Searching for candidates with specific job titles can be a nightmare as there are often 100s of ways of describing exactly the same role.

Over the last year we’ve looked at several thousand searches and in each case, Recruiters are missing out on a straightforward technique to find more candidates.

Take “PHP Developer” for example. Every time we ever see a search looking for this, or any other kind of Developer, it will contain “PHP Developer”, then maybe a couple of other variations.

What’s never present is “Developer PHP”. A quick check on LinkedIn shows that adding this into your search will increase your candidate pool by 11% – a substantial increase for one small tweak.

On top of that, because the vast majority of Recruiters aren’t searching like this, the extra 11% are less likely to have been contacted than “PHP Developer” candidates – so more chance of engagement and getting them placed.

The reason why you achieve such good results with this technique is that a significant number of candidates will present their title and follow it with their key skill / area of expertise.

All of the below candidates were picked up simply by typing “Developer PHP” as LinkedIn will automatically exclude special characters and commonly appearing words such as ‘with’.

So there it is, a quick intro on how to find more niche candidates simply. Happy sourcing!