What is Boolean Search?

Boolean search combines keywords with the operators AND, OR, and NOT, plus quotation marks and parentheses, to make a database return exactly what you mean. Quotation marks lock a phrase ("product manager"), OR widens the net to alternatives (developer OR engineer), NOT excludes noise, and parentheses group the logic so it evaluates in the right order. LinkedIn's people search supports these operators, and recruiters lean on them daily to source candidates, which gives the technique two practical uses for you. First, you can run the same searches recruiters run, to find alumni, hiring managers, or peers at target companies. Second, you can reverse-engineer how you get found: if your profile never contains the phrase a recruiter would put in quotes, you are invisible to that search no matter how qualified you are. Job boards and ATS databases accept similar syntax with small variations. Build and test strings with the boolean search tool instead of guessing at operator behavior.