Facebook is, per their website, “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”.‚ On this site, you can set-up a personal profile of yourself, connect with friends and work colleagues, join networks and groups, post videos and photos, read news and more. Facebook is a social networking site, much like LinkedIn for example, but with a more open community for communicating, setting-up and customizing profiles and sharing of information. The site was originally built for college students to network and socialize with one another, but has since opened its doors to everyone else, and it has‚ really taken off‚ in popularity. Here is my home page below. You can see that it offers alot of features and information.

Recruiters and Internet Sourcers can use this site as another outlet for finding potential job seekers and candidates. Here are a few ways to do this:

1) Use Facebook “Friend Finder”. This‚ feature automatically scans your email and address books. This will show you what friends, colleagues and other people you know who are already out on Facebook and will give the option to send invitations to connect. From there you can see what mutual friends you have‚ and also look into their other friends as well. You can see the names and minimal information for friends that are “not‚ mutual”, but you‚ do have ways to reach out to them and connect directly. In most cases, you can use Facebooks option to “poke” them, write on their “wall” in their profile, or see if they posted contact information on their page - such as a phone or email address.‚ 

2) Use‚ Search Options. Facebook offers Basic Search (by keywords), Advanced Search (tons of options such as location, company, title and education), the ability to search for classmates by schools, and the ability to search for colleagues by current and past workplaces. The one drawback on Facebook is that it will only let you search your network (I’m from Pittsburgh, so my network is limited to Pittsburgh connections and anyone else I connected with). One way around this is to connect with others outside of your network, but are only limited to see those contacts‚ in the other networks. Another option is‚ to change what network you want to be designated on Facebook.

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3) Post Positions to the Marketplace. Postings are free on the site and go out to your network. Most job categories are represented.‚ 

4) Join Groups. This is the area where you are most likely going to find people and connect. I highly recommend. One group I joined is Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs, which has over 29,ooo members. There is a discussion board where you can interact with other members. This is where you will get a good bang for your buck so to speak on Facebook. An example of a discussion is below.

There are plently of other ways to use Facebook, such as asking questions to your network, participating in or sponsoring events and uploading tailored videos for others to see. You can customize your‚ profile and advertise your interests in connecting and job openings that way as well. I will do a video tutorial on Facebook in the next few days. Keep an eye out for it.

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Interested in recruiting and sourcing from companies that are just in the Web 2.0 space? Check out GO2Web20.net. This site claims to be the “The Complete Web 2.0 Directory” with‚ 1,807 companies currently listed along with‚ information on what‚ each company does and links to their sites. This is a great place to identify both small “under the radar” start-up companies to potentially pluck great talent from, and also show large “well known” companies that have already emerged on the scene.

There is a great blog attached to the site as well, Go2Web2.blogspot, which talks about the latest companies in this space and gives recruiters and sourcers many avenues to explore.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

Let’s face it, most IT Recruiters do NOT come from technical backgrounds.‚ Most of us come from some type of sales or marketing background.‚ Sometimes we need a little help when it comes to having a discussion with a candidate who is talking tech talk.‚ This comes into play when we need to tech screen candidates before we submit them to our clients.‚ 

I’ve found a few different websites that list technical interview questions for different skill sets, but one stuck out to me because it seemed very easy to understand and navigate through.‚ The website DevBistro is a site that serves several different functions: a place for recruiters and employers to post jobs for a fee, search resumes, a place to read tech articles and learn about technology, and a place where technical interview questions and answers have been complied.‚ 

These questions have been taken from multiple sources such as a website called TechInterviews (which I find is difficult to navigate through and some of the links don’t seem to work), and some have even been submitted by candidates who have been asked these questions by specific employers.

On this particular site, they have a number of different tech categories listed, and each one includes multiple questions and answers about the technology.‚ A lot of the questions and answers are written in a way that a recruiter would understand if the candidate is answering the question wrong or not.‚ For the questions that don’t have answers with them, those questions could be asked by the recruiter and then the answers could be reviewed by someone who you feel is an expert with that technology who could properly grade the answers given.

Recruiters can also learn from looking at the interview questions and answers.‚ We aren’t going to understand everything, but it could always be helpful in becoming more confident when a candidate is talking technical with you.

If you are a technical recruiter seeking out IT professionals, ITtoolbox is the place to go.‚ ITtoolbox is a website similar to MySpace or LinkedIn but is specifically catered to those in the IT industry.‚ There are 1.2 million people who are members, and there are four main areas to the site: Blogs, Groups, Wiki, and Peers. Below, I will give some information on each area. First, before you start jump into the site, you can sign up and build your own profile on the site, including a photo if you’d like.‚ After you’re signed up, you are able to interact in all of the areas of the website.

