The Sourcer's Daily Dozen

Agenda – Sourcer’s Daily Dozen

Featuring the 12 free sourcing methods/tools we use practically every day. A big thank-you to JobMachine’s Shally Steckerl for contributing some slides used in this presentation:

Bookmarklets (“browser favorites/bookmarks on steroids”)

Thematic search

Search engine must-know special commands

Number range search

LinkedIn tricks

Social network hacks

Free company search (Jigsaw, ZoomInfo & JWT layoffs)

Diversity search

Metasearch tools

Blog search

More people search lookup tools

Ongoing results via RSS and alerts

Bookmarklets

PROS:

Usable on search sites of any type, not just major search engines (prompts for your keywords and runs rest of embedded search criteria

Many other uses across the Web besides search engine results (extract email addresses from pages, select/deselect all checkboxes, etc.)

Portable (see at right); loads as a folder in web browser’s favorites/bookmarks on any computer

Visit bookmarklets.com to create basic bookmarklets, search for them online, ask peers for top bookmarklets, etc.

CONS:

Usability varies by browser (e.g., different versions may be needed)

Need to know some JavaScript to create custom bookmarklets

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. You just saw a bookmarklet in action – not merely a favorite that takes you to a website, but it actually DOES something Get many useful bookmarklets at www.recruiting-online.com/ bookmarklets.html

Synonym & Thematic Search

1. ~ (tilde) Google command

Finds synonyms of the term immediately following

Incorporates terms you might not have thought of

Example: ~ui finds GUI, user interface, etc.

2. Related: Google command

Follow with domain of site you’d like to compare

Uncovers competitors, related associations, etc.

Examples (sometimes you need to add www. so try both ways): related:www.vldb.org , related:vmware.com

3. Thematic search

Helpful to understand related concepts (use it after a Wikipedia.org search for technologies or other topics new to you)

Use Quintura.com or Vivisimo’s Clusty.com and note the special left-hand pane with link clusters

Examples: virtualization hyperthread on Clusty; “online advertising” on Quintura

All major engines:

1. site:DOMAIN -- to find things contained on pages in that domain

Example: with a professional association or conference domain along with presenter keywords, you find the people! Use specific job titles to narrow further:

site:bio.org ("chief scientist" OR "senior scientist") (chair OR agenda OR keynote OR speaker)

2. (inurl:resume OR intitle:resume) KEYWORDS -send -submit -template -you

When looking for resumes, use above NOT (-) terms to eliminate the job postings

Example: (inurl:resume OR intitle:resume) boston audit (SOX OR sarbanes) -send -submit -template -you

All Major Engines (cont’d.)

3. "resume book" MBA 2008 filetype:pdf -- great to find collegiate resumes with certain degrees

NOTES: a) on Yahoo, replace filetype: with originurlextension: to run this search type; b) Can have multiple filetypes on Live (e.g., filetype:pdf OR filetype:rtf), but only one on Google and Yahoo

On Google:

1. ~cv to find resume terms (yes, the same tilde used before); note how ending NOT terms eliminate job postings, etc.

Example: ~cv KEYWORDS/BOOLEANS -example -job -jobs -sample -send -submit -template -your

The Power of “Numrange”

1. Resumes by geography

Useful for zip code search

Use a tool like ZipMath ’s Zip Codes in a Radius (under Applications menu at www.zipmath.com) to find the low and high zip values

What to avoid:

number ranges starting with zero

very low values (<4 digits) that could be confused with other things (e.g., year or page numbers)

Another powerful Google search command to find pages containing any number within a specified range.

Put two periods between the low and high values (no spaces), e.g., 10001..11999

Example: Seattle area resumes ~cv (C++ OR MFC) ~ui 98001..98599 -example -job -jobs -sample -send -submit -template -your

If you get this Google error:

Your search looks like “spyware”…

Change Google preferences to 10 results per page

2. Find people by technical certification

Many certs now issue an actual license number for each person who is certified

Combine cert # range with cert name / acronym to find people who actually earned it, not merely studying towards it

Example: Brainbench certification resumes or bios: (~cv OR my) "brainbench transcript id" 99999..300999

3. Find people by number of direct reports, e.g., "managed * team * 25..100"

(which also utilizes the wildcard words command) will find "managed virtual team of 25 professionals", "managed cross functional team comprised of 37", "Managed geographically distributed team with 52", "managed and developed the development team of 100", etc.

