Sourcing Passive Candidates With Boolean Search

Most of the strongest candidates for any given role are not actively job hunting. Boolean search is one of the few sourcing methods built specifically to find them anyway — because it doesn't rely on someone applying.

Written by Rebecca Holt · Reviewed by Daniel Kaur · Last updated 3 August 2026

Why passive candidates need a different search approach

A candidate actively applying for jobs will usually mirror the language in a job advert back at you — the CV or profile will often say "project manager" because that's the title they're searching for. A passive candidate, who isn't job hunting and has no reason to optimise their profile for recruiter searches, is far more likely to describe their role in whatever terms their current employer actually uses internally, which can be inconsistent, outdated, or unusually specific.

This is precisely where the OR operator, covered in our operators guide, matters most. A search built around a single expected title will systematically under-represent passive candidates, because they have never had a reason to align their profile to standard job-board language.

Building a title-variant list before you search

Before writing a search string for a passive-heavy role, it's worth spending five minutes listing every plausible title variant — including internal, slightly outdated, or company-specific labels — rather than starting from the title on your own job advert.

("head of growth" OR "growth lead" OR "VP growth" OR "growth marketing manager")

Each additional realistic variant added to an OR group increases the odds of surfacing someone who would never have searched for or applied to your role, but who fits it well.

Searching by skill and output, not just title

Passive candidates can also be found by searching for the work itself rather than a job title — a specific technology, methodology, publication, or achievement that a strong candidate in that space is likely to mention, even without job-hunting intent.

("led migration to Kubernetes" OR "Kubernetes migration lead")
AND ("platform engineer" OR "infrastructure engineer")

This kind of achievement-based search tends to surface candidates who wouldn't appear in a pure title search at all, because their current title doesn't reflect the specific project experience you're targeting.

Widening geography deliberately

Passive candidates are also less likely to have filtered themselves by explicitly stating openness to relocation or remote work — because they aren't currently thinking about moving. For roles where flexible location is genuinely viable, it's often worth running a search with location as an OR-linked nice-to-have rather than an AND-linked requirement, then narrowing manually once you review results.

A note on outreach

Sourcing well is only half the work — a passive candidate found through a well-built boolean string still needs an approach that reflects that they weren't looking. Referencing something specific and accurate from their profile, rather than a generic template, tends to perform far better with this audience than with active applicants.