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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

I remember last year Amybeth Hale put together a great post on “Skype Searching” and how to run searches out on Skype. Please check out her blog post for more. I think her article hits all the key points and shows step-by-step how recruiting can be done with Skype, and all for free.

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!

First I click “Technology” in the top toolbar.

Next, I click on “Computers” half way down the page on the left hand side.

I then click the first video titled “Computer Basics” under Hardware SOS.

Once the video starts, I note two things. First, I see the name, title and company are listed for the “expert” who has developed the video. Second, there is a “Meet the Expert” link at the top.

When clicking on “Meet the Expert”, I discover more information about this potential passive candidate, including details about his job duties, technical skills and work location. His current company is listed as well. All of this information gives me plenty of leads to go on to determine if he may be a fit for one of my open positions, and how to track him down if needed.

Another avenue to pursue on VideoJug‚ is to utilize the search feature at the top of the site. This‚ will allow you to locate videos based on key words and important skills sets.‚ 

One final way to take advantage of VideoJug is to ask a question in the Discussion Forum‚ and open dialog with experts and potential job seekers.

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.

Recruiters have the ability to search for active and passive candidates in Emurse. Candidates create profiles‚ that are either free for recruiters to‚ view or require a fee. Fees are based on popularity and‚ availability for each candidate. Recruiters log into an “Employers” section where they are brought to a basic search screen.‚ The database seems to be fairly diverse, offering candidates from a wide range of areas from Information Technology, Sales, Finance and Government.‚ To show an example, I did a search on‚ profiles in Emurse with the key words “oracle” and “sql” from any location. The search pulled back 493 results.

Recruiters are‚ only‚ given the first name‚ and first initial of the last name for each candidate. Small details are provided for each profile. Recruiters will be able to see past positions, top keywords and job preferences for each candidate. Some are free but most require setting‚ up a pay account and purchasing‚ the contact. This is the screen shot of what appears when you want to move forward with a candidate and how it works:

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For Job Seekers, Emurse offers a “resume builder” where candidates‚ are walked through a step-by-step approach to developing a professional resume, along with expert tips and advice,‚ several design layouts, and options for marketing and distributing their resume outside of Emurse.‚ Here is an example resume (screen shot below):

Emurse also offers the ability for Job Seekers to organize detailed profiles and search for jobs,‚ as‚ the site‚ ties into Indeed, which is a search engine specifically for jobs. Click on the link for further information on Indeed.

My overall take is that it adds another good option for recruiters to use when sourcing for candidates, and a solid option for job seekers, especially with the guidance in forming a high quality resume.

Mobile Storm is a digital marketing company that provides services to both small and medium businesses as well as offering enterprise solutions. Specifically they provide robust options for companies including email, sms/texting, voice and fax campaigns for your company.‚ These‚ offerings‚ allow you to do large campaigns to targeted audiences (i.e. candidates in‚ your database regarding open positions in your company),‚ free up your time‚ from pointing, clicking and choosing among each individual resume in your database (not to mention the time to reach out to‚ each one‚ individually),‚ help spread the word about your openings and your company (creating a viral marketing effect), and turn-up‚ active and passive job seekers from your ATS.‚ Fairly cost-effective too.

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Emma is an “email marketing and communications service” that essentially let’s users create custom email newsletters and campaigns. Emma offers self-service options for companies of all sizes. Essentially you can create templates or get help in creating custom email templates to run very polished and unique looking emails. Emma is set-up for companies to run large campaigns to specific audiences - and gives recruiters and sourcers a way to reach out to candidates with more of a personal touch not found in standard text emails. This service has full campaign management, tracking every email out the door with response rates. The pricing seems affordable as well.

Here is an example template of how United Way is promoting their message through Emma…

Other options in the “campaign” marketplace include: Constant Contact,‚ Campaign Monitor, PopularMedia, StrongMail, EmailLabs, iContact, eCampaign and a slew of many more.‚ If you run a search online, you will honestly get‚ a headache with all the options. I think that the above selections have the right options and price points for most size organizations. Let me know your thoughts…

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.

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.

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One product in particular, called meebo me, is “designed for anyone with a home on the web. If you’ve got a web page where you’d like to communicate with your visitors, meebo me allows you to see the people who are visiting your web page and chat with them.”‚ Examples include Wordpress or Blogger (blogs), social networks like MySpace and Friendster, Salesforce.com, and any other web page you can control.