LinkedIn tricks

MyLink500.com and TopLinked.com have names & links to the highest-connected LI members. Their profiles typically list their email addresses and are very open to new connections.

Connect directly to the most-connected people from their profile pages (click link after “Do you know [name]?” or invite up to 6 at a time at www.linkedin.com/inviteMany )

You can import any or all of your Outlook contacts easily using LI’s toolbar

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. Get a 3-degree network >4 million in 15 minutes on LinkedIn.com (“LI”), the biggest of the professional social networks (>15 million members):

If you’re going to mass-contact, better to send an email OUTSIDE of LI to ask if they are accepting connections

LinkedIn tricks

Keywords: For maximum results, avoid using this field, because most LI users DON’T populate their profiles beyond current job title and employer.

Job Title: (application OR developer OR engineer OR lead OR programmer OR tech OR technical OR development) -business -channel -recruiter -recruiting -sales -sourcer -talent

Company: Deloitte OR IBM OR Wachovia

Location: Located in or near  Country: United States (remove zipcode, if any, to search all US; leaving it in searches that metro area only)

LI quirks: “Dir” in the job title field will find Director, and certain terms in between (e.g., “Dir Marketing” will find Director of Marketing, and Director, Marketing Operations, etc.) but typing Mgr won’t get “manager” results.

LinkedIn tricks

Use Google hack to find relevant names outside your LI network & no 500-results limit!

Substitute your keywords (skills, job titles, companies, etc.) in this powerful template (use LinkedIn’s metro area names like these for MA/RI):

inurl:linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (engineer OR developer) posix ("greater boston" OR "rhode island area") -intitle:directory -inurl:jobid -inurl:answers -inurl:find -inurl:updates

If you see “repeat the search with the omitted results included” link at bottom of results page, click it to show additional unique results)

MySpace

~200 MM users, all social, not much business

Search MySpace from Google with the site: command

site:www.myspace.com (occupation.*.CPA OR major.*.accounting)

Limit geography with intitle: for city or state

For example add intitle:virginia or intitle:atlanta to the site: search, or use the previous example with multiple nearby city names:

site:www.myspace.com (occupation.*.CPA OR major.*.accounting) (intitle:jacksonville OR intitle:orlando)

Filter for specific universities

For example: university.of.houston

Diversity inclusion search:

site:www.myspace.com ethnicity.*.asian (or latino, black, etc.)

Contact by sending a message via MySpace

MySpace Classified job ads

http://classifieds.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=classifieds

MySpace hack (works best on Yahoo search)

linkdomain:myspace.com -site:myspace.com "software engineer" (me OR my OR "i am")

Then add your keywords

Works with almost all web 2.0 and social networks like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Xanga, Flickr, etc…

Facebook

LinkedIn’s “My company is hiring”

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2415694143&b&ref=pd

Create a company Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages

Social Ads seen by users who visit your Facebook page or website site

http://www.facebook.com/business/?socialads

Free Marketplace job postings

http://www.facebook.com/marketplace/editlisting.php?new&category=2303&have&subcategory=-1

Post career fair events

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=400000010&dt=1&n=67108872

Facebook hack (works best on Yahoo search):

linkdomain:facebook.com -site:facebook.com (me OR my OR "i am")

Narrow example: linkdomain:facebook.com -site:facebook.com "state street" (me OR my OR "i am") ("fund accountant" OR "fund administrator")

For a people metasearch of all major social networks, try Wink.com

Jigsaw

Business card search system that provides:

Name

Full Title

Business email

Direct number (most cases)

Business address

Points-based, self-correcting system

Get free JigSaw PLAY account + 100 extra points via Shally: www.jigsaw.com/partners/jobmachine/

Or pay $1 per contact

Slide courtesy of Shally Steckerl of JobMachine.net. Used with permission.

