HELP..What am i doing wrong

[Mac]

i'm trying to search for software engineers the charleston, NC with C# skills and i'm using the search string below

 

site:linkedin.com "Charleston, NC" (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -inurl:dir -intitle: Software engineer, C#

[Mac]

i also tried the string below;

 

site:linkedin.com implementation C# (software engineer OR "software developer") "Charleston NC" powered

[Mac]

okay, so i found one of my mistakes :) Charleston is in SC NOT NC but i would appreciate any different suggestions

[Melissa Martin]

Hi,

 

The main problem is the specificity of "Charleston, NC" it's too specific.  A better option would be:

 

site:linkedin.com ("North Carolina" OR NC) (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -inurl:dir -intitle: Software engineer, C#

 

On google that brought up about 3500 results - now whether or not they're relevant to the search at least you have some options.  Another option as well is that sometimes other companies call Software Engineers by a different title so you may want to increase your options with the following:

 

site:linkedin.com (Charleston OR "North Carolina" OR NC) (inurl:pub | inurl:in) -inurl:dir -intitle: ("Software Engineer" OR "Software Developer"), C#

 

Hope that helps.

[Melissa Martin]

And when you said Charleston is not in NC I just remembered that too.  That is too funny.  Hey, it happens.

[Mac]

Thank you Melissa

[Mac]

i wonder what am i missing on my search string so it can only point to Charleston, SC as LOCATION.

[Dave Galley]

Mac,

Location-specific search is supported by some engines - either through the normal interface or advanced operators. You could try the "loc:" operator on Bing, for example. Google's "local:" operator is only supported by Google News search, and local.google.com is Google Maps. I'm sure there's something google has in place... perhaps Places? But I don't use this very much, so I'm not an expert with it.

The problem with location search is that if you are doing keyword search (which you generally are via a major search engine), and there is no structured location data element or even common phrasing (in many cases structured location data is not provided or indexed), you can't really pull out JUST people living in a given area. You can search for people who list a given city/state on the resume, but as you know you will find people who worked for a company headquartered in the location, people who went to school in the location, people who ONCE lived and worked in the location but have since moved, and many other types of folks who are not your target.

So, an open web search is not going to let you narrow it down very far, at least not directly searcing to match key words between a resume and your target location. For websites that allow the search engines to index user profile pages, since these do tend to have structured location data elements, you can "x-ray" via search engines to find this information, and the method will depend very much on the site you are searching and how the engines index elements of the site.

Since your strings indicate you are specificly seeking a method for LinkedIn - think about how LinkedIn profiles display location information. Generally speaking, for big metros you have something like "Greater CITYNAME Area", and other cities have the "CITYNAME, NONABBREVIATED-STATENAME Area" format. If you're not sure of a specific area, try using LI's advanced people search for anyone within, say, 35 miles of the ZIP Code. Look at the way the location name is formated in the results.

If you do this for Charleston (29401), you will see it follows the latter method -- "Charleston, South Carolina Area". Sometimes this is actually. not very helpful. Consider my own backyard, the "Greater New York City Area". This label spans about half of NJ, anything in NY remotely close to the city, and parts of southern Connecticut -- it can be frustrating trying to find people in Stamford, CT, and getting tons of results from Jersey City. But I think for Charleston we will have better luck in that regard. :)

So, in your string, replace "Charleston SC" with "Charleston South Carolina" (you could include 'area', but since almost no one spells out the full state name, you will not get too many false positives leaving it out).

-Dave Galley

Mac said:

i wonder what am i missing on my search string so it can only point to Charleston, SC as LOCATION.

[Mac]

Gary-

 

I appreciate the time you took to explain this indepth.

 

Thanks

 

Mac

[Melissa Martin]

Another thing I like to do for google searches is add zip codes and area codes surrounding the areas you're looking at.  A for instance would be:

 

intitle:resume java hibernate (PA OR pennsylvania OR Philadelphia OR 610 OR 484 OR 215 OR "whatever the surrounding zip codes are separated by OR")

 

Typing everything out may be a pain in the butt but I like searching this way.  Better quality.

[Nick Bollar]

Hi Mellisa & Mac,

 

i don't know how to search in google. i'm familiar Boolean strings in job boards.

 

Thanks in advance

Nick

[Mac]

thanks Gary, i appreciate the detailed response.