I have been gone 6 months from StaffBytes, but I have a really good excuse. It’s called Twitter. Consider it my 6 month Twabbatical.

Twitter is changing the world in my opinion. It could be the most important invention of the century as well, next to the computer. It is a microblog, a business network, an always “switched-on” social hub, a mobile mesh, a broadcasting tool and search engine, all rolled into one. What other invention can you say the same about? The telephone? Sure we all use it, but it is limited. TV? I have all but ignored it (save LOST and a few others I Tivo). Radio? Please! Never listen to it. Am I missing anything? We could argue lots of different inventions here. The point being, I can get the highlights or lowlights from my Twitter stream on TV, movies, sports, technology, politics, or anything else I want. Twitter is what the Internet was born to do.

You see, Twitter is “in the eye of the beholder” meaning it can be whatever you want or need it to be, which is what makes it so unique. Let me explain. Here are the top reasons why I think that Twitter is a real game changer not only for me, but for you as well:

1. Twitter acts as a digital swiss-army knife. Some people use it to connect with close friends and colleagues. Others use it to spread the word about their blog or business. Some come to learn about the latest trends in their industry. Others use it as a watercooler. I use it for all of the above.

2. Twitter is a constantly evolving and morphing community. If you pay attention, you will find new trends and uses for Twitter almost daily. Check out hashtags for example. Watch how others use it. Discover new apps that plug into Twitter on EverythingTwitter and other sites.

3. Twitter is a growing community. 1,382% spike in unique visitors to Twitter from February ‘08 to February ‘09. I predict at some point, just about everyone will have an account. It’s inevitable. It could end up being a one-stop shop to connect with anybody and everybody. Think LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace, but bigger. It actually could have a greater impact than Google down the line, and trust me, Google is paying attention.

4. Twitter gives you access to any of its members (by using @ replies and DM direct messages). You can ping anyone out on Twitter from @RealHughJackman to @barrackobama with a message and they can see it. Just don’t get your hopes up that everyone will respond back. Some will. There are celebrities, politicians, CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies and many others using Twitter. This is great because these are people you had zero access to before. Think of Twitter filling in the blanks on email addresses, instant message id’s, or phone numbers you never had.

5. Twitter is a place to learn. I follow people in my industry (recruiting and human resources) as well as in social media, marketing, technology, entrepreneurship and other areas. I learn from others. I use a “wisdom of crowds” approach to my daily life. You can too. Follow some people that interest you. Sit back and digest.

6. Twitter has major searchability. This is the part where Google is starting to get jealous. There are many ways to search Twitter, and by searching Twitter, you are actually peering into conversations. Conversations on the web are what I call “The Social Web.” This is the real good stuff. Now you can find out what the CEO of Oracle really thinks, or what Betty from Marketing on the 5th floor really does in your company, and much more. It is also the ultimate reference check on anybody. No need to interview someone for a position if you listen to their Twitter stream…if you follow me. You’ll know if you want to hire them before you even reach out to them. So, check out the search feature inside your Twitter home page, see Twitter Search, and also a personal favorite, Twazzup. This is just scratching the surface on search.

7. Twitter is being embraced by developers. There are hundreds of apps, desktop clients, tools and sites out there currently that tie-into Twitter, making your world a hell of a lot easier. I love TweetDeck (w/Seesmic Desktop a close second) because they act as a dashboard for the 800+ tweeps I follow, and for the 2,100+ people who follow me. Check out the Twitter Fan Wiki for a good starting point on more, and also see the impressive Twitter list on Mashable.

8. Twitter is mobile, making it the “everywhere” social and business network. Have a smartphone (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.)? Then you’ve got a powerful network in your pocket my friend. Take Twitter to work, in your car, on vacation, to the grocery store. Wherever you want. Tweetie or TwitterBerry give you a clean, easy to use version of Twitter. Get recommendations, do business, anything you want with Twitter on the go.

9. Twitter can put you on the map. I’m not talking about 15 minutes of fame here. I’m talking about branding yourself or your company. Take the concept of LinkedIn, where you look to connect with other people in your field, or network for a new career opportunity, and expand much further. With Twitter, you can get into real conversations with other people you want to meet. It can also showcase your skills and talents. Members can also place themselves in Twitter directories such as WeFollow, Twitr or geofollow so others can find and follow them.

10. Twitter can help you AND your company perform better. If your company is not on Twitter, get them there, or start looking for your next job. It is not a trend, and will not go away. I only see it getting bigger and better (although don’t get me started on the recent “hiccup” policy changes). Conversation is where everything online points to now. MySpace and Facebook got millions on top of millions of people there, but Twitter offers a much better platform to get to the next level. Companies (and people) can recruit, market, brand, sell and much more utilizing Twitter if done right.