Use the Advanced Search:

Title: Tax Manager

Company Name: Deloitte

Level: Director and Manager

Now try:

Department: Sales

Metro Area: Miami

Industry: Electronics

Jigsaw

Downloadable company lists (Search -> Download Free Company Data)

Run your search; basic info on 1 million companies

Export up to 50,000 company records in CSV format at no charge at one time, or in SalesForce CRM format up to 500 at a time

Slide courtesy of Shally Steckerl of JobMachine.net. Used with permission.

Jigsaw

About 6.7 million contacts from almost 530,000 companies

From the company page:

Click on a level like “Manager-level”

Or a department like Sales

From the Company Directory search by:

Level and Department

Country, State, Area Code or Zip Code

Slide courtesy of Shally Steckerl of JobMachine.net. Used with permission. What are Graveyard Contacts? Contacts that have been challenged but not updated.

Click “Preview” to see that contact

Contact info revealed for 5 points

Before you purchase contacts, check:

Is it fresh? Outdated contacts less useful.

Who added them? Is this a trusted user?

How many others have purchased them? Have too many people called this lead?

What other versions are there?

Find layoffs

Layoffs are an obvious source of talent, but getting comprehensive information in a timely manner for free is even better:

The weekly recap by JWT at http://www.jwtec.com/hrlive/layoffs.php (archive searchable by industry, date, keywords, location, etc.) is great for a free tool. E.g., High Technology (category), software (keyword), Boston area, last month date range.

Find competitors

Knowing which competitors are relevant – especially under-the-radar players -- is useful anytime. Here are two of the best free methods:

ZoomInfo.com – while it’s known for its paid tool, the free version is fantastic for uncovering lots of companies (much more detail than Hoovers.com’s free version)

3+ company name method – if you know at least 3 small-medium competitors in that technology, type them on any major search engine. Results typically list others (industry directories, articles, etc.)!

Diversity Search

Some techniques, not foolproof in part because many candidates don’t promote their diverse status. If your company is subject to OFCCP guidelines, consult your legal dept. re: if/how you use and document these sourcing methods.

Ethnicities: “natural phrase” keywords put in an OR clause such as (“African American” OR “Asian American” OR “Latin American”) added to a string of professional/educational associations can be effective in expanding results.

Languages: combine with natural phrases like “native Spanish”, “fluent Cantonese” or “fluent Korean”. Searching for both the words “Cantonese” and “Mandarin” is a great way to find Chinese candidates because typically only native speakers list both on a resume. This works well for other ethnicities that commonly speak multiple languages (e.g., “Hindi” and “Urdu.” Also try using the native spelling of their language as a search keyword, e.g., Español CPA Miami FL (he OR she)

Significant slide content courtesy of Shally Steckerl of JobMachine.net. Used with permission .

Diversity Search

Diverse fraternities/sororities: Black females (e.g., Alpha Kappa Alpha), Black males (e.g., Alpha Phi Alpha). Latinas (e.g., Kappa Delta Chi), Latinos (e.g., Omega Delta Phi), Asians (e.g., Lambda Phi Epsilon is a cross-national Asian fraternity; Beta Chi Theta focuses on South Asians). A key source of multicultural Greek organizations is the NMGC ( www.nationalmgc.org ). Also see nalfo.org (Latino) and blackgreeknetwork.com

Universities: the majority of alumni of the 114 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are African-American (see www.edonline.com/cq/hbcu/ ) . Also see lists of Hispanic (hacu.net) and women’s colleges (womenscolleges.org). Search through these websites using the site: command to find relevant points of contact, or use school names in resume searches.

Professional associations: acronyms are good keywords, such as NSHMBA (National Society of Hispanic MBAs), SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers), NBMBAA (National Black MBA Association) or NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers), etc.

