Question: I want to find Cisco certified network people. A Google search using "CCIE" returns people who are still studying for their certificate or have only received partial certification. The people I want have their certificate number on their resumes, in the form of "CCIE #9999" or CCIE#9999. How can I do this search?
Answer: Use Google's numrange search command. This lets you find web results where numbers within a stated range appear on the page. (And, no other major search engine has it).
The format is low-value, then two dots, then high-value, with no spaces.
Since you are interested in four-digit values, you would use 1000..9999 (though you could go higher, of course).
Since you want people with this certificate number on their resume, we would add that to the standard Google resume template string as follows:
~cv ccie 1000..9999 -benefits -candidate -careers -eeo -eoe -example -job -jobs -opening -post -preferred -reply -sample -send -submit -template -your
The results aren't ideal because these resume pages also contain "Windows NT/2000" year numbers.
So you could use a more limited range to knock out the number 2000 and the likely years (year values) which are going to appear on the resumes of irrelevant people as the dates of past employment and expected degrees. For example:
~cv ccie 2010..9999 -benefits -candidate -careers -eeo -eoe -example -job -jobs -opening -post -preferred -reply -sample -send -submit -template -your
That's a little better, but again, we see equipment model numbers and other noise -- particularly the final 4-digit strings within phone numbers (almost ubiquitous on resumes!).
Adding "cisco certified" to the above string only helps a little and doesn't address the main problem.
For very pure (but fewer) results, try this, which forces the number to be near the CCIE (regardless of whether it has a space, a #, or another word in between) but is otherwise forgiving with regard to whatever way the candidate may have formatted it on the resume:
~cv ccie=*=2010..9999 -benefits -candidate -careers -eeo -eoe -example -job -jobs -opening -post -preferred -reply -sample -send -submit -template -your http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-37%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=%7Ecv+ccie%3D*%3D2010..9999+-benefits+-candidate+-careers+-eeo+-eoe+-example+-job+-jobs+-opening+-post+-preferred+-reply+-sample+-send+-submit+-template+-your&btnG=Search
But, if you want the motherlode, take out the ~cv.
It's still going to find you web pages mentioning people with CCIE certificate #'s but those mentions will not necessarily be on resumes! So, you won't have the full resume, but you'll usually have enough info to contact them:
ccie=*=2010..9999 -benefits -candidate -careers -eeo -eoe -example -job -jobs -opening -post -preferred -reply -sample -send -submit -template -your http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-37%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=ccie%3D*%3D2010..9999+-benefits+-candidate+-careers+-eeo+-eoe+-example+-job+-jobs+-opening+-post+-preferred+-reply+-sample+-send+-submit+-template+-your&btnG=Search
Note: For a deeper explanation of the keywords and commands surrounding ccie 1000..9999, see Google's help page. For more specific recruiting-related details, see Shally Steckerl's recently-updated Google cheatsheet
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