A boolean search string generator turns a role, its must-have skills and a location into search strings you can paste straight into LinkedIn Recruiter, Google X-Ray or GitHub. Enter the role, add the skills that actually matter, and get strings back in seconds. Free, no signup.
Boolean search combines keywords with the operators AND, OR and NOT, plus quotes for exact phrases and parentheses for grouping, so a search returns the candidates who match your real requirements instead of everyone who used a buzzword. "Site:linkedin.com/in" turns a normal Google search into an X-ray of public LinkedIn profiles.
Enter the job title, the three to five skills a candidate genuinely cannot do the job without, and the location or remote policy. The generator writes the string with synonyms for the title (a "software engineer" is also a "software developer" and a "backend engineer"), groups them correctly, and excludes the terms that pull in recruiters and job ads rather than candidates.
Most sourcing tools search on your behalf, but the moment you need a candidate profile nobody else is contacting, a hand-built string on LinkedIn or GitHub finds people no shortlist surfaced. Boolean is also how you audit a search: every term is visible, so you can see exactly why a candidate matched.
Stacking too many ANDs until only three people on earth qualify. Forgetting quotes, so "product manager" matches any profile containing both words anywhere. Leaving out title synonyms. Searching skills the role does not actually require, which is how a strong candidate gets filtered out for missing a keyword.
A string finds people; it does not tell you which of them can do the work. AI sourcing takes a plain-English brief instead of a string and returns verified contact details, and live AI interviews assess the shortlist before your team spends an hour on anyone.
Related: Resume screening criteria builder · AI job description generator · Boolean search for recruiters: the complete guide