Blogs - The blogs on this site relate to every IT topic that you can imagine.‚ You can search blogs by topic, and you can also sort them by factors like most recent and most popular.‚ If you feel like you have something to share with the ITtoolbox community, you too can start your own blog on the site.‚ 

Groups - The groups section is a place where members can go to ask questions and receive advice from other members. The groups are also sorted by topic.‚ If you join one of these groups, you can interact with the other members of it to discuss things related to a particular technical specialty.‚ I would say that this area has the same idea as Yahoo!‚ Groups and Google Groups.

Wiki - Due to the popularity of Wikipedia, almost everyone is now familiar with the term Wiki.‚ ITtoolbox has its own Wiki for their members to contribute to.‚ It works the same way as Wikipedia, where users of the site can write and edit entries for specific topics if they have knowledge of the topic (and hopefully it’s accurate information!).‚ In this area, you can find answers to many of your simple and complex questions related to the IT industry and technology.

Peers - Since you just built your ITtoolbox profile, you are now able to connect with your peers on the site.‚ The search functions are similar to those on LinkedIn: you can search by someone’s name, employer, expertise/skills, or display name.‚ After you have a profile on the site, you can also do a search for people who have a similar background as yours. You can make connections with your peers on the site, too.‚ 

Navigating this website is a bit confusing for a first time user because there are so many links and different areas to look at, but it seems like it gets much easier to click through once you get the hang of it.‚ Recruiters can use this site to learn more about the technologies that their consultants and employees work with, and it is a good alternative to LinkedIn to connect to those in the IT industry.

As a content-rich destination for web-based resources and information for the life sciences industry, BioSpace includes a vast and varied set of career tools for recruiters as well as job seekers.

The site certainly is a comprehensive resource for job career news and information, but it also provides recruitment professionals with an impressive array of tools to target opportunities in the life sciences segment. Clicking the site’s Career Fairs tab at the top of the page provides upcoming events truly geared toward‚ the life sciences industry to include‚ pharmaceutical and biotechnology. Likewise, the site provides highly organized and widespread company profiles that include available jobs, related news items and contact information. These profiles can also be searched via industry, location, services and more.

And here’s a helpful piece of functionality that the site offers to further target its content: clicking on the main navigational tabs at the top of the page provides segmented versions of the site’s content for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry (BioSpace); medical device and diagnostics interests (DeviceSpace); and a clinical research channel (ClinicaSpace). See the screenshot and note the arrow:

Each tab provides some similar site content, but with a number of key differences so that site visitors can appropriately segment their search for news, events and job search opportunities.‚ There is an “Employers” section to each site, where there are options for job posting and resume search packages. With extensive access to newsletters, featured stories, blogs and more, all three of these interconnected resource websites provide a wealth of content for job seekers and recruiters alike.

There’s no doubt that Vault provides a vast amount of useful information for recruiters and job seekers alike. From simple job listings and the ability to post resumes to more complex functionality such as employee surveys, salary research, career forums and much more, Vault is a comprehensive and robust information warehouse.

Vault offers a general job board for employers to post open positions for a fee, a free HR newsletter and‚ employee surveys. Employers can post internships for free to the site. A community section of the site offers a forum where topics are listed and members of the site can interact with others‚ by reading and posting‚ messages. In addition Vault offers a “Buyers Guide”, which offers a comparison of‚ recruiting and HR related products and services.

Vault offers job seekers the full capability to search nationwide job listings and apply online, provided they have registered and have uploaded a resume. Similarly, researching salaries is only available to logged-in members, and many other levels of information can only be accessed with a paid membership.‚ Vault attracts heavy student traffic to it’s site‚ offering a‚ campus marketing program that delivers an online “career library”‚ with guidebooks,‚ company profiles and articles all aimed‚ at helping students launch their careers.

Vault memberships are both fee and free depending on what you want.‚ Vault membership provides “insider” access to employee and salary surveys that are searchable by location, company name, industry type and more. Paid members can also find out interviewing tips, company quality of life rankings, tools to review and evaluate resumes and cover letters and quite a bit more. Without the membership, job seekers can still get a snapshot of company profiles, and can also access a wealth of information, career tips, white papers, etc., but paid membership, however, is the only way to truly open up the Vault.

