or “price waterhouse” or pricewaterhouse* or Ernst* or “E&Y” or capgemini or bearingpoint or “bearing point” or “cap gemini”)
Then I moved on to LinkedIn. I found a zip code for the location and used that in LinkedIn to find what LinkedIn calls that particular location. I won’t share the specific location in order to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the search.
So I took a crack at “x-raying” into LinkedIn via Google:
Search #1
site:linkedin.com “XXXX, XXXX Area” (”Tax Manager” | “Manager of Tax” | “Audit Manager” | “Audit Lead”) (”certified public” | CPA | “C.P.A”) (~tax | ~audit) -inurl:jobid -inurl:find -intitle:directory -inurl:answers -~inurl:updates
That search returned 0 results in the target area. However, it returned 649 in all of LinkedIn – so the search worked well – it appears that the location is the limiting factor.
Search #2 – going looser on title
site:linkedin.com “XXXX, XXXX Area” (manager | lead | senior | Sr.) (”certified public” | CPA | “C.P.A”) (~tax | ~audit) -inurl:jobid -inurl:find -intitle:directory -inurl:answers -~inurl:updates
Results: 0 in the target area, however, I did find 4770 in all of LinkedIn. Again, the search is good, the location has slim pickings.
Search #3 – super loose
site:linkedin.com “XXXX, XXXX Area” (”certified public” | CPA | “C.P.A”) (~tax | ~audit) -inurl:jobid -inurl:find -intitle:directory -inurl:answers -~inurl:updates
Results: 2 people in the target area. Neither was a match -but one could definitely know people who are given their role. Opening up the search up to the entire nation yields over 10,000 results in all of LinkedIn.
I also checked my own LinkedIn network with a really loose search just for CPA’s with some mention of audit or tax for the target location. I have over 6000 first degree connections, and I only pulled 3 people in the target location, 2 of the same from Search #3, and the other was not a match.
Just out of curiosity, I also ran a search just to see how many total people were in LinkedIn that live in the target area. There’s over 10,000 – it’s just that there aren’t many CPA types that live there, let alone Senior Tax/Audit Leads or Managers.
I also checked for resumes on the Internet and came up with very few and no decent matches in the target area. That wasn’t too surprising – I typically don’t find many finance and accounting professionals with resumes on the Internet.
It was a worthy exercise – I’m hoping that the reader has some people in their internal database. If not, cold calling and network recruiting may in fact be the only productive option given the location challenge.
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