Here is a custom search engine that looks for LinkedIn profiles. Enter a name or a keywords and see the results:

LinkedIn Profiles

Now, let’s search, for example, for

physician cardiology diagnostics MD "Greater Atlanta Area"

Let’s exclude the word “recruiter” from the above search:

physician cardiology diagnostics MD "Greater Atlanta Area" -recruiter

We got fewer results.

*** Are you ready for a sourcing CONTEST? ***

Contest warm-up: Did we just exclude recruiters’ profiles or did we also lose any relevant (non-recruiter) profiles in the search results?

CONTEST. Please give an example where excluding a keyword that we don’t want to see on a profile (like we just did) leads to excluding relevant results. Please either use the LinkedIn custom search engine  or a search for LinkedIn profiles using your own Boolean search strings, either on Google or on Bing. Please explain how this happens. (Or, instead, explain why this can’t happen if you believe that it can’t.) Of course, it could be a search for any type of professional in any geographical area.

The first person who sends the correct answer to contest@braingainrecruiting.com gets a guest pass to the 2-part webinar 

http://booleanstrings.ning.com/events/extract-candidates-from-linke... 

or a pass to a future webinar.

Please follow the directions very carefully.