Secondbrain opens up all sorts of avenues for recruiting, human resources and sourcing professionals. For starters, the site let’s users import content they find online from a wide variety of popular services such as Google, YouTube, Digg and Delicious to name a few. Users of Secondbrain can then search upon all of this content, share sites, pictures, videos and more with other users, in addition to finding users on Secondbrain and connecting with them. In a nutshell, recruiters and sourcers will discover new sites and new leads to pursue for finding available talent online, as well as connecting with new resources and people right in the Secondbrain community.

Here is an example of a user’s page on Secondbrain. Take notice of the red arrows. One arrow shows that each user gets to set-up his or her own profile, and another arrow shows that Secondbrain has search capabilities to search content (articles, sites, videos, pictures) as well as user profiles.

Grouply currently only supports Yahoo Groups, but states they are moving to support Google Groups and other groups shortly. After signing up, I found that the site is a real time saver in that you can manage all of your groups from one site and see an overview of the activity of all your groups on one page, much like a dashboard. When you subscribe to hundreds of different Yahoo Groups this can really be a huge time saver, not to mention a very efficient way to recruit.

As for networking, Grouply has thousands of users who manage their groups from the site, so naturally, Grouply let’s you connect and network with all the users in the community. Add Grouply to your list of social and business networking sites you use for recruiting and sourcing. It is worth a look when you are trying to reach out to new people for positions or simply to market your job openings.

I put together a short video recently on using Twitter and posted out on RecruitingBlogs. I wanted to extend this video to StaffBytes as well after receiving very positive feedback. Take time to check it out. There is lots of good Twitter coverage here. I think you will also “get” it after watching. In addition, check out Koka Sexton’s blog. I found a fantastic article there which runs through the in’s and out’s of Twitter and shows some very advanced techniques not covered in my video.

To start, you can create a profile to tell the community about yourself and what you do:

Next, you can connect with other recruiters and sourcers on the site and swap info, tips and positions you have with them:

You can post open recruiting related positions you have for the community and visitors of the site to see:

Also, resumes of recruiters and sourcers can be found laying around out here if you look under the “replies” to posted positions:

Other ways to use the site include blogging directly on the site, uploading videos, contributing to and reading the “forum”, and advertising or staying up to date on recruiting industry events. The one thing that really makes this site stand apart though is the participation of it’s members. An example of this is “Tutorial Tuesday” which is one of the weekly features out on RecruitingBlogs that it’s members can be apart of. It represents a nice way to share expertise, learn new techniques‚ and find new people in the field. Below is an example (you have to go to the site to watch the video). Check it out!

With all the attention on networking sites, Ning is one site that stands apart, in that it not only let’s you join various networks but also let’s users build their own social network as well.

Per Ning, “the site offers a wide range‚ and diversity of social networks being used by everyone from students to artists to bloggers to alumni and more.” A quick search on the key word “software” pulled up dozens of networks. Here is a snapshot:

I clicked through to the Software Testing Club to show an example of a social network inside of Ning. Each network has different abilities, but most allow it’s members to create a profile and interact with that particular network whether it be by contributing to the forum, adding resources to share with others, or adding a blog post to the network. Other features include uploading videos, posting photos and conducting events. This is the general layout of most of the networks:

As a Recruiter or Sourcer, you can imagine the possibilities Ning presents. The first is to search Ning and join networks that seem to be inline with areas you are currently recruiting for and begin to network with others and post open opportunities in your company. The second would be to develop a social network that your company would approve (using their name, logo and brand) or start a hot topic of interest and welcome each job seeker and candidate you come in contact with to join it. As time goes by, you will be developing a warehouse of both active and passive job seekers who you can market job openings to. Best yet…it’s free. As far as getting the network set-up, it can be easy and hard depending on what you want on your network and what capabilities you want there. Visit the site and determine for yourself.

An especially valuable aspect to Plaxo is that each‚ member has a “Pulse Stream” on their home page. It‚ basically lets you know what your Plaxo network is up to.‚ The Plaxo Pulse Stream represents a great way for recruiters and sourcers to‚ spread the word about job openings and a unique way to attract top talent, find job seekers and to network with others. For example,‚ Plaxo “hooks up‚ feeds” to sites that you use, such as Blogs (WordPress/Twitter), Social Networks (Facebook/LinkedIn) and a lot more. When you post or use these sites, your activity is displayed out on the Plaxo Pulse Stream. So, if you wanted to get the word out about job openings in your company, this represents a nice option for you.

