Google and LinkedIn Search for a Bioinformatics Executive
I came across a discussion in Irinia Shamaeva’s LinkedIn Boolean Strings group and found a search string example for a senior executive of bioinformatics in the New Haven, CT area.
I actually tried the original search suggestion, using Google, and got 0 results:
(filetype:doc OR filetype:wpd OR filetype:wps OR filetype:pdf OR filetype:rtf OR filetype:txt) AND (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) AND 065* AND director OR VP OR “Vice President” AND bioinformatics
So I simplified it and added the necessary parentheses that were missing around the titles:
(filetype:doc | filetype:wpd | filetype:wps | filetype:pdf | filetype:rtf | filetype:txt) (intitle:resume | inurl:resume) 065* (director | VP | “Vice President”) bioinformatics
Still got 0 results.
The issue is the 065* – Google does not recognize the asterisk as most resume databases do, which is as a root-word operator. Google sees the asterisk as a single word wildcard.
So I decided to go for a zip code range:
30 miles from 06517 in New Haven (although 30 miles dips a little into NY) yields a zip code numrange of 06010 to 06890, from low to high.
(filetype:doc | filetype:wpd | filetype:wps | filetype:pdf | filetype:rtf | filetype:txt) (intitle:resume | inurl:resume) 06010..06890 (director | VP | “Vice President”) bioinformatics
This yielded 41 results, but they are sloppy with false positives. The issue is that Google (and most search engines) no not recognize the leading “0” in the number range, so you will get tons of false positives in the number range of 6010 – 6890, such as in the last 4 digits of non-local resumes.
So then I decided to try to go for area codes:
(filetype:doc | filetype:wpd | filetype:wps | filetype:pdf | filetype:rtf | filetype:txt) (intitle:resume | inurl:resume) (203 | 860) CT (director | VP | “Vice President”) bioinformatics
That yielded 14 tighter results, and there is not a single job posting among them, so no need to use -~job and such.
Let’s check out LinkedIn via Google:
site:linkedin.com (director | VP | “Vice President”) bioinformatics “Hartford, Connecticut area”-intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:answers
3 results (4 results, 1 duplicate). Nothing impressive here.
These numbers seem quite low to me, and my instincts are telling me that not everyone will explicitly mention the term “bioinformatics” in their profile or resume, even if they have experience with it. One of the best practices of successful Talent Mining is simply taking a moment to think, as well as to perform some research to figure out if every candidate would necessarily mention any specific term, skill, or title mentioned in a job description or by a hiring manager. The people that most recruiting and staffing professionals seek to hire are not professional resume writers – they often simply forget to explicitly mention everything they do or have done, and often do not describe and label their experience in the ways that we assume they “should.” The operative word being assume. And so a great many candidates are never even seen in lying in the depths of the Hidden Talent Pools of candidates you can’t find because you unknowingly used search strings that simply make it impossible to find them.
But they are there.
So how do you find people with specific experience that you need, such as senior managers/executives with bioinformatics experience who do not explicitly say “bioinformatics” in their profiles or resumes?
I will address this specific challenge in a future post. It’s already in the works. 
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