• Leaving a space between the words

  
  If you leave a space between two words the search engine will assume you are expecting both words to appear in the advert and will automatically insert an AND between the words. For example, if you type in project manager, the results will show jobs that include the words project and manager but not necessarily next to each other in the vacancy.

• Inserting a comma between words

  
  If you insert a comma between two words the search engine will assume you are expecting either word or both words to appear in the advert. It treats the comma as an OR - this is known as an accumulated search. For example, if you type in project, manager the results will include adverts that contain the word project or the word manager or both words.

• Inserting Speech marks around the words

  
  If you inserting speech marks (" ") around two words the search engine will assume you are looking for a phrase and will return all adverts where the two words appear next to each other. For example, 'as project manager you will be working with…' will appear in the results but 'on this project. In your role as manager…' will not.

Advanced Search

Depending on the type of job you are looking for and the search terms you have used you may find that too many search results have been returned. You can either refine your search on the homepage or for more options you can use the advanced search.
You do not have to use all of the fields on the advanced search form, you can use as many or as few as you like.

'Any words' and 'All words' setting

The Advanced Search works in slightly different way to the Homepage Search, as it has the added functionality of 'ANY or ALL words' filtering.

The Job Title and Skills boxes allow you to pick whether you want to search on all words or any words that have been entered as the search string. If you enter several words with spaces between each word without changing the 'find ANY words' setting then an accumulator search will take place.

For example, if the words: navigation electronics electrical are entered in the skills box with 'find ANY words' selected, the jobs that are returned will contain any one (or more) of the words entered.

If you change the setting to 'find ALL words' and run the search again, any jobs that are returned must contain each of the entered words.

How to enter search keywords into the advanced search

As the 'Job Title' and 'Skills' boxes on the Advanced Search feature the 'find ANY words' and 'find ALL words' settings, the rules regarding the use of spaces between search words change. The default behaviour for both boxes is to treat searches with spaces between the words as an accumulator search.

For example with the default 'find ANY words' setting, project manager will yield results with the words project or manager. The words may appear next to each other in the vacancy or they might not. One word might appear and the other not. To change this you must ensure you select the 'find ALL words' radio button.

If you insert a comma between words, the words will be accumulated unless the 'find ALL words' setting is selected. For example, if the ALL setting has been selected and words have been entered with commas between them then: project, manager will yield results with both the words project and manager included in vacancies.

Speech marks around the words will find the phrase regardless of the ALL or ANY setting. E.g. "project manager" will only find vacancies where the words appear next to each other.

What each box does

Job Title

This box searches only the job title of the vacancy. Often this is the best box to use in your search (e.g. "Sales Manager", secretary)(note the use of speech marks around words to search for a phrase). Don't forget that some job titles are known by different names, so tailor your search to cover all possibilities, (e.g. "Sales Manager", secretary).

Skills

The Skills box searches the job description of the vacancy. This box is useful if you have any particular skills that are important to the role you are looking for. In some cases, such as the IT industry searching on skills may be more relevant than job title, as many mean the same thing - (e.g. "audio typing", word) - the skills or languages involved will differ though.

Locations

The Locations box on the Advanced Search page gives you considerable flexibility if you wish to search for jobs in a particular area(s).

If you know the exact location in which you wish to work, simply type in the name and select the 'This area ONLY' option. This will look for any jobs that match the exact location you have entered.

If you are happy to look at jobs nearby the location you have entered, you can select the 'This area +3 miles' option. This will return all jobs that exactly match your location, PLUS any other locations with a 3 mile radius. If you are prepared to travel a little further afield, select the +5 miles, or 10 miles, 15 miles up to +50 miles, depending on your preferences.

For example, if you were to type in Portsmouth and were to select the +20 miles option, jobs would come back located not only in Portsmouth but also Chichester, Fareham, Petersfield and Southampton.

When using the location box you can enter a country, county, city, town or first part of a postcode.

Entering United Kingdom will return all vacancies with a corresponding location of United Kingdom, UK or nationwide.

If you type in a county and select the exact location option ('This area ONLY'), all jobs with cities and town names that are found within the county will also be returned. For example, Kent will return all jobs with locations of Kent, plus all matching jobs with locations within the county itself (such as Maidstone, Orpington and Dover).

If you'd like, you can search for jobs in a certain an area by entering the postcode. The search is performed on only the first part of the postcode i.e. the outward part, so it's not necessary to enter the whole postcode. For example, PO1 or PO1 8EL will both return the same jobs - all for the PO1 location.

Please remember that postcode areas are slightly different to the geographical definition of a location. E.g. the postcode for Portsmouth begins with PO and the PO1 postcode search will search a different area to the area searched if Portsmouth was entered in the location field.

Ignore

Sometimes when you're searching, you'll find a number of jobs in your results aren't appropriate because they are asking for a particular skill you don't have or are based in a location you don't want to work in. To save you having to needlessly read through these jobs, you can choose to exclude those terms from your search using the Ignore box.

By default, the Ignore box looks at the job title of a vacancy, but you can change that to ignore words from:

Any part of the job
The job description
The location

For example, you may want to work anywhere in the South East with the exception of London, in which case the location box should contain "South East" and the Ignore box should contain the word London with the Location option selected.

Salary

You can search for a job based on the advertised salary by making a selection from the dropdown menu. Some recruiters do not supply salary details and so unless you select 'Any Salary', their vacancies will not be included in your search results.

If you do a salary search the results will be returned in date order. To order the search results by salary, scroll to the bottom of the search results page and select the sort by salary option.

Industry sectors

You can choose to target your search based on industry sector. Ticking one or more of the boxes will limit your search to the vacancies within the selected industry sectors.

You can select as many industry sectors as you wish.

More Options

The More Options section enables you to make a number of extra choices to refine your search.

You can choose to search for permanent, contract/temporary or either type of job.

You can view jobs that have been posted from within the last 2 hours or from up to 7 days ago.

You can opt to view a summary of each vacancy within the search results, to give you an idea of the job as you scan the listings. Or you can choose to view just the job title, salary, location, job type and date and time the vacancy was published.

Specific vacancy search

If you know the reference of a vacancy you found previously on Loot, you may enter it in the specific vacancy search box to return the vacancy.

Viewing Search Results

When you have entered your search criteria, all matching vacancies will returned to you in a list. By default, these are arranged in date order, but if you prefer you can change this by selecting one of the following options:

Default sort by date

The results are arranged first by advert type (we offer three different levels to advertisers) then displayed in date order with the most recently published appearing first.

Relevance

Results are arranged in order of closest match to the criteria you entered. This is the most accurate search, but the newest jobs will not necessarily be near the top.

Salary

The results are arranged in order of salary, with the highest salary listed first.

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