#Boolean search strings for recruiters software#

Please join us for a deep dive into Github sourcing – Keep the search syntax subtleties covered above in mind. The good news is that, in practice, language: and location: “cover a large territory” and are often sufficient for collecting a sizeable promising user list to investigate further. OR is executed first, then AND (same as on Google). However, spaces between quoted words under location: work as a Boolean AND! Example: location:”francisco san.” I haven’t seen this documented. (Nice that they didn’t do anything unusual here 😉 ) Example: “NYC SF”. Phrases in keywords should be in quotation marks. (Interestingly, GitHub user search API takes extra operators followers:, repositories:, and joined:, as well as sort: to run the same functionality). The number format accommodates for “numrange” like 2.5, and these two – >, 1000 repos:>6 language:C. You can also write followers:=<3 or followers:<=3 (but not followers:=3)Ī drop-down on GitHub search allows you to sort results by “best match,” followers, repositories, and join date. The other two operators search for the numbers of: (Incorrect in the docs.) NOT, for a change, is written as minus. With the operators, the Boolean OR is the default. Knowing that any user can only be found by one “main” language is essential. Partial operator arguments will not be found. They are ignored at the beginning and end of the parameter. Special characters under operators for location and language serve as a divider – and give you a Boolean AND – location:NYC*SF. The operator location: does work with accented characters it is important for global Recruiters. If you search for a language that is not on their list, GitHub will ignore it language:lisp language:nonexistent is the same as language:lisp (make sure you do not get caught here.) The note above in the “Keywords” “chapter” means that, when searching by location, you may also want to look for it as a keyword separately – like chicago -location:chicago. The most useful for sourcing are the operators language: and location. Partial words will be found (I haven’t seen this explained.) Example: Keywords support “normal” Boolean logic operators – AND, OR, NOT. Locations and languages will not be found. But they also find things you see on the profile under the image – bio, site, X, and company. The docs say that keywords find users by name and username.

But it is restrictive (same as on search engines or Indeed). If you are just getting started, practice with the advanced search dialog – it will create the right search strings for you. Here is an awesome list of search operators (which GitHub calls “qualifiers”) by my friends Sofia Broberger and Suzanna Frazier: The documentation is helpful, yet it also contains several errors and omissions, which I will outline. But GitHub user search is more of a “Jungle.” Its syntax is incredibly complex.

#Boolean search strings for recruiters software#

Technical Recruiters cannot afford to stay away from GitHub due to its rich data about Software Developers.