If you join specific groups within Plaxo, each group has it’s own “Pulse Stream” which helps recruiters and sourcers to target a specific audience and‚ also allows for another outlet‚ to gain potential job‚ seekers for your open‚ positions. Here are a few examples:

Here, you can see a job seeker reaching out to the group I joined called “Networking for Global Entrepreneurs”:

Here, you can see a manager or recruiter displaying a message about a job opportunity in the same group:

If‚ you currently use‚ Plaxo,‚ you may already‚ be seeing the benefits. For those who‚ have not joined yet, I‚ recommend it, and believe it to be‚ a nice compliment to your LinkedIn networks and a solid‚ place to gain some‚ extra traction for your recruiting and sourcing efforts.

I joined a group called Web 2.0 (Entrepreneurs) inside of Facebook which currently‚ has 34K members.‚ I see two places‚ in the “Discussion Board” and “The Wall” where those members are posting up messages with full‚ details and links to job openings.‚ 

Here are a few examples of job postings that I found:

and…

Facebook has‚ numerous‚ groups to join, and lots that are very niche and specific to a certain subject, topic or theme. Take a look for yourself if you are a member of Facebook.‚ I suggest joining groups where you think that you may be able to attract talent that best fits your job requirements, and also groups that welcome and allow posts for job openings.

*If you would like full screen, hit the square box in the bottom right hand corner of the video player.

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

Digg opens the door for recruiters and internet sourcers in many ways. Let me show you:

Let’s say you want to search for stories that were put on Digg about “ASP.NET”. You can see that several stories and links appear below. What is most valuable to recruiters and sourcers is the fact that each article gives the link source and the user that submitted the article. This creates two leads per story - one being the link source provided is a new avenue for recruiters and sourcers to pursue for approaching and discovering ASP.NET talent, and the second being the user listed with the story, in that this person may be a great potential candidate in the making! If not, he/she may be a great resource to reach out to for knowledge on the .NET community. In the example below you have the sources gutfire.com, ajaxprojects.com, ajaxlines.com and aspnetcafe.com along with users tak111 and a few others:

Another feature of Digg is that you can search for, track and stay in touch with other Digg users. In this example, I did a search for other users in Pittsburgh, PA. Think of Digg also in terms of “social networking” but with much less details and information on users of the site. Relationship building should be thought of in a long-term approach. Getting help and asking others for expertise based upon the stories they submit, i.e. if someone keeps submitting programming, development and technology specific articles, this may be someone to keep tabs on (if you are a Technical Recruiter for instance).

Finally, Digg gives users the options for RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) which streams certain content to a Google Reader for instance. If you understand RSS feeds, this opens the possibilities for recruiters and sourcers to only get stories delivered to them from Digg that they are looking for, and nothing else. Let’s say you want only “programming” stories to be sent to you. This will help you to build up a stable of great sources around the web for finding technical talent.

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

Here is how it works: After you sign up for free, you can start to build your Naymz profile.‚ Basic membership for the site is free, but there are two upgrade packages that you can purchase.‚ The idea behind Naymz is that you can use this site to build up your professional reputation.‚ You invite others to connect to you on the site as references to vouch for your professional experience.‚ You get points for sending out invitations, adding information to your profile, and the points are also relative to the points of the other users on the site.‚ These points count toward your “RepScore”, and the higher your RepScore is, the more “reputable” you are considered.

You can easily add connections on the site by importing your connections from LinkedIn and various email sites such as Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and Mac.‚ You are also able to search jobs that are posted on the web (the search is run by Indeed).‚ In addition to being as a site to connect to your business contacts, Naymz also serves as a way to get your profile near the top of Google searches on your name.‚ The website discusses their Search Engine Optimization techniques and how they want to help their members get the most positive information about themselves out on the web.

Naymz also gives you access to several different types of reports:‚ you can view detailed activity of any visitors that view your profile under the Network Activity section; you can track your reputation on the Reputation Monitor, which shows you a list of all of the web results on your name; and you can monitor any updates of profiles of others in your network and web activity of your contacts in the Network Profile Activity section and the Network Web Activity section.

