Instructions and covered skills
Read each question carefully before selecting a response. Focus on the search logic and the likely effect of each operator, quotation mark, parenthesis, or exclusion. Do not rush through scenarios involving titles, skills, or synonyms. Turn off notifications and avoid switching between tasks while completing the test. Choose the response that best supports the stated sourcing objective. Review your selections when time allows, especially where a small query change can alter the result set.
Key Areas
This test covers the construction and evaluation of Boolean search strings used in talent sourcing. Candidates work with AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks, parentheses, and platform-supported wildcard behavior. The focus is on converting a role brief into search concepts that retrieve relevant profiles without making the result set unnecessarily narrow.
Effective sourcing queries distinguish required capabilities from acceptable alternatives. This includes grouping equivalent titles, accounting for common abbreviations, pairing skills with relevant domain terms, and excluding clearly unrelated profiles. Candidates should understand that a term may have multiple meanings and that an exclusion can remove otherwise suitable people when used too broadly.
The test also examines query troubleshooting. A sourcer should be able to recognize whether a weak result set is caused by restrictive terms, missing synonyms, poor grouping, unquoted phrases, or a search platform's syntax rules. Query development is iterative: inspect results, identify patterns, adjust one meaningful element, and compare the impact. This approach supports transparent, repeatable sourcing work.
Recommended Preparation
Review Boolean operators and their effect on result sets. Practice writing searches for roles with multiple title conventions, such as product designer, UX designer, and interaction designer. Build short term lists from a job brief, separating must-have skills, related terminology, exclusions, locations, industries, and title variations.
Practice grouping alternatives with parentheses and enclosing exact multi-word phrases in quotation marks. Test how a search behaves when one concept is removed or replaced with a synonym. Learn the documented syntax of the platforms used by your organization, because wildcard characters, proximity features, field filters, and operator support can differ. Finally, validate queries against a small set of representative profiles and revise the wording based on the profiles returned.