Even if you're not an expert, Boolean is a powerful tool to conduct even the simplest searches. This page provides Boolean basics, as well as other linked articles that will give you more advanced Boolean search commands.
Boolean Basics
The grid below displays many of the simplest and most common Boolean operators. These operators give you full control of what results are returned from your search.
Search | Action | Example | Result |
AND | Narrows your search by retrieving mentions where all search terms are present. | "java" AND “python” | Any result where "java" and “python” are both included within the profile. |
OR | Expands your search to retrieve mentions containing at least one search term. | java OR python | Either the term before or the term after “OR” must appear in the results. |
NOT | Excludes mentions containing an unwanted term. | java NOT python | Any result where “python” does not appear in a profile. |
AND/OR | Use this when you need a keyword to pull results alongside one or more other keywords. | software engineer AND (java OR python) | Any result where “software engineer” and either “java” or “python” are present. |
ASTERISK | Use this when you are looking for one or more different keywords in a document. | software eng* | Matches results that have the keywords software engineer, software engineering, software engine, etc. |
Refining Boolean Search Results
To further refine and enhance your search results, there are additional Boolean syntaxes you can use:
Quotation Marks " ": Use these for exact phrases. For example, searching "JavaScript" ensures results contain this exact phrase.
Parentheses ( ): These are used to group alternative terms together. For example, (java OR python) groups these terms as one unit in the search.
Parentheses are also the secret sauce in great Boolean search results. As your queries get longer, parentheses are as necessary to the structure of your search as the location of your Boolean operators. For example, if your query looks like this: java AND (web development OR multithreading OR databases) NOT "CI/CD" OR "Python" OR "memory manag*", you have not officially grouped the ending keywords together to be excluded, so you will pull in irrelevant results. Instead, make sure your query looks like this: java AND (web development OR multithreading OR databases) NOT ("CI/CD" OR "Python" OR "memory manage*")
Asterisk (*): This acts as a wildcard. It's useful for capturing various forms of a word. For example, "memory manag*" will find both singular and plural forms as well as variations in the ending, like "memory management" and "memory managing." Loxo only supports the wildcard as a suffix, not a prefix.
Advanced Boolean Operators
Emphasize Specific Words in Your Search
You can add extra emphasis on certain searches by using the carrot ^ symbol. For example, if I am looking for a Ruby and Java developer but Ruby is 5 times more important, I can notate that as follows:
"java developer" AND "ruby"^5
Search a Root or Stem of a word
You can use an asterisk * to find the root/stem of a word. The asterisk can be used on most resume databases and non-Internet search engines as a root word/stem/truncation search. In other words, the search engine will return and highlight any word that begins with the root/stem of the word truncated by the asterisk.
For example:
admin*
will return: administrator, administration, administer, administered, etc.
The asterisk is a major time saver because it saves you from creating long OR statements and having to think of every way a particular word can be expressed.
Search for Words or Phrases that are not Exact Matches
Use the ~ symbol to look for phrases that are not exact matches. For example, let's say you are looking for people who have won some type of Sales Award. Typically, a sales award isn't going to be called a sales award on a resume. So you can search for a sales award by telling the system to find results that have the words "sales" and "award" a specific distance from each other (in the below example - 5 words apart). So you might find the "Top Regional Sales of Automotive and Sales Design Award" and the "The John Smith Sales Winner" award, etc. Your search string would be:
"sales award" ~5