Squidoo is a site where “everyone is an expert on something”.‚ The site‚ hosts thousands of free “lenses” which are a one-page take, opinion, or expert look at a particular topic. These lenses are a way for users of the site to share expertise, teach people, establish an identity, build brand recognition, highlight websites and a variety of other creative reasons.

The site is set-up with the ability to search a particular topic and communicate with the user of‚ a page or “lensmaster” as the site calls them. This makes the site especially useful for recruiters and sourcers as they can either search the Squidoo site for people with expertise in a particular skill set and reach out to them, or set-up their own lens on their company or a particular topic and drive traffic to their open positions or website. I found many lenses on the site to give links directly to open positions they are currently recruiting for. This ultimately will lead to more candidates and more leads for open positions. In addition, The site acts as a medium for recruiters to really get the word out about their company and their expertise. The site currently has 117,641 members each with their own lens.

Here is an example lens set-up for job openings:

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A great lens to start out with is the guide to creating a successful Squidoo. This will give you ideas on how to effectively use the site moving forward.

Massively robust, immersive and philosophical, idealist - Action Without Borders is a wildly sprawling hybrid site. Part non-profit job-seeking; part philanthropic; part social network and part community outreach, it’s quite an impressive destination.‚ 

The Software Contractors’ Guild website is a place for “career contractors”, as we call them in this business, to come to post their resumes and credentials for prospective employers.‚ It’s also a great way for recruiters to find highly experienced consultants.‚ 

This site gives recruiters the ability to post open contract software positions and search for contractors numerous ways - by keyword, location, preferred working location, name, et cetera.‚ Another way to search is by using the “Search by Skill Set” function, which breaks down almost every technical skill set that you could ever think of.‚ This website is especially helpful when you are searching for hard-to-find skill sets that aren’t as prevalent on major job boards.‚ 

The screen shot below shows an example of the results that come up while doing a skill set search on SAP FI/CO contractors.‚ Next to each contractor name, the site shows you whether or not the contractor is currently available (if they regularly update their profile), and where they are willing to work.‚ This site is free for employers and recruiters, and the contractors post their contact information in their profile so they can be contacted directly.‚ 

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Gmane (pronouned mane) is a mailing list archive established in 2002 for‚ thousands of‚ technical groups worldwide. Gmane‚ offers a way where mailing lists are‚ funneled into news groups. No messages ever expire. All messages have the ability to be searched across by key words, groups, people and dates‚ (boolean search capabilities included). Members as well as outsiders can post to‚ most mailing lists without being a member, and can read all information posted to‚ the‚ various‚ groups. There are groups here that cover a wide range of topics, but the overwhelming majority are technical lists dealing with everything from Linux to Java to .NET technologies. The site‚ states that they are‚ ”heavily dominated by computer-related mailing lists, which reflects the interests of the user base.” The site currently has 9,984 lists with over 60 million plus messages archived.

Gmane has great potential for the recruiting community.‚ Everything archived‚ has‚ some form of user contact information listed per article, some with just email, while others have full names and companies they work for. It’s a safe bet that someone giving a detailed answer on Java code must have some experience with Java. Wouldn’t this be someone you may want to reach out to‚ for your job openings?‚ Another solid assumption would be that if one user from a certain company identified on Gmane is using Java, that other users‚ at this company‚ are as well. That company would‚ represent a good lead to pursue further.‚ This especially comes in handy when you are identifying a very obscure or niche skill set not found in many places. In addition,‚ I saw several job postings in mailing lists - so there is always the option to introduce yourself and your open positions by posting to a certain list.

The‚ screen shot‚ below shows a quick search for J2EE (a Java based skill set). Gmane searched across roughly 50 million emails from various groups and pulled up close to 184,000 articles‚ where J2EE was being discussed among users of the site. You can see by the arrow that email contact details identify each user.

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The one downside I see from Gmane is that you can’t identify very easily where people on mailing lists are from geographically. So if you are trying to locate technical talent in Java from say New York, you may have to take additional steps in your search, such as looking up the company name a user works for, or “googling” a users name to see information on where they may live. A previous post on Pipl may help here.

By now the vast majority of the recruiting industry has taken notice of Craigslist. Craigslist originally was a small website set-up for the San Francisco area as a way for the local community to sell items (before eBay became a household name), find local services‚ and advertise available apartments and houses for rent. Job seekers and Recruiters were not frequenting the site. Now, Craigslist dominates what we call the “classifieds” space with a few other online companies nipping at it’s heals. I will talk about others in future posts.

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Craigslist is a very good alternative to the major job boards such as Monster and Careerbuilder in that there are options for posting positions here, and searching across resumes posted‚ to the site‚ as well. Posting is free in most of the‚ cities, with small fees in some of the major cities including NY, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. More than 1.5 million jobs are posted to the site every month. In terms of traffic, the site gets 8 billion page views per month - so you are guaranteed to have alot of people see your postings. I did a quick search in their resumes section and found 75 “Software Developers” in the San Francisco area. Here is a screen shot of the resume searcing capabilities:

Craigslist has expanded well beyond it’s northern California roots to encompass every major city in the U.S. as well as Canada and many other countries overseas. The site covers 450 cities worldwide.‚ I have heard many success stories from using Craigslist as a strong alternative to other career sites that have forced employers’ hands with huge fees.‚