There are easily another 10 or so ways that make Twitter a game-changer, but I want to save some of those for a “Freemium” Twitter workshop I am putting together and hope to roll out in the next month or so. Stay tuned to me @geoffpeterson or right here on StaffBytes for more details.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear from you. More posts are on the way…

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In case you missed it, I gave a free presentation recently on “30 Recruiting Strategies in a Down Economy” for recruiters and sourcers. Here is a copy of the PowerPoint. Take a look!

This Thursday, September 18th from 1PM-3PM EST, Geoff Peterson, Managing Principal of General Lead (http://www.generallead.com/) and Editor of StaffBytes (http://www.staffbytes.com/) will conduct a fast-paced and detailed webinar for recruiters and sourcers, The War for Talent: 400+ Ways to Source Passive Talent.

Today, there is a “War for Talent” being waged amongst recruiters and sourcers to find and attract the best candidates. In this loaded webinar, you will discover 400+ leads to pursue in addition to easy-to-implement tips, ideas and strategies for uncovering passive candidates.

BONUS!! For Attending the webinar, you get:

FREE copy of The War for Talent: Starter Guide, which details 400+ sites, networks, communities and tools detailed in the webinar; 14-day trial of Broadlook Diver; and PowerPoint deck of 400+ slides to reference at a later date.

In this fast-paced interactive webinar, Geoff will tackle the following:

-Scores of newly emerging places online to find talent, such as Scribd, Koders, Backtype and Squidoo
-Example sites include Facebook, Technorati, Google, LinkedIn, Jigsaw and Twitter
-More examples include Digg, Ning, Indeed and many other sites, networks and communities
-Sourcing tools & tips referenced, including Joopz, Xobni, Broadlook, eGrabber and Google Alerts
-Live examples of dozens of sites including The Blogosphere & Social/Business Networks
-Demonstrations of Name Search Sites, Search Engines, Groups, Listserves and more
-Detailed searches conducted for IT/IS, Finance, Healthcare, Medical, Sales and more
-Live “mashup” examples: How to leverage one site with another (Google, Jigsaw and more)
-Advanced boolean search string examples for finding passive candidates online
-Overview of how to build a passive candidate talent pool on your own beyond the Webinar
-Live interactive Q&A conducted with examples on the spot

*Sign-up for the Webinar today at http://thewarfortalent.eventbrite.com/. Pay for one line and have your whole team join.

A new site I discovered recently called Backtype, is very similar to the fast-growing and popular microblogging site, Twitter. Backtype is like Twitter in that you can “find, follow and share comments across the web.”

Recruiters and Sourcers will instantly see the benefit of using Backtype to not only identify active and passive talent, but the site also represents a goldmine of solid leads to pursue, such as other networks, communities and places to discover talent to fill open positions. In the example below, you can see that Backtype offers advanced searching across their network of comments:

I found a few hundred comments tracked by Backtype that had the key phrase “my resume.” These are a few potential leads to check into:

You can also search across people as well. I ran a quick search for “John” and hundreds of “John’s” pulled up with searchable profiles, where you can view all of there comments. Great way to determine if this person may or may not be a potential fit for any open positions (i.e. mentions key words and skills, talks about his/her company, talks about what they do, etc.). In another example of people on Backtype, I used the key word “java”. The search pulled up a few hundred people using Java in the online ID. Here were my results:

Finally, Backtype is a place where your comments can “find a home to be discovered by others” For example, a recruiter can leave comments on blogs, news sites, journals and other places online, and leave his/her signature along with comments and links to their company (helping to brand the company) and open positions (helping to attract more potential candidates).

Title:        LinkedIn for Recruiters and Sourcers: Live Demo, Search Strings, Mashups, Groups and More
Date:       Thursday, August 7, 2008
Time:       1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST

This coming Thursday, July 24th at 1PM EST, I will be giving a fast-paced 60 minute webinar presentation for Kennedy Information on “Microblogging: The Hot New Sourcing Tool for Today’s Recruiters“.

In this presentation, I will fully demonstrate Twitter by walking through its search capabilities and will show you and your team how to build a “following” which benefits recruiters as they promote open positions and search for active and passive job seekers. I will also demonstrate backdoor tips and tricks of using other sites including Friendfeed and Pownce and review how recruiters and sourcers can use them to begin building relationships within online communities.

• Learn how to utilize microblogs to recruit and source candidates
• Discover fast-growing social networking communities online
• Find active and passive candidates who “live” online
• Watch a live demonstration of how to recruit on Twitter, an online network of more than 7 million people
• Learn how to grow your microblog networks in seconds
• Uncover hundreds of “leads” through sites such as Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed and more

If you are interested in learning more or would like to sign up, click here.