Adding your profile to Naymz can only help you increase your exposure to your network of contacts and potentially help you get your name out there with positive feedback from others.‚ 

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform
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Plaxo has well over 15M users currently and has created a ton of buzz recently with the addition of their social networking feature, Plaxo Pulse, which creates a stream of information on what other users are doing that you are directly connected to. See the screen shot below as an example:

Plaxo has a real “LinkedIn” feel with the ability to peer into other people’s connections to see who is in their network, and with the ability to send messages and invitations to “connect” with others. Below you can see that Adam Boone (a connection of mine) has several people in his “connections” that I don’t know and gives me the‚ option to reach out to them through‚ the Plaxo network. Sound‚ familiar?‚ 

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Plaxo let’s you “hook up” with other sites and tools that you use and syncs directly with them, such as Outlook and LinkedIn for example - that way anyone who is in your other address books will come over to Plaxo. From there you can notify these people you are on Plaxo. Plaxo also has search features to find other Plaxo users, which comes in handy for recruiters, internet sourcers, researchers and others. In addition, Plaxo has groups, where users network on specific topics (another great opening for fellow recruiters and sourcers). A final note - like LinkedIn - the larger your network is (the more people you are connected to), the more people you can see in Plaxo.

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

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.

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

Once in LinkedIn, find a profile in your search of a candidate you want to contact (an example of mine is below). Let’s say they are not a 1st connection,‚ you‚ don’t have InMail’s to use, you don’t want to use “introductions”, there is no email in the profile (ignore mine please), and you don’t know how to get in touch with them.

Note what company they work for (General Lead in this case) and go into Jigsaw seperately.

Once in Jigsaw, look up the company name‚ of the candidate (General Lead for the example) and get‚ one of the‚ business cards (using their point system which is either free or fee depending on what you use).

From here, you have the email string that is used by that company. You can‚ leverage this knowledge when coming across other candidates in your searches for General Lead. You will know that the email string for this company is (”first initial last name AT generallead.com”).‚ You can bypass the LinkedIn communication features for this company next time you need to. For larger organizations, such as Fortune 500 companies, you may have to get a few Jigsaw business card examples, as they use multiple email strings. For telephone sourcers, you can see the phone string for that company as well.‚ Dial extensions up and down from the last few digits to get to different seats in an office building from there.

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 with most career websites, their are free and pay plans to choose from. Jobster has a variety of different packages designed to meet most recruiting needs. Jobster has partnerships in place with companies such as‚ Facebook and ZoomInfo to provide a wealth of contacts and additional sourcing data found outside of the Jobster network. Posting jobs gives you the option to pay $25 up front and receive unlimited applicants, or pay nothing upfront, and pay $5 only when a job seeker‚ applies to your posting. There are other ad options and upgrades, such as sending a feed of all your company jobs to be included in their search engine.

The free option lets you create a user profile and search across their network by key words and locations. Each profile can be filled with work history, resumes, personal information, videos‚ and tags.

Here is an example search. I want to find people with sales experience located in Miami, Florida. Please note the arrows in the screenshot. Each profile has what Jobster calls “superstar tags” which are key words a user picks out to best describe themselves. There are ways to refine your search on the right hand side, such as filtering profiles to find only those who are “job hunting”.

An example of a profile I clicked on is here. Alot of profiles have resumes attached to them, and there are ways to reach out to each user by “leaving a note”.‚ Users can get set-up in their system for notifications on notes, candidates, profiles, you name it.

For recruiters and sourcers, LinkedIn Answers represents a great avenue for finding information. Let me show you an example question I posed recently and some of the responses I received. I‚ asked‚ ”Can you help me identify the top‚ ’International’ job boards/career sites?”‚ I received 55 answers in the 7 days it was posted to the‚ LinkedIn community. Most answers were very direct with links to valuable‚ career sites I was unaware of. Asking questions using LinkedIn not only helps to provide good leads for recruiters and sourcers, but ultimately will help to build your network there.

Here is a look at the site in action. Say I want to find groups focused on Information Technology local to Pittsburgh, PA.

I note one group titled DotNext-Pittsburgh and click on it.

I see that this meetup group is for people who like to learn new skills in the technology arena. This group has 4 ways listed where a member attending the meeting could get involved. For example: you could introduce‚ your company’s product or service (making it relevant to the group) and make an impression on why your company would be a great place to work.