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Think of the possibilities for recruiters and sourcers‚ here. You post open positions on sites where you have a profile, and add-in meebo me, which gives visitors to your page more ways to reach out to you. Instant Message is‚ a fairly “non-threatening” way for someone to reach out, and not have to get into a full discussion at the same time. Instant Message gives potential candidates an easy way to reach out for a first step and test the waters while hunting for a new job, not to mention handy while someone is at work! Once a Meebo account is created, you can also advertise your Meebo account in other areas like your email signature (Outlook for example), and other places like LinkedIn.

Now about those other features…a quick search in meebo rooms for “programming” pulls up several seperate chat rooms to choose from. Most were empty when I checked, but offer a way to leave your questions‚ for others to answer as well as leaving links, such as‚ a job opening.

Also, meebo has a community forum to communicate and search for other meebo users. Some users in their “directory” list their occupation and several ways to contact them outside of meebo. See below:

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Clicking on the “Careers” link in the main site’s left navigational column sends you to the landing page of the JavaWorld.com Career Center. All of the usual functionality can be found here for job seekers including Quick Job Search, Featured Jobs and Companies, Post Your Resume and many other job seeker tools. Recruiters and sourcers have the option of job postings and resume database access. A quick search in their database on “Java” netted 96,000 resumes total‚ (see below):

The site also peels back resume “web results”‚ as well. “Java” netted 60,000 resumes here:

But I think that the hidden gem in the JavaWorld.com site are the capabilities that it provides for recruitment professionals to learn more about the Java developer mindset and the inherent advantage of understanding more about this valuable segment of the IT population.

In the JavaWorld.com Career Center, you can see at a glance what the top U.S. cities for IT jobs are, and then search those cities to learn what kinds of technology professionals are in demand regionally. Two other online tools that I found helpful were:

• The site’s capability to perform job-related searches using IT keywords, which is an excellent way to learn the basics of available technology job assignments if one isn’t immediately familiar with the terminology, and
• IT Job Descriptions, in which the site provides basic job descriptions - many of which include video support - for a number of career assignments. This struck me as a very valuable resource for recruiters seeking quickly-accessed, specific information about filling slots in the technology sector.

JavaWorld.com is a cleanly-designed, excellently-organized site - not surprising, considering its target audience - that really does include a great many decent resources for recruiters and job seekers alike.

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

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

*If you would like full screen, please hit the small box on the lower right hand corner of the media player.

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

Let’s say you are sourcing in a new area geographically, and are unsure of the surrounding cities and towns. You find a perfect candidate while sourcing, and you want to determine if this candidate is within a commutable range of the client site. In this example screen shot below, I am trying to find out if Stamford, CT. (where‚ a perfect candidate lives) is closeby to Hartford, CT. (where‚ the client is).‚ You can see it shows that it is 1hr. 30 min. away, most likely too far for the candidate. By using Google Maps, I can also see what‚ surrounding areas‚ ARE within a reasonable commutable distance, and I will take note in future searches.

Another example is say you are searching for businesses to source from a city you have not worked in before. Google Maps will do a search and show you where businesses are located nearby, along with contact information and links to their websites. In this example below, I searched for financial companies located near Hartford, CT.

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In my‚ opinion, not enough emphasis and strategy is placed on‚ subject lines in emails - so I wanted to‚ pull together‚ knowledge from‚ others‚ in‚ the recruiting industry and find out what‚ has‚ been used and‚ what has worked.‚ Here are some of the suggested subject lines:

• Hoping to network with you
• A confidential career appraisal and access upper quartile job opportunities in your industry
• Salary survey for (a specific industry)
• Job Title + ‘Please Respond’
• Challenging career opportunities with xyz ltd.
• Interesting career opportunities with xyz ltd.
• Message from “firm name”
• Geoff, your old resume‚ 
• Geoff, Recruiter calling
• Name followed by the name-of-someone-they-know suggested we connect
• Can we setup a time to talk?
• Would you be available for a phone interview?
• Career Opportunities at ______________
• Would you be interested in opportunities at __________?
• Your Resume Online - ________ Opportunities
• Hi _______ - Interest in _____________
• Hi _______ - _____________ is hiring
• Excellent Opportunity at XXX (Direct to a personal account)
• You’re professional expertise is requested (professional organization)‚ 
• Introductions or Phone discussion requested (work account)‚ 
• Help a friend find a new position and earn a referral bonus (any account)
• Recruiter seeking numerical astrophysics Ph.D. for XXXXX
• You are the answer to my client’s prayers

