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Table of Contents

General Search Behavior Connectors Symbols Boolean Using AND Using AND NOT Using OR Using * or ? (Wildcards)

Using (...) (parentheses) NEAR Searching PARAGRAPH Searching PHRASE Searching SENTENCE Searching Other Special Function Operators Common Errors

General Search Behavior	^ Table of Contents
The search engine makes the following assumptions: Documents are ranked based on the number of times a keyword appears in the search results. Keywords are searched, along with the conjugations of a word, ie. searching on FILM will default return, FILM, FILMED, FILMING etc.  Case is ignored.

Connectors	^ Table of Contents

Symbols	^ Table of Contents

Boolean	^ Table of Contents
Boolean logic forms the foundation of any powerful search language. It's logical, it's powerful, and it will help you create some stunningly elegant and specific searches. But remember you don't need to use any of these. The system will always implicitly assume that there is an AND between words or groups of words. For many searches, this is adequate. What you might want to do is print it out this document, and have it to refer to as you fill out your forms.

Using AND	^ Table of Contents
This is the default connector, and is used when you want all the words it connects to appear in a posting. For example, either of the following searches: marketing and MBA marketing MBA ...would retrieve all records with "marketing" and "MBA" in them. It does not mean that these words appear in any relation to each other.

Using AND NOT	^ Table of Contents
Used to exclude words or phrases from a search. For example, business AND NOT monkey would retrieve only those records with the word "business" and without the word "monkey."

Using OR	^ Table of Contents
This connector is used when you want any of the words it connects to appear in a posting. For example, the query: company or business ...would retrieve all records with "company" or "business" somewhere in the posting. Since these two words are often used interchangeably, OR is a logical connector. HotResumes.com search will rank higher those records that contain both words, so an OR search will give you all the records an AND search would've, and they'll be listed first on the search results page.

Using * or ? (Wildcards)	^ Table of Contents
A search word can contain wildcard words to make it match multiple words from the index. For instance: compan* matches companies, company, etc. Records which contain any of the matched words would be included in your search results. Please note that any search which begins with a wildcard will typically result in an error or at least take much longer to process than one that ends in a wildcard. You can also use a ? to match a single unknown character, such as the search: las? which matches last, lash, etc.

Using (...) (parentheses)	^ Table of Contents
Parentheses make it possible to combine search elements. For example, in the query: monkey and (company or business) ...the database would first search for what is inside the parentheses, "business or company", and then look for records which also contain "monkey".

NEAR Searching	^ Table of Contents
Near (or concatenation) searching is a special kind of AND search, and is useful when you want find words near each other, or within a specified distance of each other. You must enclose the <NEAR> keyword within "<" and ">", otherwise <NEAR> is used as a keyword. The syntax is: <NEAR/__> The value specifies how many words away the second keyword should be from the first in order for the search engine to return a match. If is unspecified, as in <NEAR> , a default distance of 1000 words is assumed. Examples: bogart <near/30> maltese military <near/50> intelligence lend <near> lease zig <near/1> zag Restrictions: Wildcards should not be used at or near the beginning of either keyword in a near search. additionally, phrases cannot be concatenated. A near search will find the specified keywords in either possible order, so that in the first example directly above, articles would be returned containing "bogart" either before or after "maltese" (assuming the distance criterion is met). Note that a near search with no distance value specified is a good way to hunt for words which may or may not be hyphenated (or joined with some other separator character), as in the third example above. To more explicitly search for words that may or not be joined by some intervening character, a distance value of 1 may be specified, as in the fourth example above. Near searching is very expensive in terms of our system resources, however. In order not to make you wait too long, we limit the number of articles scanned to see if they match your query. This means there may be other articles in our database which match your query, but were not shown. If that is the case, you would be able to view these articles by refining your query.

PARAGRAPH Searching	^ Table of Contents
Paragraph searching is a special kind of AND search, and is useful when you want find words within a paragraph of each other. You must enclose the <PARAGRAPH> keyword within "<" and ">", otherwise PARAGRAPH is used as a keyword. The syntax is: < PARAGRAPH> Examples: You can search for two words using <PARAGRAPH> (bogart, maltese) Or you can search for three or more words by using the following format: military <PARAGRAPH> intelligence<PARAGRAPH>find

PHRASE Searching	^ Table of Contents
Phrase searching is used to search for strings of words with internal spaces, most commonly multiple words. The engine treats the string as if it were one long keyword. The syntax for phrase searching is: " ...". Examples: "marketing director" "the end of the world" "take this job and shove it" You can also use the following syntax: Example: marketing <PHRASE> director   Restrictions: Wildcards cannot be used within phrases, nor can phrases be used in near searches. Also, phrases must contain at least two keywords to be valid searches. Phrase searching is very expensive in terms of our system resources, however. In order not to make you wait too long, we limit the number of resumes scanned to see if they match your query. This means there may be other resumes in our database which match your query, but were not shown. If that is the case, you would be able to view these articles by refining your query.

SENTENCE Searching	^ Table of Contents
A Sentance search result document will include all the words you specify within the same sentance. Examples: You can search for two words using bogies<SENTENCE> falcon or <SENTENCE>(bogies, falcon)

Other Special Function Operators	^ Table of Contents
<THESAURUS>: Placing this operator (exactly as shown here) in the search string will expand the search to include the word following it and its synonyms. <SOUNDEX>: Placing this operator (exactly as shown here) in the search string will expand the search to include the word following it and one or mor words that "sound like," or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified. Collections do not have sound-alike indexes. <TYPO/N>: Placing this operator in a search string will expand the search to include words that are similar to the word that follows the operator. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words. The optional "/N" variable int eh operator name tell the system the maximum number of errors between the query term and a matched term, a value referred to as the error distance. If "/N" is not used in the operator <TYPO>, the error distance of 2 is used. Example: <TYPO> bill would return documents with "ibll" or "blil" but bypass documents with "lilb" in them. <TYPO/4> bill would return all of the variations and a lot more.

Common Errors	^ Table of Contents
The following table give examples of expressions that represents over 90% of the errors that users encounter

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