I continue further, and click through on the organizer of the group and note that there are a few ways to reach out to him without attending the meetup. Say for instance the group really frowns on recruiter attending. So I may send the organizer my contact information and see if I can share my company and openings with him and the group at the next meeting. It sure doesn’t hurt.

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.

I recently got an XBOX 360 and got signed up for the XBOX LIVE which allows you to play video games online with or against other gamers from around the globe. I never thought in a million years that this would be a place to recruit someone. But sure enough, while I was into a game last night, I found myself thinking just that. Hey now, quit laughing over there. No seriously - let me fill you in.

Last night there were over 500,000 people online in the XBOX LIVE community, with a vast majority of those numbers from the U.S. When you sign up, you set yourself up with a screen name, much like the way you would when signing up for any other networking community, like MySpace for instance. While playing, you wear a headset, and over the course of your gaming, you talk to the other people you are playing against (some good and bad talk mind you), but there is ALOT of dialogue there. You find yourself asking questions such as “Where you from BATMAN 320?” or “What do you do X-MAN?” XBOX LIVE actually makes recruiting easy believe it or not. You have the ability to add friends to your personal list and re-connect with them each time online (so you can build some rapport). You can also have one-on-one chats in the online lobbys outside of the games. In addition, you have the ability to look into your “friends” lists as well, and see who they know (easy way to introduce yourself to new people then).

What do you think the demographics are on the people who are playing in XBOX LIVE? My thoughts are these are people who like technology and perhaps a large percentage of them would make excellent candidates for open technical positions, if you know how to talk to them. What are your thoughts?

P.S. If you want to extend your network, send me an invitation. I am an open networker.

I ran a quick search on topics currently being discussed on “java” technologies. Here is a screen shot of the results:

Here is the list below, check them out:

(1) 43 Things (2) Advogato (3) Amina (4) aSmallWorld (5) Bebo (6) BlackPlanet.com (7) Blue Dot (8) Bolt (9) Broadcaster.com (10) Buzznet (11) CarDomain (12) Care2 (13) Classmates.com (14) Consumating (15) Couchsurfing (16) Cyworld (17) Dandelife (18) DeadJournal (19) OpenID (20) Dodgeball.com (21) DontStayIn (22) Doostang (23) Ecademy (24) eSPIN (25) Facebook (26) Faceparty (27) Flickr (28) Flirtomatic (29) Fotki (30) Friends Reunited (31) Friendster (32) Fr¼hst¼ckstreff (33) Gaia Online Anime (34) Geni.com (35) GoPets (36) Graduates.com (37) Grono.net (38) Hi5 (39) Hyves (40) imeem (41) Infield Parking (42) IRC-Galleria (43) iWiW (44) Joga Bonito (45) Last.fm (46) LibraryThing (47) LinkedIn (48) LiveJournal (49) LunarStorm (50) MEETin (51) Meetup.com (52) MiGente.com Latinos (53) Mixi (54) MOG (55) Multiply (56) My Opera Community (57) MySpace (58) myYearbook (59) Netlog (60) Nexopia (61) orkut (62) OUTeverywhere (63) Passado (64) Piczo (65) Playahead (66) ProfileHeaven (67) Pownce (68) RateItAll (69) Reunion.com (70) Ryze (71) Searchles (72) Sconex (73) Shelfari (74) Soundpedia (75) Sportsvite (76) Studivz (77) Stumbleupon (78) TagWorld (79) TakingITGlobal (80) The Doll Palace (81) The Student Center (82) Threadless (83) T-shirts (84) TravBuddy.com (85) Travellerspoint (86) Tribe.net (87) Twitter (88) Vampire Freaks (89) Vox (90) WAYN (91) WebBiographies (92) Windows Live Spaces (93) Xanga (94) XING (95) Xuqa (96) Yahoo! 360° (97) Yelp (98) Zaadz (99) Zooomr

The site has both free and pay accounts. A free account will get the job done, but a pay account opens more possibilities for recruiting and sourcing. Pay accounts let you use LinkedIn’s email system called “InMail” and gets you more search results, as well as letting you make more “introductions” to other professionals. See a comparison of the accounts below:

For searching, LinkedIn offers a good bit of options:

The advanced search features are shown here as an example:

For an example of how a profile looks on LinkedIn - check mine out. I’m always open to networking with other professionals and will accept invitations. A video tutorial will be offered on LinkedIn in the next few days.