Targeting GPA’s with Boolean Search Strings
Have you ever wanted or needed to be able to search for people that have a grade point average in a specific range? Searching for the term “laude” will certainly pull results of any person who specifically makes mention of graduating cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude, but not everyone with a decent GPA graduates with one of those statuses.
Beyond searching for “laude,” you CAN create Boolean search strings to target the actual GPAs. Any search engine that supports proximity searching gives you the power to target numeric GPA values.
Let’s first take a look at an Internet search engine everyone has access to: EXALEAD
Here is a basic search example:
(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) AND “engineer” AND (BS OR BA OR Bachelor* OR “B.A.” OR “B.S.”) AND (GPA OR “G.P.A.” OR “grade point”) NEAR (3* OR “4.0″) AND NOT sample*
As you can see, most of the results are resumes of people who have a GPA over 3.0.
LINKEDIN VIA EXALEAD
site:linkedin.com AND “developer” AND (GPA OR “G.P.A.” OR “grade point”) NEAR (3* OR “4.0″) AND NOT intitle:directory
Unfortunately, Exalead does not handle searching around punctuation very well, so trying to run something like this: (GPA OR “G.P.A.” OR “grade point”) NEAR (3.2* OR 3.3* OR 3.4*…) does not work.
MONSTER
Monster is the only major online job board resume database to support proximity search through the NEAR operator. Unlike Exalead, Monster’s search engine can handle searching around punctuation, so we can take the search use used on Exalead a step further:
Accountant and (GPA or “G.P.A.” or “grade point”) NEAR (3.2* or 3.3* or 3.4* or 3.5* or 3.6* or 3.7* or 3.8* or 3.9* or “4.0″)
One thing you will find when you try this trick on Monster is that you will also see all manner of non-GPA numbers highlighted throughout the resume – however, each resume will always be a specific GPA mentioned that meets your search criteria.
Happy GPA hunting!
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