This printable guide was produced to complement the deskside cheat sheets. The guide goes into far more detail on x-ray searching, including several real life examples.

1. X-RAY SEARCHING – FUNDAMENTALS FOR RECRUITERS
X-RAY SEARCHING OVERVIEW
X-ray searching enables users to instruct internet
search engines to search specific domains or
even pages within a domain using Query
Modifiers. Let’s be clear most tech recruiters are
already using X-ray but those outside of tech
quite possibly aren’t. X-ray searching is
incredibly helpful but on sites like Linkedin it is
always best to start there and use X-ray to fill in
the blanks. If you are working in a new industry
or location then building your network is crucial, but whilst you do that X-ray can provide a
great work around.
USING X-RAY FOR RECRUITMENT
For recruiters X-ray searching can provide several key benefits, including:
 Reducing the amount of time spent searching irrelevant data
 Finding data that may not be available once logged into a site
 Searching sites that don’t have in-built search tools
 Increasing results
 Accessing additional search filters
GOOGLE VS EVERYTHING ELSE
There are lots of different search engines available but in reality users generally either use
Microsoft Bing or Google. Whilst X-ray experts all have their opinions on which is best,
most people use Google. The difference in results in marginal, so we have focused on this
Google for the purposes of this guide.
Unique search parameters that are specific to Google:
 32 search term limit
 1000 search results limit
SEARCH QUERY MODIFIERS
There are three core Search Query Modifiers, link, related and site, whichever you are using
always ensure that the URL is next to the Modifier not separated by a space:
 site:forbes.com ✔
 site: forbes.com X
 link: Used to show all websites that actively link into a website. For recruiters it doesn’t
offer much value.
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2.  related: This Modifier tells Google to find sites that is believes are similar to the original
domain. It is a powerful Modifier that can be very helpful for recruiters starting out in a
new industry or location. The only proviso is that a related search definitely isn’t
exhaustive, often it only works on larger sites and emits obvious results.
EXAMPLE - related:ere.net
Results that include: soucecon.com, fistfuloftalent.com, recruiter.com, onrec.com,
recruitmentblogs.com
 site: For recruiters this Modifier is the most powerful of the three, it targets the search
engine on a specific URL or Top Level Domain.
EXAMPLE 1 - site:linkedin.com
Results will be limited to those contained within the linkedin.com URL
EXAMPLE 2 - site:.uk
Results will be limited to all websites that end in the .uk top level operator, generally
sites from the United Kingdom
SUPPLEMENTARY MODIFIERS
Google filters results in a number of different ways, including relevance, popularity and in-bound
links. In general it can be assumed that it prioritises keywords in the URL first, then
title, then text. To target results from one of these, Supplementary Modifiers are used.
These three Modifiers can be used independently but for recruiters they are more powerful
if used in conjunction with the Site Modifier.
 Inurl: Searches for a word that is contained within the webpages URL.
EXAMPLE 1 - site:linkedin.com inurl:pub OR inurl:in
Will narrow the search to show results that are from linkedin.com but also contain pub
or in within the URL. One or other of [pub] and [in] are in the URL link when looking at a
people profile from Google, removing results from other areas of the site such as jobs
and company pages.
EXAMPLE 2 - site:linkedin.com –inurldir –inurltitle –inurljobs –inurljobs2
This search will remove all references to [job], [jobs2], [title] and [dir] within the URL, all
of which generally don’t contain individual profiles.
 intitle: searches for a specific word within the title of the webpage. It can be used to find
resumes but is not overly relevant for recruiters unless you are searching for a specific
document or blog, in which case it can be useful.
EXAMPLE - intitle:resume -job -jobs -example -template -how Sydney java
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3. This is a good search to look for resumes online, it would produce results that contain
resume Sydney and java but removes terms that could relate to job advertisements.
 intext: similar to intitle, instead focusing on the text within the webpage
PRACTICAL RECRUITER SEARCHES
The searches below are the recommended recruiter basics, fields in blue can be altered to
adjust the search results plus you can further modify the strings if you wish to add or
remove specific words.
