Using Boolean to target lower-level management candidates in manufacturing or production environments

[Brian Hatfield]

Hello All -

New member and my first discussion topic (exciting, huh!?)

This week, I'll be working with a novice Recruitment team to help create search strings for commonly filled positions that vary "mostly" by geography only.  The strings should target lower-level managers in heavy industrial and manufacturing environments.  The positions are scattered throughout the US and Canada and mostly in rural environments where candidates tend to spend less time on career sites, job boards and are not always the most internet savvy.

So, if any of you detective's out there have any tips, tricks, tools or know how to help better educate me and help some eager, new Recruiters - I'd welcome the opportunity to dialog with you.

Respectfully,

Brian.

[Dave Galley]

Brian,

May be a little late to help you this week, but good search comes down to a few things:

1) Syntax - the 'easy' part. Generally speaking, any search function (general search engine, or built-in search for a site or DB) is likely to have documentation. Some are documented well, some poorly, but the info is mostly out there. Hard to give suggestions w/o specifics on what you're using, and there are too many search tools to just include them all in a reply like this.

2) Choosing keywords - what you put in between the operators, really drives the results you get. Choosing the best search term to surface the desired results is what it's all about - the operators just place some limits/filter out junk results.

3) Approach to research (methodology) - Defines how you go about looking, where you start, how you spend  you time. Defining key terms, relevant companies/people/industries/locations, etc. Really the most important part of the process.

Many times people post help requests for syntax, but actually need help on keywords/methodology without even realizing it.

The interesting thing about lack of tech savvy / usage of job sites is that it is not a phenomenon limited to the areas you speak of. It is more noticeable there due to lower population - higher population concentration leads to more hits on job boards, not because of the awareness of the people in the area but because of more people. Not the only factor, some areas do have higher use rates of online job search tools overall, or sometimes specific sites (Jobing.com comes to mind as a highly regional resource), but the biggest one in general.

You want supervisors / line managers of manufacturing companies. Would start with developing target lists of companies similar to your client(s). Lots of resources for this (some paid, some not). If relatively small companies, consider higher titles ("plant manager" of a 40 person company may be comparable to "production manager" in a 200 person company, etc). Similar products (outputs), similar raw material requirements (inputs), similar equipment (process) - any could help, as people choose the strangest things to highlight in their resumes while leaving important things completely off.

Of course, if the people you are looking for are not online, then looking for them online is not a productive use of time. Need to take the search offline at that point.

-Dave Galley