Hidden Github Resumes

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Github has tens of thousands of resumes that Google won’t find. Intrigued? Read on.

Unknown to many, Github is widely used not only to work on software code but to store documents such as resumes. Just as software code, documents are stored in the code section. This search – “my resume” – would reveal some, but it’s not well targeted.

Here are some ways to locate Github-stored resumes – and why Google doesn’t index them.

Let me start with Google. A favorite format for resumes on Github is JSON. Originally created as “JavaScript Object Notation”, the format is now used for non-code documents as well. Unfortunately, Google still considers JSON as not worth being indexed. resume filetype:json produces no results. As Google’s Dan Russel told me, when I had asked him why, JSON files are “generally created dynamically rather than stored long term. Because it’s dynamic, we can’t index them.”

Too bad. But we have ways to source for these – and other document formats – within Github.

Github has search operators extension: allowing to search for files of given types and filename: to search for document names (these are similar to Google’s filetype: and intitle:). Armed with the operators, we can run a more targeted search. Here is an example:

extension:json filename:resume “san francisco” javascript.

Another less known resume format, popular among Github users, is TEX. Example search:

filename:cv extension:tex “data scientist”.

Of course, we don’t have to necessarily include searching for file types. And, there are plenty of non-developer’s resumes as well. The above example finds Data Scientists. Here are a couple more examples:

filename:resume “product manager”

filename:resume “vice president” engineering

Check out the fully updated webinar “How To Find and Attract Technical Talent” to learn these (we provide a Github search syntax tip sheet) and other IT Sourcing techniques!

 

 

Comments 2

  1. I’d like to learn more about mining Github. Right now I’m looking for research engineers in Cryptography. Does Github have hardware resumes?

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