Finding Contact Details
For any recruiters finding the candidate is only stage one, it is then important to make
contact with the potential candidate. Online media is a goldmine of publically available
contact details and X-ray searching is a great tool for finding them. It should be noted that
it is nearly always quickest to speak with reception and ask to be put through to that
person or to ask for a contact number rather than searching. If this doesn’t work then try
the following:
 site:[url] (“Meet The Team” OR About)
EXAMPLE - site:litmus.com (“Meet The Team” OR About)
 site:[URL] [Full Name]
EXAMPLE site:litmus.com "David Smalley"
 (email * @URL)
 EXAMPLE (email * @dell.com)
 Use Rapportive – Watch this video from distilled.net for more information
Facebook
Facebook is very hard to search using X-ray techniques, part of the problem is that the
available data is very shallow. The only professional options available are job title,
employer and location. With the introduction of Graph Search it is now far easier to search
Facebook internally.
Twitter
Twitter search and advanced search only search tweet contents. Most sourcing experts
agree that Followerwonk is the best way to search Twitter Bios but according to Boolean
Expert Glenn Cathy X-ray produces slightly more results, his search stream is below:
 site:twitter.com tweets -inurl:(search|favorites|status|statuses|jobs) -
intitle:(job|jobs) -recruiter -HR -careers –job [Location] [Key Skill] -[Unwanted Skill]
 EXAMPLE - site:twitter.com -inurl:(search|favorites|status|statuses|jobs) -
intitle:(job|jobs) -recruiter -HR -careers "java" "auckland"-.net
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4. Google+
 site:plus.google.com [Job Title] "lives * [Location]” inurl:about
 EXAMPLE - site:plus.google.com "software+developer" "lives * auckland" inurl:about
Linkedin
When searching Linkedin, it is helpful to put the country code at the beginning of the
search stream, limiting results to those from that specific country.
 92% of Linkedin Profiles are publicly visible, so can therefore be found using X-ray
Search.
 X-ray searches show a range of information, but at a minimum have to show the
person’s name, industry, location and number of recommendations
To find someone’s full name using X-ray search based on their job title and first name:
 site:nz.linkedin.com -inurl:dir -inurl:title -inurl:jobs2 [First Name] [Job Title]
 EXAMPLE - site:nz.linkedin.com -inurl:dir -inurl:title -inurl:jobs2 matthew
"construction project manager"
To find people with a specific job title, working in a defined industry and location
 site:uk.linkedin.com -inurl:dir -inurl:title -inurl:jobs2 [Industry] [Job Title] [Location]
 EXAMPLE - site:uk.linkedin.com -inurl:dir -inurl:title -inurl:jobs2 construction “Project
Manager” London
To find someone with a specific current job title
 site:linkedin.com “current * [Job Title]”
 EXAMPLE - site:au.linkedin.com “current * Project Manager”
Linked Premium account holders are able to search profiles by their join or registration
date. To do this from Google run your X-ray search and then use Google Search Tools to
select the most recently amended or added profiles.
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5. Others
StackOverFlow
 site:stackoverflow.com/users [Key Skill] [Location] intext:"website * (com|net|me)"-
"0 reputation"
 EXAMPLE - site:stackoverflow.com/users java Auckland intext:"website *
(com|net|me)"-"0 reputation"
GitHub
 site:github.com "joined on"-intitle:”at master" -inurl:tab -inurl:jobs. -inurl:articles java
auckland
 EXAMPLE - site:github.com "joined on"-intitle:"at master" -inurl:tab -inurl:jobs. -
inurl:articles java auckland
FOR AGENCY RECRUITERS
Searching Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
Rather than going into each companies ATS system, you can simply search across all
organisations that use one specific ATS or even multiple systems.
 site:[URL] [Job Title] [Keywords]
 EXAMPLE 1 - site:taleo.net intitle:careers Estimator “New York”
 EXAMPLE 2 - site:icims.com/jobs "Project Manager" Houston
Searching for Jobs on Careers Pages
Job aggregators such as Indeed and SimplyHired have made searching the internet for
jobs a relatively easy process. If you can’t find what you are looking for this search string
could provide a few additional results.
 EXAMPLE - site: inurl:careers inurl:"project manager" -inurl:indeed -inurl:linkedin -
inurl:seek Software Sydney
OTHER ADVICE
If X-ray searching still goes over your head you could try the Google Advanced Search
function or this great X-ray Search Boolean Generator from Recruitin
Good luck and please feel free to contact us with any questions.
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Image Credit - Google