ATS Boolean Search Strings

Plain Boolean only — parenthesized OR groups joined with AND — the shape Greenhouse documents and the conservative subset for ATS boxes that publish nothing. This guide carries the syntax rules, a worked example, and one page per cluster with a ready-to-paste string for every role.

One brief, one ATS string

Finance Manager — paste as-is:

ATS Boolean — paste as-is

("Finance Manager" OR "Senior Finance Manager" OR "FP&A Manager") AND ("Financial Modeling" OR "P&L Management" OR "Working Capital") AND (CA OR "Chartered Accountant") AND ("SAP FICO" OR "Oracle ERP") AND (Bengaluru)

Lint this string

Spelling matters. Bengaluru is also written Bangalore; search (Bengaluru OR Bangalore) to cover both.

ATS Boolean syntax rules

1
No platform operators
A keyword box reads AND, OR and NOT as words, not as Google syntax. site:, intitle: and filetype: are treated as literal text, so a string that carries them matches nothing.
Our convention — not platform-documented
2
Alternates live in one OR group
Put every accepted job title in a single parenthesized OR group and every core skill in a second. Greenhouse documents this shape — `(MIT OR Harvard) AND "Computer Science"` — and it is the one every ATS parser we have seen accepts.
Documented by the platform
3
Two nesting levels is the ceiling
Groups may sit side by side (depth 1); nesting a group inside a group (depth 2) is the practical limit before parsers start reading the string unreliably. This is our review, not a published limit.
Our convention — not platform-documented

Sources: Greenhouse Support

ATS searches by cluster

Six clusters, one page each — every ATS Boolean string is built from the cluster's own titles, skills, credentials and systems.

Legal10 ATS Boolean strings Finance10 ATS Boolean strings Sales10 ATS Boolean strings Store Managers10 ATS Boolean strings Marketing10 ATS Boolean strings Operations10 ATS Boolean strings

ATS search FAQs

What is a ATS Boolean search string?

It is a search written in ATS Boolean's own grammar — Plain Boolean only — parenthesized OR groups joined with AND — the shape Greenhouse documents and the conservative subset for ATS boxes that publish nothing. The OR groups marker is what identifies the dialect when you paste it.

Which roles does the ATS guide cover?

Six clusters, one page each: Legal, Finance, Sales, Store Managers, Marketing, Operations. Every in-scope cluster has a ATS Boolean page with one string per role, built from that role's own titles and skills.

Why does the same brief need a different string per platform?

Because the search boxes parse different grammars. A ATS Boolean string is written for Workday, Greenhouse, Taleo, SmartRecruiters, Instahyre; pasting it into a platform that reads another dialect — or pasting an ATS string here — is the most common reason a search silently returns nothing.

Other dialects

LinkedIn X-RayA Google/Bing X-Ray that opens with site:linkedin.com/in/ and appends quoted Boolean groups over the text of the public profile page.Naukri RMSNaukri's box takes Boolean; this dialect adds title(), skill(), exp() and location() — a field-code layer this product writes, not a Naukri-published syntax.Indeed ResumeIndeed documents plain Boolean; this dialect adds a title:(...) filter of our own, and leaves location to the resume filter.CV X-RayA Google/Bing X-Ray for public CV and résumé documents: intitle: (reported, not documented) and filetype: (documented), then the role's terms.Bing X-RayA Bing X-Ray that uses inbody: to match terms inside the page body — Bing's documented equivalent of Google's intext: — which surfaces profiles whose terms sit below the fold.

Start your next shortlist tonight.

Open a workspace, paste a JD, and screen the first pipeline. Plans from $9/mo, no auto-renewal.

Get started