I previously wrote in StaffBytes on LinkedIn, and wanted to follow up on that post with a video tutorial on how to use the site to find passive candidates. The following 21 minute video will walk you through the search features of LinkedIn exclusively and how to use them effectively. There is a an option in the video toolbar to go full screen so you can see it better. Hit the square button next to the volume control if you want this. Sit back, take some notes and enjoy. Please let me know your feedback or questions.
P.S. If you want to extend your network, send me an invitation. I am an open networker.
Shuzak is a “Social Network for Geeks”. I didn’t make it up - it’s right on their website. Shuzak is a site where people gather to talk about Information Technology, Products, Science, Movies and other topics. The site, like most other social networking sites, represents a potential way for recruiters and sourcers to find people for positions. This site happens to be very specific to technology and technical related discussions. While not very large yet in my estimation, there are ways to use the site to introduce yourself, meet other people and recruit. I imagine that more strategy and a tactical approach needs to be taken here - but is another avenue to recruit nonetheless. Shuzak allows for posting of new topics for the community to see, searching other member profiles by key words, and viewing profiles. I found some contact information listed in some profiles. You can add a user as a “friend” if you can’t find contact information, and really want to reach out to them. On Shuzak, there is also a chat room where discussions are ongoing and you can view older postings. Reading some of the older positings on say “java” or “oracle” will help to determine if a user on Shuzak is using that technology or has experience using them.
I ran a quick search on topics currently being discussed on “java” technologies. Here is a screen shot of the results:
I have been using Talenthook for over a year, and give it my endorsement despite having to pay for a license each year. Talenthook is a resume search tool that allows you to simultaneously search several job boards, career sites or free resources out on the Internet. Talenthook is a great tool to use for recruiters and sourcers because you can can get a “snapshot” of all candidates available out on the major areas a recruiter uses - for instance, pay sites such as Monster, Dice or Careerbuilder, in addition to many other sources. Talenthook has many of these sources already listed in their database. All you need to do is plug in a username and password, type in key words, locations and date ranges for each search, and let Talenthook “peel back” those resumes. From there, you can run an email campaign to all candidates in your search, or simply go through each resume and determine how to proceed. It’s a huge time saver because Talenthook logs in and grabs all the relevant resumes and puts them into one area for you to search across. The searches are usually fast as well. Another benefit is to set-up an “agent” in Talenthook that will run continuous searches for you or your team.
I subscribe to a few groups run by Vincent Wright that deal mostly with the LinkedIn community, but give great insight into Social Networks and recruiting in general. There are alot of staffing people out on his lists and I encourage you to take a look at his profile and sign-up for his lists. Lots to learn there. Speaking of which, I saved a post to the group from back in July to put up specifically on StaffBytes. This list talks about social networking places and how there are at least 99 of them identified by the group. I repeat…99! That is a ton of networking potential for recruiters and sourcers. And you thought that LinkedIn was the only one out there didn’t you?
Have you checked out Pipl yet? Pipl is a search engine specifically designed “to retrieve information in real-time from the deep web, and interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.” Sounds a bit technical huh? Easily put - Pipl will find people for you, and give you alot of information on them.
Pipl is useful for the recruiting industry in that it can be used to follow up on a candidates background, previous employment and education, as well as discover new sites to explore for sourcing. Another good reason to use is to follow up on an older resume of a very strong candidate with outdated contact information. This will allow you to possibly identify where they are currently. I ran a search on Bill Gates located in Seattle, Washington, and pulled up links to public records, social network profiles, publications, news articles and alot of other interesting sites. See part of the search below:
I’m still trying to “get” Twitter, but realize there is potential here for recruiters and sourcers. I signed up for an account a few weeks back, and have been trying to use as a sourcing tool to find new candidates for various positions.
Twitter asks the question “What are you doing?” As a user of Twitter, you create a short profile of yourself, and update the Twitter community with what you are doing, whether it be sourcing for candidates on your computer, making dinner or away on vacation. People who use Twitter seem to be very addicted and make frequent posts that give you insight into their lives and who they are. There is an option to “follow” people on Twitter where you get daily feeds of there posts.
Getting back to recruiting, there is a search feature in Twitter that is useful for recruiters. The only search functionality is by key words. For an example to show, I ran a simple search using the key word “developer”. I received 1,700+ results from Twitter profiles. The profiles and details listed are limited to short amounts of information, so there is very little to go by, but regardless, there ARE developers here if you are a Technical Recruiter or Sourcer. No profiles I found had any contact information listed or even full names, but did find profiles with links to personal pages and their blogs:
What is your take on Twitter? Am I missing something? I want to be able to utilize the community effectively.
My favorite website by far is TechCrunch. It is a site started by Michael Arrington a few years ago, and is dedicated to reviewing new Internet products and services. I found this site last year and now read it daily. TechCrunch showcases new and existing companies along with their products or services. They have tackled everything from Google to LinkedIn (among the well known), to smaller startups and not so well known companies like Lingoz. Brutally honest opinions are given on each company and their offerings and where the folks at TechCrunch see them going, and what kind of value they bring to the table. Their site CrunchBase lists all of the companies they have profiled.
From a recruiting standpoint, I have found hundreds of new websites through TechCrunch to explore and new products and services to aid in sourcing specifically. While not a site specifically aimed at recruiters, you will see huge value if you take a few minutes and read through some posts.
Alexa is a company that ranks websites based upon Internet traffic. Alexa has long been the standard for determining where companies and websites rank on the web - in other words which websites get people to click onto their site, which pages they view, how long they are there, and how many different “unique” visitors each site receives at any given time.
For the recruiting industry, this site is important, because in order to fill positions, we want to go where lots of people are. You can determine where to invest your time, energy and money by using this site. Alexa is also a great way to find new sites that are gaining popularity and which are losing favor among the web world. You may even discover a new site to use for recruiting that you previously have not heard of.
The Alexa “Top 500 Sites” list lets visitors scroll through and view each site and see the statistics.
Alexa offers a toolbar which can be downloaded for free. This toolbar comes in handy as you click onto new websites and get the ranking and statistics right at the top of your web browser. I recommend downloading it.
Exalead is, per their website, ”a global provider of software designed to simplify all aspects of information search and retrieval for organizations of all sizes.” Exaled has been around since 2000, and provides recruiters and sourcers some nice features for searching resumes out on the Internet. Exalead offers the ability to search text, images and video specifically.
For an example, I continued with my “technical recruiting” theme from my earlier postings, and did a search for resumes with the key word “Java” in them and focused in on resumes from California. My search string was: intitle:resume java california. Exalead pulled up 5,248 search results, most of them resumes. The neat part of Exalead is the screen shot preview to the left of each search result, which let’s you peer into the site very quickly and find out if it really is a resume or worth a click through. See the example below:
Spoke is an online network of over 35 million people. Membership to Spoke gives you the freedom to explore their database and connect with other professionals.
Much like LinkedIn, Spoke offers both free and pay accounts, where you have to decide which is the best for your recruiting and sourcing needs. Pay accounts essentially get more search results and some easier information to work with and options for contacting people. The free account let’s you know the name of the contact, the company they work for and sometimes their number, if not the main number of their company for starters. No emails are provided, but a good sourcer should be able to figure out the email pattern from there.
Here is a search example below. I used Spoke to search for Software Engineer’s located in California. 6,259 results came up. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts.
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