Boolean Searches for Sales People on LinkedIn and More

Posted at December 5, 2008
While surfing through the discussions in the Boolean Strings Group on LinkedIn, I stumbled across someone asking for search advice on how to create effective Boolean search strings to find sales professionals and I offered some suggestions – which I will expand upon here, covering resume databases as well as leveraging LinkedIn via Google using the site: command.

Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, Internal Resume Database

Here is a “core” title-based search that can be used on any resume database that recognizes standard Boolean:

(sales or “account executive” or “account coordinator” or sales rep* or “outside sales” or “inside sales” or “sales consultant” or “business development” or “account development” or “sales executive” or “sales associate” or “account manager”)

In addition to the title-based search, you can add activity-related keywords to experiment and refine results:

(sell or sold or phone or call or called or calls or client* or customer* or clos* or cold or business or lead or leads or prospect*)

To further refine your results, you could add achievement-related keywords, such as:

(increased or lead or led or top or highest or most or exceeded or quota*)

You could add them all together and run this Boolean search string:

(sales or “account executive” or “account coordinator” or sales rep* or “outside sales” or “inside sales” or “sales consultant” or “business development” or “account development” or “sales executive” or “sales associate” or “account manager”) and (sell or sold or phone or call or called or calls or client* or customer* or clos* or cold or business or lead or leads or prospect*) and (increased or lead or led or top or highest or most or exceeded or quota*)

That’s 459 characters with spaces – it will fit and run on Monster and most ATS’s.

Here’s an example of a result from an online job board:

LinkedIn via Google

Moving on to LinkedIn, we could start with a search like this one using Google, targeting Houston:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates

That gives you nearly 18,000 results.

You can further narrow your results by searching for specific industries.

For example – targeting the Oil & Energy Industry:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” “Oil & Energy” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That narrows it down to 688 results.

You could also try and eliminate managers and directors, like this:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” -”manager” -”director” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That search produces 767 results. Here is a sample:

Coupling Oil & Energy and non-managers/directors into one search:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” “Oil & Energy” -”manager” -”director” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That search yields a manageable 121 results.

Anyone need any sales professionals?

Internet Sourcing, Job Boards, LinkedIn, Resume Sourcing

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