Generate your queries
Four searches from one role and city. Copy each into Google — they surface different things.
What “X-ray” actually means
It is a recruiter’s term for using a general search engine to look *inside* a site that has its own weak search — or no public search at all. Applicant tracking systems are the classic case. Thousands of companies host their listings on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable and Workday, each on a predictable URL, and none of those platforms offers a useful cross-company search. Google has indexed all of them.
So instead of asking a job board what exists, you ask Google to show you every Greenhouse page mentioning your role. The results are current, unsyndicated, and posted by the employer rather than a reseller.
The operators worth knowing
- site:boards.greenhouse.io
- Restrict results to one host. The single most useful operator for job hunting, because it turns every ATS into a searchable job board.
- "exact phrase"
- Match the words together and in order. Essential for job titles, which otherwise match any page containing the words separately.
- -word
- Exclude. Google’s equivalent of NOT. Use sparingly — it removes whole pages, not just the phrase.
- OR
- Either term. Must be capitalised. This is how you cover a title family in one query.
- intitle:
- The term must appear in the page title. Useful for filtering to actual listing pages rather than blog posts mentioning a role.
- after:2026-09-01
- Only pages Google believes are newer than that date. Approximate, but a decent freshness filter when the Tools menu is not enough.
The hosts worth searching directly
These carry the bulk of listings at technology and startup employers. Substitute your role into each.
| System | Host to search | Typically used by |
|---|---|---|
| Greenhouse | site:boards.greenhouse.io | Mid-size and large tech companies, well-funded startups |
| Lever | site:jobs.lever.co | Startups and scale-ups |
| Ashby | site:jobs.ashbyhq.com | Newer, fast-growing startups |
| Workable | site:apply.workable.com | Small and mid-size companies across sectors |
| SmartRecruiters | site:jobs.smartrecruiters.com | Large enterprises, retail, services |
| Workday | site:*.myworkdayjobs.com | Enterprises, banks, consultancies |
| Zoho Recruit | site:*.zohorecruit.com | Common with Indian SMEs and agencies |
Queries to keep
Paste, swap the role and city, and run them weekly. The last two find things no job board will ever show you.
Every Greenhouse listing for your role
site:boards.greenhouse.io ("data analyst" OR "business analyst") "Bengaluru"
Across four systems at once
("product manager" OR "APM") "remote"
(site:boards.greenhouse.io OR site:jobs.lever.co OR site:jobs.ashbyhq.com OR site:apply.workable.com)
Careers pages, not aggregators
("frontend engineer" OR "UI engineer") "Pune" ("careers" OR "we are hiring") -site:naukri.com -site:indeed.com
Hiring posts rather than listings
("we're hiring" OR "my team is hiring" OR "DM me your CV") ("backend engineer" OR "SDE") "Hyderabad"
One company, everything open
site:stripe.com/jobs ("engineer" OR "designer")Use the date filter, always. After running a search, open Tools → Any time → Past 24 hours or Past week. Without it you are reading pages indexed months ago, and a closed listing looks identical to an open one. This single click is most of the value of the technique.
Searching for hiring language, not job titles
A large share of hiring never becomes a formal listing. A team lead posts that they are looking for someone, a founder mentions it in a newsletter, a company adds a line to an about page. None of that is indexed as a job, and none of it appears on Naukri, Indeed or LinkedIn’s job tab — but all of it is text on the open web, and text is what a search engine is for.
Searching phrases like "we’re hiring", "join our team" or "send your CV to" alongside your role surfaces this layer. The competition on it is a fraction of what it is on a job board, because reaching it requires knowing it exists.
Honestly, where this technique fails
- Technology, startups and any employer using a modern ATS
- Finding roles days before they reach an aggregator
- Watching a specific shortlist of companies you want to work at
- Roles at companies too small to pay for job board listings
- Employers who only post to a national board and have no careers page
- Sectors where hiring runs through agencies — search results are then mostly agency pages
- Knowing whether a listing is still open, since indexing lags reality
- Volume: it returns fewer results than a board, and they need more judgement
A weekly twenty-minute routine
- Run the four generated queries. Role family, ATS hosts, careers pages, hiring language. Set the date filter to the past week on each.
- Open everything plausible in tabs. Judge later. Stopping to evaluate each result is how twenty minutes becomes ninety.
- Save the ones worth applying to. These pages disappear without notice and are much harder to find a second time than a board listing.
- Add newly-found companies to a watch list. A company hiring one role you want is likely to hire another in three months. site: their careers page directly next time.
- Apply in a separate session. Sourcing and applying are different kinds of work and mixing them halves the output of both.
The real cost of doing this properly
Four queries a week across two roles and three cities is twenty-four searches, each returning results that need reading and judging. Done properly it is the highest-yield sourcing there is. Done at the end of a working day it is the first thing to get skipped, and it is skipped by nearly everyone — which is precisely why the competition on these listings is so much lower than on the boards.
Related
- LinkedIn Boolean search generator
- Where to find jobs beyond LinkedIn
- How to find jobs posted in the last 24 hours
Questions
What is X-ray search for jobs?
Using a general search engine to look inside sites that have weak or no public search of their own — most usefully applicant tracking systems such as Greenhouse, Lever and Workday, where thousands of companies publish listings that never reach a job board.
How do I search Google for jobs on company career pages?
Combine your role in quotes with site: restricted to the host. For example: site:boards.greenhouse.io ("data analyst" OR "business analyst") "Bengaluru". Then set Tools → Past week to filter out stale indexed pages.
What Google operators are useful for job searching?
site: to restrict to one host, quotation marks for exact job titles, OR for alternative titles, a minus sign to exclude, intitle: to require a word in the page title, and after: for a rough date filter. The Tools menu date filter is more reliable than after:.
How do I find jobs on Greenhouse or Lever?
Search site:boards.greenhouse.io or site:jobs.lever.co followed by your role in quotes and your city. Neither platform offers a cross-company job search, so a search engine is the only practical way to read across all of them at once.
Is Google Jobs the same as X-ray searching?
No. Google Jobs is a curated listings panel built from structured data that employers and boards submit. X-ray searching queries the open index directly, which reaches pages that were never submitted to any jobs feed.
Why do X-ray searches return closed jobs?
Search indexes lag reality — a page can stay indexed for weeks after a role is filled, and many ATS pages simply return an error once pulled. Filtering to the past week under Tools removes most of the stale results.
Does X-ray search work for non-tech jobs?
Partly. It works wherever employers publish their own listings, which increasingly includes retail, healthcare and financial services on systems like Workday and SmartRecruiters. It works poorly in sectors where hiring runs mainly through agencies, since results then skew towards agency pages rather than employers.