SlideShare is “the best place to share PowerPoint presentations” as stated on their site. Individuals and organizations can upload presentations to share publicly, connect with other members of the site, build their company brand, and dig up leads to follow up on.

First thing I do on SlideShare is run a search on “recruiting.” The search pulls up over 1,600 slide presentations with recruiting in the subject or description. See below:

This opens up the possibility for any recruiter or sourcer to peer into presentations being shared by others in the recruiting community. Some of the PowerPoints listed out on the site were given from past conferences such as ERE (Electronic Recruiters Exchange) when they held one of their annual ERE Expos. This is a solid way for a recruiter or sourcer to learn and stay up to speed on the latest discussions, technologies and trends in the recruiting landscape. The site offers a “Most Viewed” slideshows area to show what is popular on the site. There is a diverse amount of presentations out here including many business and technical related.

Believe it or not, you can get some recruiting and sourcing done out on SlideShare too. There is a section called “My Slidespace” where users can put up a profile with key words (tags), upload presentations, connect with other members of the SlideShare community and send messages right inside the site. If you are sourcing for say technical people, simply run a search across the tags. I ran a search on “Java” tags. See below:

The search pulls up hundreds of presentations with Java tagged. From there, you can see who has posted these presentations out on the site. If they are doing full-fledged PowerPoints on Java technologies, wouldn’t these people be worthy of reaching out to? I would guess they are highly coveted in their field regardless of location.

Finally, SlideShare represents a great community for floating presentations and information about your company to build buzz, whether it be a small PowerPoint outlining positions and benefits, or a presentation interviewing internal managers on why a candidate should be excited to work for you, or even a promotion of a new product or service to drive traffic to your site. SlideShare syncs audio to presentations as well allowing for more possibilities.

I discovered a site that recruiters and sourcers will find especially helpful on an everyday basis. It’s called Vumber. Vumber is a virtual phone number that can be linked to your home, work or cell phone and used to make your real number private.

Vumber opens up new possibilities for recruiting and sourcing tactics. For example, say you are trying desperately to reach a candidate, but this particular candidate is hard to reach and you have already tried calling he or she several times. Candidates can simply screen your call if they are unsure who you are or worse if they know who you are and don’t want to pick up. As recruiters, we are simply trying to do our jobs and find out if there is interest in our company and our positions, and are always looking to find out answers from our candidates. Using Vumber, a recruiter or sourcer can simply set-up a new virtual number to call out to certain candidates, and use your real number for other candidates. It essentially allows you to get multiple lines from one phone and allows you to disguise yourself when calling. On the other side, a second example is if a recruiter is in a tough position where they don’t want to give out there work number to a sales person trying to sell a product or service. A recruiter can simply hand out there Vumber, and screen out calls from there. Finally, a good third example for using Vumber is if you are calling a candidate out-of-state, and you want to appear as though you are a local caller. My experience has shown me that having a local number will attract more people to pick up on the first call. Vumber allows you to choose the area code for your virtual phone number.

Are you using Twitter? If so, check out Summize. Summize is a great site or should I say search engine that specifically searches across all conversations out on Twitter. Summize angles itself as “Conversational Search” among other search engines online.

Summize offers advanced search options as well as search operators to help you set-up quality searches. With these in mind, this search engine opens up the possibility to tap into the reportedly 12M+ people who have adopted Twitter and use it daily. Recruiters and Sourcers can now search by key terms such as titles: “Software Engineer”, company names: “Microsoft” and phrases such as: “new job”.

Let me show you Summize in action. Recruiters and Sourcers are always looking for active and available talent currently in the marketplace. Using Summize, I run a search on the key phrase “my resume” and tons of results come up:

From there, you can join in on a discussion or directly send a message to that user. Using Twitter, there are several ways to reach out to people. Check out my Twitter video for a further rundown on Twitter and it’s benefits to Recruiters and Sourcers.

Glassdoor is a well put-together site that aims to give an “inside look” into companies around the globe. With over 40,000 employees from 11,000 companies in 76 countries already on Glassdoor, this site is growing fast to show employee ratings, company reviews and salary information…all for free.

Glassdoor provides detailed company reviews so outsiders can get the good/bad and pros/cons about working for and working with each company listed, employee ratings so outsiders can get a pulse on what the morale is like inside each company, not to mention the benefits, perks and other inside information, and finally real-time salary and compensation details for employees at each company to include salary, bonuses and more.

This site can benefit employers, recruiters, sourcers and more in many ways. Sign-up for an account and put your take in their system. Recruiters and Sourcers can use information they put into Glassdoor as a huge selling piece for why a hot candidate should join your company over the next. Glassdoor can really make a solid employer and company stand out and help to attract top talent in the marketplace.