Diversity Search

Putting it all together: examples to use on search engines:

1. Find associations: “African American” Accountants Association, or try (Latino OR Hispanic) Accountants Association.

2. Narrow geographically if you like with city, state or region names, e.g.:

(Latino OR hispanic) Accountants Association “New York”

3. Take the name of an organization and combine it with keywords that would reveal members, volunteers or presenters at that group’s meetings, e.g.:

("Women in Technology & Industry” OR WITI OR link:witi.com) (member OR speaker OR panelist OR presenter OR board OR officer OR president OR chapter OR staff OR volunteer)

4. Try keywords that may reveal people at a particular chapter meeting, etc. Example:

("Women in Technology & Industry” OR WITI OR link:witi.com) (roster OR list OR directory OR “meeting minutes” OR attendees OR attended OR attendance)

5. Narrow using names/abbreviations of locations, area codes, particular universities, or even employers. Or include a particular year(s) to get more recent results, e.g., (2006 OR 2007 OR 2008)

Metasearch Engines

Can be convenient to search multiple sites at once.

May spot search results in smaller engines not indexed by major search engines

Examples of the many free metasearch engines:

AllTheInternet.com – the most basic of them

Dogpile.com – Google, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, About, MIVA, LookSmart are among the engines; also has audio, video, image and white/yellow pages search

Zuula.com – shows results from each engine in a different tab

NOTE: Special commands from the major search engines are not universal. Inurl: and intitle: command are the only ones that seem to be common to metasearch engines. Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.

Blog Search – Why?

Primarily, to find experts expounding on their expertise. Contact information is usually an email address, but occasionally a detailed profile is available (e.g., see “About Me” page).

Secondarily, to track people who comment on the writings of the expert.

Third, to source competitive intelligence.

Blog Search – How?

Lots of methods/tools, but these are some of the best/most comprehensive of the freebies:

Major search engines

Technorati (technorati.com/widgets)

IceRocket (esp. its MySpace search)

EveryZing (for audio-video search)

Remember to check the blogroll (list of the blogger’s other favorite blog links), typically along the edge of the blog homepage, as these are usually peers with expertise in similar subject matter.

Blog search

1. Google blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com) - nice that it can do very targeted searches, but it never shows you as many results as it estimates exist. Examples:

Find I work at, I work for, I work with, etc. for the company or person following wildcard: “I work * ibm” OR “I'm working * ibm” OR “I am working * ibm”

Find AJAX-focused blogs talking about Yahoo’s mashup-related tools (use inposttitle: command to find posts containing the keyword, rather than in blog’s title):

Yahoo mashup inblogtitle:ajax

Blog search

2. Live.com – two good ways to find blogs (feed: and hasfeed: commands)

feed: finds RSS or Atom feeds (typically blogs) on a website for the terms you search for. For example, type posix feed:multithreading .

hasfeed: finds web pages that contain feeds, and this example finds resumes to boot, so check for peers in their blogroll:

hasfeed:virtualization (cv | resume | vita | vitae) -sample -please -sample -send -submit -you

Blog search

Technorati.com was the first comprehensive blog tracking site.

Its Advanced search (www.technorati.com/search?advanced), conveniently shows results of different types on separate tabs: individual Posts, entire Blogs (ones related to your search, best if you use concept terms), Videos (mostly YouTube search results) and Photos (mostly Flickr results that have beent tagged with your keyword(s)

For blogpost search only, use http://search.technorati.com/ which uses an Authority level to sift out less authoritative results (generally, the more blogs that link to a blog, the higher its authority rank)

Blog search

IceRocket is a fine blog search tool, but its search of content on the largest social network, MySpace, is comprehensive.

Example: occupation.*.accountant intitle:tennessee

After typing the query in the search box, click the MySpace tab (otherwise, default is Blogs search)

NOTE: This finds more results than the same search on Google (adding site:myspace.com and filter=0)!

