Scraping Values to Feed the Boolean Builder

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Undeniably, scraping has become a must-use skill for anyone who sources for hard-to-fill roles, profiles outside of LinkedIn, or Diversity.

Sadly, Sourcers are not blessed with a satisfactory advanced scraper. (We know of the perfect design, but the app was abandoned. Know of a strong developer team?) However, for the simpler job of recognizing and collecting similar records on a page and following pages of results if necessary (on Google or elsewhere, but not on LinkedIn), Instant Data Scraper is the perfect solution.

One delightfully easy – non-technical and fast – yet productive application of scraping using the tool is quickly collecting lists of values such as common womens’ names or company, school, or association names (etc.) and automatically assembling OR search strings for LinkedIn such as, for example, members of one or more Nurse Associations in the US:

(“American Association of Critical-Care Nurses” OR(“American Association of Managed Care Nurses”) OR(“American Association of Nurse Anesthetists”) OR(“American Association of Nurse Practitioners”) OR(“American Association of Occupational Health Nurses”) OR(“American Nurses Association”) OR(“Association of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nurses”) OR(“Association of periOperative Registered Nurses”) OR(“Emergency Nurses Association”) OR(“Infusion Nurses Society”) OR(“National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists”) OR(“National Association of Neonatal Nurses”) OR(“Society of Pediatric Nurses”))

(you know why the formatting is strange, right?)

This string looks for members of at least one of the national associations for nurses in one shot. There are many hack applications other than searching for association memberships. Examples are searching for graduates of a specific kind of Universities (like HBCU) or employers from a list (like top image recognition companies). The technique allows access to search filters that the site otherwise will not provide. Specifically, you can use it in Diversity sourcing for each Diversity type. The good news is that these searches are easily automated; do the following.

You have seen how simple Googling quickly lands on a page with the correct list for any category (check the info for validity, though, just in case). Go to that page, run Instant Data Scraper, and download the list of terms in CSV. Next, paste the list into your copy of the LinkedIn Boolean Builder. Finally, transfer the auto-generated OR string to the right search field in the advanced LinkedIn people search. That’s it – you automatically run inclusive searches such as the long one above.

To summarize:

  1. Google for a list or get it elsewhere (like a list of target companies from the Hiring Manager – that would give you more choices)
  2. Use Instant Data Scraper to collect the values if Googled
  3. Use the LinkedIn Boolean Builder to create an OR string
  4. Paste the generated string into advanced LinkedIn people search.

When people see a live demo of the steps for the first time, they have a “wow” reaction. (Let me know if you have trouble reproducing them.)

As a warning, this automation hack is for LinkedIn only and not for Google. I hope we are in agreement on that.

BTW, have you noticed how the respective searching abilities of Google and LinkedIn make it a solution?

 

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