Someone also‚ presented‚ four great articles on the topic of “email subject lines” to check out as well:

1. http://www.web-source.net/web_development/email_marketing.htm‚ 
2. http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6909.asp
3. http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/EmailCommunication.htm
4. http://www.gettingattention.org/my_weblog/2007/10/email-subject-l.html

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

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

I found a site I liked recently called Joopz, where you can set-up an account for free and send and receive text messages all online at no cost. The interface is very easy to use and displays all messages outgoing and incoming, along with other nice features. Here is an example of a recent outgoing test text for this post:

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You get notified online when you get‚ a reply:

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Texting affords recruiters and sourcers a great way to further reach out and communicate with potential job seekers and candidates. There are links to other free text messaging services online here.

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

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

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.

Even though this article was written during the “Dot Com” era in 1999, I feel as if IT Recruiters are going through a similar situation now.‚ In a lot of markets, there are fewer candidates readily available, so we are forced to come up with creative methods to find those perfect candidates.‚ If you weren’t already aware of some of the techniques discussed in this article that employers are trying to avoid, now you have learned some new tricks.‚ 

Dialing different desk numbers through a phone directory, paying for hard copies of employee directories, and doing some thorough web searches for employees of specific companies are methods that employers are well aware of.‚ I don’t think any company can really prevent recruiters from getting to their employees, one way or another.‚ A few years ago, I had the VP of HR from a company call me directly and tell me to stop emailing her employees from a directory that I had obtained legally.‚ Ironically, there was a pretty high rate of response from the employees that I did contact, and it was a great way for me to find some passive candidates and get referrals.

I hope you also find this article interesting.‚ As recruiters, we need to continue to come up with ways to find these hard-to-find passive candidates, especially as employers tighten security to keep us out.

After sending out emails to candidates, I received the following messages as the “Out of Office AutoReply”:

Example 1:

I will be on personal vacation from‚ July‚ 3 through‚ July 4‚ and will return to the Herndon office on‚ July 5. I will have limited access to email and voicemail. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact —– at (—)— —-.

Example 2:

Thank you for your email. I will be on vacation March‚ 15-19 without access to email. In my abscence, pls contact the following individuals:

—- —– Management Issues, Sarbanes Oxley Testing/General Remediation Issues, IT Audit

—- —– Logging & Monitoring Project, ESM Projects, CobiT Project, Operational Risk

—- —– Scheduling and Administrative Matters

Gets you thinking doesn’t it? In these two emails, I have colleagues and managers of candidates along with direct dial extensions and some titles. You can work the email address patterns from there too. I have tons of these types of emails to go through every time a holiday comes up, whether it be Memorial Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Try for yourself and see where it takes 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.

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.

Check out the link here which explains what they did step-by-step.

You can search what are called “resume books” for each of the schools you are linked to.‚ Resume books are basically groups of resumes, organized in different ways such as by major or by industry.‚ Whenever you choose a folder, it pulls up a list which includes the name of the student, their GPA, graduation date, and their major.‚ You then have to click on each name to pull up their profile, and on their profile page, you can click to view their resume.‚ You can also email the student directly from their profile page if you are interested in their qualifications.

Another feature of this site is the ability to post jobs for the individual schools you are linked to.‚ These jobs can be accessed through the school’s Career Center, where students can apply and have their resumes sent directly to you.‚ Registering your company with Experience and linking to colleges in your area is a great way to find entry-level candidates.‚ This is also a helpful tool if your company has internships available, since many of the resumes posted are ones of students who have not yet graduated but want to get their foot in the door early.

Why use FlipDog at all? Once you decide to apply to a job listing, the site links out to Monster for that process. FlipDog seems to exist purely for the utility of providing a listing and then flipping - pun, I’m guessing, intended - the job seeker over to Monster. In the end it’s hard to understand why one wouldn’t skip the whole thing and go right to Monster. At FlipDog there is no ability to create a profile, save job searches, subscribe to an RSS feed, or perform any of the higher-level functionality that users have come to expect.

For recruiters, Flipdog can be used to find competitive intelligence. For example, if you are searching for candidates skilled in say Java technologies in the Washington, DC area, Flipdog will allow you to use boolean search strings (AND, OR, NOT) based on key words. From there, you can see which companies and competitors of yours are seeking the same type of resources. This will give you a very solid indication that they already have that type of talent in-house, and you can focus your sourcing strategies on recruiting their internal employees.‚ See the example below:

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.

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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:

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