Plaxo, per their site,‚ keeps people connected by solving the common and frustrating problem of out-of-date contact information. Plaxo is a site much like LinkedIn, in that it is a community with free and fee services for networking with business associates, and keeping in touch with family and friends. Plaxo can be thought of as an online rolodex for all of your contacts, with users having the option to show physical addresses, emails, phone numbers and fully detailed profiles.

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

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.

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

When sourcing for new candidates, I find that using multiple sites can yield far greater results than if you used each‚ site seperately. Let me give you an example. When using LinkedIn, the only way you can reach out to candidates‚ in your network is if‚ they are 1st connections (where you can see their email address),‚ through InMail (if you‚ have an upgraded LinkedIn Business account AND if you have some to use),‚ or through Introductions (which any user of LinkedIn knows can‚ be very hit and miss). By using Jigsaw‚ with LinkedIn,‚ you can increase your communication with these candidates. Let me show you:

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.

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.

Jobster is a site designed to connect employers with job seekers. Per their website - they are a “leading innovator in online recruitment technology”. Jobster gives employers many options when using their site - such as posting jobs, searching for candidates, building a talent network, managing email campaigns‚ and promoting their brand.

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.

LinkedIn, a professional networking site which I covered in a few previous‚ posts, has a great feature that is worthy of standout attention - LinkedIn Answers.‚ As a member of LinkedIn, users can ask their direct connections and the entire community 10 questions every month on a variety of topics from Technology, Careers, Business, Politics and more.

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.

Meetup.com is a site that organizes groups worldwide into one area. Meetup.com is a free site to either find and join groups on a wide range of topics from technology to sports to politics and more, or a site designed for starting your own group and promoting your own causes. The site has alot of search functionality, where you can‚ find “meetups” by topic, city or group, or find people and connect with them directly. There are a number of ways to communicate with groups and organizers of groups within the site as well. If you become a member of a group, you will get invited to all the local events, where you can attend and network with all the members face-to-face. For recruiters, this is a great way to reach out directly with potential job seekers and get referrals and leads for open positions. Staying active in your local community through groups found on Meetup.com is a great way to promote your company, market job openings‚ and get your name out there as well - all of this being subtle of course.‚ ‚ 

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.

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.‚ 

…XBOX LIVE. OK, indulge me for a moment will ya.

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?