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

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

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

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.

Are you looking for another way to find passive candidates? As a recruiter, who isn’t? Passive-Candidates.com does just that for you. This site is free for recruiters to find resumes that have been posted on the web, usually as personal web pages. The site looks easy to use, and well, it is! As the website says, it’s “The search engine that grows each time it’s searched”.

For every one resume you share with the site, you will get thirty back for free. Here’s how: you do have to do a little work in order to get the thirty free resumes as stated (or less depending on the search results). The site requires you to input the link to a resume that you have found on the Internet (note that your link will be rejected if it is already in their search engine results). If you are doing a search on Google or Yahoo for resumes and come across links, save‚ some results and load‚ them up on Passive-Candidates.com. The resumes that this site gives you in return are ones that have been entered by other recruiters who have used the site before.

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This site represents a great way to stumble upon a personal web page of a person who may have posted their resume a few years back and who isn’t actively job searching and putting their resume on job boards for others to find. Even though you may receive some duplicate or outdated‚ resumes, finding passive candidates in this industry is one of the best ways to recruit. The site also respresents a great way to build up a large personal candidate database for free.

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.‚ 

Employers, Recruiters and Job Seekers alike can find a lot to like at WorkGiant, a website that practices “Performance Based Recruiting”. More on that in a moment.

For Job Seekers, WorkGiant offers the usual capabilities to create an online profile, post a resume, and find jobs based on searchable criteria. WorkGiant offers a unique incentive in its referral program. Job Seekers who have recommended WorkGiant to their friends can pick up anywhere from $50 to $200 on every referral hired by a WorkGiant employer - and the program costs job seekers nothing to join.

WorkGiant offers “Performance Based Recruiting” to employers who join the service. What this means is that, rather than charging an up-front fee for listing open positions and searching resumes, WorkGiant allows employers to list all of their available employment positions for free, with no expiration dates, and the site only charges a fee when an employer’s position has been filled (the fee works out to 1 percent of that position’s annual salary).

WorkGiant also provides:

• The ability for Job Seekers to control their private information
• Complete job listings to job seekers instead of just a select few
• The “Recycled Candidate Program” where employers and recruiters can recycle surplus candidates
• Precision Match Technology to ensure accurate database searches to match job openings.

WorkGiant is a decent site and even features a live support interface, but the site’s usability could stand some updating. Some page load times are a bit on the long side, and navigating through the site’s pages can be a bit confusing. When you’ve reached the “Learn More” page for employers or job seekers, a video Flash presentation plays automatically with no ability to pause, turn the sound off, or avoid loading the show each time you visit the page. Another site worth checking out in this space is BountyJobs, which I covered in a post earlier this month.

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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For job seekers, having a well written and engaging resume is very important. A resume can open or close the door to new opportunities. Common mistakes found in resumes include spelling and grammatical errors, length, inadequate information, missing information, incorrect and overlapping dates and disorganized layouts.

A job seeker got in touch with me recently and asked for my advice on his resume. With his permission, I put together a short video to demonstrate the changes I would make to his resume to get more attention and more leads on job and career boards as well as amongst other recruiting professionals in the industry. If you want “full screen” for this video, click the square button on the right hand side of the video toolbar.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Below are two screenshots of the resume, before and after my suggested changes. What are your thoughts?

Before:

After:

With such a competitive job market right now, it’s pays to be creative. One solution I have used with success to reach out to job seekers is to use video emails. A company called Accelstream offers solutions for inserting video messages in your emails - and I have found that they do get a better rate of return (response from candidates) than the average “text only” emails. With a camera, record a message‚ describing your open job opportunity and why the candidate‚ would benefit from working for your company, load it up to Accelstream and add the video to your email.‚ It’s pretty straightforward to use and easy to get going. It shows great initiative on your end to the candidate, and the subscription services Accelstream offers‚ are fairly cost-effective.

This is what will show in emails that you send out:

A video screen pops up from there when you click on the video frames in the email. The video starts playing automatically. The screen is customizable - where you can insert your company logo, pictures, text and contact information.‚ 

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There‚ are a few video examples on the Accelstream site to get a feel for what they offer. Try a campaign‚ for one job opening you have and see what kind of results you get. ‚ 

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.