The tilde operator symbol is located in the top left corner of my keyboard, under the esc key.
Google stopped supporting the tilde search function about 5 years ago. Great news, it’s back!
The tilde is a handy little search operator that helps recruiters uncover synonyms for keywords so they can find even more of those difficult-to-find technology specialists.
What is the tilde operator?
You can use the tilde operator (~) to get Google to expand the search with related keywords.
When you place the tilde operator in front of a keyword, it will also search for words that are synonyms of that keyword. This is helpful when you you don’t know all of the keywords to add.
Here’s a search string with the tilde operator (~)
~CV “Software Developer” -Jobs -Template
Here’s a more advanced search string you can use to find Java developers on Linkedin:
~ "Java Developer" OR "J2EE developer" "Toronto" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:ca.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:ca.linkedin.com/pub/
Let me know if you have any questions about this technique and feel free to share your strings as well!
In your string, I was under the impression there should not be a space after the colon, i.e., (intitle:resume OR cv OR “about me”)
Please, explain.
Hi Norris,
Thanks for your comment! You’re right, there is no space after the colon.
Thanks to you, I noticed that this post was outdated. The tilde operator (~) in now supported by Google.
I rewrote the post along with some new search strings that use the tilde.
You rock!
Great Blog Emily….I am keen to try some more nesting and Google Sheets
Another wonderful alternative to the tilde command that I have discovered is Google Sheets. Google Sheets is a keyword generator and it is found in Google Drive https://drive.google.com under “Create” and “Spreadsheet”.
Once your spreadsheet is created, all you have to do is type in two similar terms – one term in A1 and one term in A2 (example: web developer and programmer) highlight the terms and drag the box down in the spreadsheet. Google Sheets will automatically generate associated keywords for you. In this example, Google Sheets generated “software engineer” “web designer” and “software developer” as related terms.
Hi Michelle,
Wow! that is a great tip. Thanks so much for sharing it with us. I will definitely check it out.
Laura
Michelle,
Does the automatically generated keywords idea still work for you? I tried it with your example and unless I am doing something wrong it seems to no longer work.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention! I tested it out and you’re right. The trick Michelle discovered doesn’t work anymore. Unfortunately I don’t have a workaround for finding synonyms. If I come across one, I’ll post it here.
Laura