Blog search – audio & video

A proliferating plethora of free video search sites (AOL’s Truveo, Dabble, Pixsy, the major search engines, etc.), but many only find a fraction of the relevant deep web content because they only grab metadata (titles, intros, etc.) but not the content deep WITHIN.

But Blinkx.com and Everyzing.com do. They actually convert the video to text (Everyzing also does audio), which is then searchable. So you can search keywords THROUGHOUT the file.

Another bonus with Everyzing is that results show you where your keywords appear in the file, and you jump directly to listening/viewing the part of the file where the keywords reside!

Great Lookup tools

Google Groups http://groups.google.com – great way to search the millions of newsgroups that comprise Usenet

Find tech pros in any arena by group or individual message – the more unique your search terms, the better. Also, response messages tend to be from more expert posters (substitute your keywords for CAPS): insubject:re MULTITHREAD KERNEL -apply -available -"immediate interview" -jobs -"job code" -"looking for" -requirement -Resumes-in-IT -softwarejobalerts -"updated resume" -"urgent need"

Find anybody’s email - use the @author:DOMAIN.com command to find posts by people who work at a given company! Click “sort by date” at top right of results page, click message title of a recent post, click View Profile beside author’s name, click 3 dots link in middle of email, answer image challenge prompt to reveal full email. Typically it’s 1stname.lastname@ or 1stinitialLastname@

Great Lookup tools

IBM Employee Directory ( http://www.ibm.com/contact/employees/us/ ) – finds direct phone & email for IBMers in any country; you only need last name. Set browser security settings to high (no cookies) to avoid site’s daily search limit

InfoBel.com – online phone directories for almost every country in the world

Wayback (http://web.archive.org) – older versions of almost any website (even after they’re taken down by the host!). Use my bookmarklet or type desired URL to search at http://web.archive.org/

WhoIs (http://whois.domaintools.com) – the best of the free domain search tools, finds some contact info when no other is available (requires free registration for unlimited searching). E.g., I had the email [email_address] but there’s no website at www.ungerman.org so http://whois.domaintools.com/ungerman.org to the rescue for more info!

Great Lookup tools

Argali.com (free download) – the ultimate home/business phone lookup tool that searches multiple online directories and de-duplicates results

Home search: Enter name and state (not efficient for VERY common names yielding too many results)

Business search: Great way to find lots of small office locations not listed on company website with regular (toll-call) phones so you don’t show up on caller ID

Ongoing results-RSS & Alerts

Free news monitoring: e.g., click the major search engines’ “News” link/tab

Free Alerts: Once you get great results from a search engine, keep getting them just as you would resume agent results from a job board:

Google Alerts ( www.google.com/alerts ) – goes to your email address; includes News, Blogs, Web, Groups (Google groups includes all Usenet newsgroups postings) or all those types of search results

Ongoing results-RSS & Alerts

Live.com – ongoing web search results come as RSS feed to your preferred newsreader or email:

Just add &format=rss to the end of any Live search result URL to make it a feed

Go to www.SendMeRSS.com and enter the feed URL

Microsoft Outlook 2007 - RSS reader integrated so feeds can be processed just like emails (see at right)

Yahoo search results:

Insert search keywords as indicated (you can also make this a bookmarklet!): http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid=yahoosearchwebrss&query= YOUR + KEYWORDS + HERE

Want more?

Are we connected directly on LinkedIn? Make the 1.5 million+ at 2 nd degree of my 11MM network instantly part of your searchable 3-degree network at no cost: Type my email ( [email_address] or glenn@recruiting-online.com) at http://tinyurl.com/2755ts

Have a sourcing question? Submit it to my blog:

www.recruiting-online.spaces.live.com

Also visit blogs to learn from your peers: besides ere.net/blogs, consider recruitingblogs.com, therecruiterslounge.com and Shally’s favorite recruiting blogs list at www.ere.net/blogs/CyberSleuthing/DCEC4C0E35004B92902198F19D228131.asp

For more detailed yet affordable sourcing training, try jobmachine.net, recruiting-online.com, risetrends.com, swatrecruiting.com, or for phone sourcing, techtrak.com