Form results via Subform search

[NYCMoreOn]

I mentioned this in a prior post but it seemed a little cumbersome so I
thought I should rephrase the question and trim it down. In addition,
I've search the forums with no avail.

I have a form with a subform. The form contains all records of
employees that users can scroll though. If they want to search for a
specific employee(s) based on first name, last name, group, etc. they
hit a command button that makes the subform become visible. In the
subform there are several unbound text boxes for users to define their
search based on the criteria mentioned above.

What I'm having trouble with is taking the criteria the users enter
(and after hitting the "search" command button on the subform), setting
a filter (or query parameters) on the main form thus allowing the
results to display within the main form (where users can now scroll
through only the employees that match their search criteria).

So my question is...I'm I going about this the right way? I know you
can filter subforms from the main form but are you able to use the
subform to pass filters (parameters) back to the main form record set?
If so, how?

Thanks in advance.