Boolean search runs in the standard query bar — type the operators and Chosen matches them literally. Use it when smart search is being too generous and you want exact control: AND, OR, NOT, double quotes for exact phrases, parentheses to group. Operators must be uppercase.

The operators

Operator	What it does	Example
`AND`	Both terms must appear	`react AND typescript`
`OR`	Either term can appear	`python OR rust`
`NOT`	Excludes the term that follows	`react NOT contractor`
`"..."`	Matches the exact phrase	`"senior engineer"`
`( )`	Groups terms so an operator applies to all of them	`(NYC OR remote)`

AND, OR, and NOT only count as operators when they are uppercase. Lowercase and is treated as an ordinary search word.

Quoted phrases

Without quotes, senior engineer matches candidates with "senior" and "engineer" anywhere — including a senior designer who once mentored an engineer. Double quotes force the words to appear together, in order.

"senior engineer"
"product manager"
"machine learning"

Reach for quotes whenever a role title is two or more words and the individual words are common.

Parentheses and precedence

Parentheses group terms so an operator applies to the whole group. Without them, mixing AND and OR gets ambiguous fast.

"senior engineer" AND payments AND (NYC OR remote)

That reads as: a senior engineer, with payments, who is in NYC or remote. Drop the parentheses and the grouping is no longer something you can rely on. When a query mixes AND and OR, parenthesize the OR part — every time.

Examples worth copying

"senior engineer" AND payments AND (NYC OR remote)

Senior engineers with payments experience, in NYC or working remotely.

react NOT contractor

React candidates, excluding anyone whose resume says contractor.

(python OR golang) AND (kubernetes OR docker)

A backend language and a container tool — any combination of the two.

"product designer" AND (fintech OR healthcare) NOT agency

Product designers in one of two domains, excluding agency backgrounds.

When boolean beats smart search

Smart search reads intent, which is usually what you want. Boolean wins in two situations:

The phrase matters. Smart search matches "senior" and "engineer" as separate signals. Quotes make the bar treat "senior engineer" as one thing.
You want a hard exclude. NOT contractor removes those candidates outright. Smart search treats your wording as a preference, not a rule, so it may still surface a contractor it thinks is a strong match.

If you are describing a kind of person — "engineers who led a small team" — that is qualitative, and smart search or deep search handles it better than boolean ever will.

Limits

Boolean matches the text that exists on a candidate. If a resume came in as an image-only PDF, resume parsing couldn't extract the text, so a boolean query has nothing to match against. Boolean is exact, not clairvoyant — a candidate who wrote "K8s" will not match kubernetes. When a query returns nothing, why a search returns no results covers the usual causes.