Whoever thought up the phrase “Information Highway” probably had something like Workforce Management in mind. It’s a thorough, exhaustive site with copious resources for recruitment professionals.

At first glance, it would appear that Workforce Management is primarily a resource for news and little else. And while there is an abundance of news on the site - latest news, top articles, recent blog posts, lead story, more stories, etc. - one doesn’t have to look very far to find more interactive online resources such as job listings, upcoming conferences and webinars, e-newsletters and downloadables and pretty much everything in between.

Take a look, for example, at this portion of the Workforce Management homepage, where “Topic Channels” break archived articles down into quickly-referenced topics on the top left. Or, on the bottom‚ right of this screenshot, notice the “Featured Jobs” box in which dozens of clickable, nationwide HR positions scroll endlessly by, complete with company name and locations. This area clicks through to WorkforceHRJobs - a site exclusively dedicated to HR related jobs. Employers can post HR jobs and request resumes there.

There’s a lot to find and a lot to do on Workforce Management, and recruiters can discover a great deal of information specifically geared toward their interests, often via links labeled “for recruiters” and the like. Site visitors can also subscribe to the printed version of Workforce Management and register for “full access” to the site. It’s a crowded, busy site where a great many links demand attention - but as packed as it is, Workforce Management still doesn’t feel confusing or overwhelming. It’s organized intuitively and leads you to make certain navigational decisions as you delve deeper into the site.

Just make sure you’ve blocked out enough time to do it.

Guru.com has what you need to connect with freelance consultants.‚ The site currently has 629,000 freelance professionals. The types of gurus you can find on this site are everything from web developers to designers to writers to accountants and more.‚ For free, you can look at profiles of consultants that match the field you’re searching for.‚ You can also post a project on the website and get quotes from freelancers who are interested. If you want to move forward with a freelance consultant, the site offers to manage the payment cycle between both parties for projects.

Each‚ profile includes information like geographic location, hourly rate, and the freelancer’s skill set.‚ These gurus are also rated on the projects that they have completed for employers who have found them through Guru.com.‚ The employer can write a review on the person’s work, and some freelancers include some work samples in their profile so you can get an idea of their previous projects. One other thing that you’re able to see in the profiles while performing a search is how much money the freelancer has made from these projects.‚ You may want to choose someone who has had several projects this year instead of someone who hasn’t yet worked on any projects.‚ If you’re interested in learning more about any of these gurus, you can easily request a free quote or ask them a question.‚ See the example profile shot below:

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The interface of this site is really easy to use and there are tons of freelance consultants of all backgrounds for you to choose from.‚ This site‚ represents a good alternative‚ for companies to find talent for very short term projects, or perhaps to open the door to a long-term relationship with many different consultants for use outside of the site. On a‚ final note, the site does have “vendors” that represent themselves on the site as well. Using Guru.com as a middleman to work with vendors now represents another option at your disposal.

Slashdot is a site that states they have “news for nerds” and is owned by SourceForge which is a pioneer in the community-generated content space. The site has sections featuring IT, Hardware, Science and Games‚ for example.

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Slashdot has a job board, where users can post open positions and get them cross-posted to Linux.com, Freshmeat, IT Managers Journal and Newsforge, which are sites similar in set-up to Slashdot. The site claims to have a reach of over 9 million developers and IT professionals.

Slashdot users can join for free and submit articles to place on the site for readers to see.‚ For Internet Sourcers, this site is filled with articles‚ for techno-enthusiasts, and represents another‚ way to find leads or potential matches for open technical positions. Like most news sites, there is some digging involved.‚ The articles themselves can give good leads to other technical communities, groups and popular trends among the readers. Users can‚ look into the profiles of those who submit articles on the site and take part in the forum by adding comments. If you want to find out who submitted an article, there are not too many with contact information attached to them. Here is one for an example:

InterviewUp is a free site where users can‚ ”Search, Find, Share, Ask‚ and‚ Read Interview Questions and Answers”. InterviewUp is a newer site in my estimation and currently has over a thousand plus questions on the site. Only a small percentage had answers attached to them. For each question, users who sign-up on the site can either add-in their own answer to a question or add a comment. Users of the site can also simply browse the site or add their own questions with answers included.

There seems to be alot of potential with the site for the recruiting industry, and a good resource to potentially use for crafting interviews via phone or in person‚ for candidates. Once the site gets some more content and a larger user base, there could be alot to learn from here. ‚ 

The site lets you filter questions and search the site by tags, job titles or an “asked at” field. The bulk of the questions so far appear to be technical. Here is a screen shot: