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Build a Boolean search string without the bracket errors

One missing quote or bracket and a search returns the wrong profiles, or none at all. List the job titles, the skills a candidate must have, the ones where any will do, and what to leave out. You get a clean Boolean string plus Google X-ray versions for LinkedIn and GitHub, ready to copy.

Separate with commas or new lines.

Every term here has to appear.

Alternatives: one of them is enough.

Profiles with these words are left out.

Boolean string · LinkedIn search, job boards, applicant databases

Google X-ray · public LinkedIn profiles
Google X-ray · GitHub
How the strings are built
  • Titles and good-to-have skills each become a bracketed group joined by OR: any one of them matches.
  • Must-have terms are joined with AND: all of them have to appear.
  • Exclusions follow NOT in the Boolean string and get a minus sign in the Google versions, because Google does not read NOT.
  • Any term with a space or a symbol (“machine learning”, “C++”, “Node.js”) is put in quotes so it is searched as one phrase. Duplicates are dropped.
  • The X-ray strings start with site:linkedin.com/in or site:github.com, which limits Google to public pages of that site. The location is added there as a quoted phrase.
The GitHub string leaves the job titles out, because GitHub profiles rarely state one, and its results include repositories as well as people. Search engines cut long queries, so the word count under each X-ray string warns you past 32 words. The tool only builds text; it does not run searches or collect profiles.
Questions about the boolean search builder
What is a Boolean search string?
It is a search query that combines keywords with the operators AND, OR and NOT, with quotes for exact phrases and brackets for grouping. Recruiters use it to describe a candidate profile precisely to a search engine or a candidate database.
What is an X-ray search?
It is a search engine query limited to one website with the site: operator, for example site:linkedin.com/in to search public LinkedIn profiles through Google. It finds only pages that are public and that the search engine has indexed.
Why does my search return too few or too many results?
Too few usually means too many AND terms: move some skills to the good-to-have list. Too many means the string is loose: add a must-have skill, a location or an exclusion. Change one thing at a time so you can see what it does.
Do AND, OR and NOT have to be in capital letters?
Yes on most platforms, including LinkedIn search and Google’s OR. In lower case they are read as ordinary words. Google does not use NOT at all: it excludes a word with a minus sign in front of it, which is how the X-ray strings here are written.
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