Having Trouble Attracting the Right Candidates?
While attending the Social Recruiting Summit in Minneapolis back in May, I made specific note of a common sentiment expressed by recruiting representatives of two social recruiting powerhouses – Best Buy and Facebook: They don’t have any trouble attracting people, but they do have a tough time attracting the right people.
Recruiters in attendance scoffed at the thought that these two great companies with fantastic brands would have problems attracting talent.
However, I wasn’t surprised – not in the least. And I’ll tell you why.
Read the rest of this entry »
Sourcing Candidates is Like Fishing
I believe sourcing for candidates is like fishing.
When people go fishing, they are aware of the fish they can actually see in the water and of course the fish they catch. However, most people who go fishing don’t spend any time wondering about all of the fish in the pond, lake, or ocean they are fishing in that they have access to, but never catch.
Similarly, when most people source for candidates – they are only aware of the candidates they find. They don’t give much thought to all of the great candidates they actually have access to, but fail to find, review, or even recognize as a potential match.
I recently spoke at a Technology Association of Georgia’s (TAG) Recruiting Society event about this very concept. Below is a modified version of the presentation, edited to make more sense given that you don’t have the benefit of seeing/hearing me address the slides.
Enjoy!
A Better Way to Search LinkedIn for Industry Experience
Sourcers and recruiters are often tasked with finding candidates that have experience in a specific industry. I’m sure that such a thing seems easy to the hiring managers and clients making the request, but it’s actually not an easily accomplished feat to perform exhaustively.
Sure, finding some people who work in a specific industry is easy – simply target one or a few major companies/competitors and you’re off to the races, right?
Not so fast, unless you’re happy only finding some people and you’re not really concerned with finding the best.
Most industries are comprised of many companies, and some have several hundred to over 1000! How can anyone say for sure that if they targeted 10 or fewer companies in an industry that they were exposing themselves to the best talent available?
Some people (and companies) think that the best talent can only come from a short list of companies they’ve identified, which seems both absurd and short-sighted in my opinion. The most talented “game changers” don’t always come from a blue chip Fortune 500 company.
However, even if a sourcer/recruiter wanted to identify people who worked at any one of a large number of companies in a particular industry, they are stuck to only searching for a few companies at a time because most search engines/interfaces have limits to the length of the search string that can be run. This can make for an extremely tedious and laborious search process, which explains why most sourcers and recruiters only search for a handful of companies or make use of built-in industry search functionality.
Read the rest of this entry »
How “Social Recruiting” Has NOT Changed Recruitment
I feel a moral obligation to weigh in on “social recruiting” again.
I’m not trying to be a buzzkill – but with the continuing swell of momentum and hype that social recruiting is building up, someone has to play the devil’s advocate, refuse to become a victim of BSO (Bright Shiny Object) syndrome, and jump off of the bandwagon to be the voice of objective reason amidst the din of social recruiting cheerleading.
From the many blog posts I am seeing on the subject to the webinars I see popping up frequently, it’s clear that many people see social recruiting as a branding and/or money making opportunity for them.
On the flip side of the coin, there are many people who seem ready to view social recruiting as “the next big thing” and are eager to absorb (and pay for) the message that if you’re not performing “social recruiting” you’re behind the curve, you’ll be left behind, your competitors will laugh at your antiquated recruiting methods, and you’ll never make another hire.
Okay, maybe I’m getting a little dramatic with the last part(s).
But you get the point.
While social media/networking has undeniably added a new dimension to recruiting, it’s important to know that the emergence and evolution of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other sites have not changed many fundamental aspects of recruiting.
Read the rest of this entry »
How to Search LinkedIn for Diversity Sourcing
If you ever have a need to perform diversity sourcing, I’m going to show you a trick on LinkedIn that goes beyond the obvious and “everyone’s doing it” methods of searching for fraternities, sororities, specific universities, and of course groups, societies and associations.
Let’s say you were in need of identifying people with specific skills and experience that are also women (software engineers, CFO’s, etc.), and you’ve already tried the standard methods of identifying them. One tactic some people and organizations utlize is searching for common first names for women. However, with most search engines, you’re limited in the size of the search string you can run (sometimes as few as 100 characters!), so you can’t search for many names with a single search. Plus, limiting yourself to only the most common first names is, well…limiting.
While I’ve written about the fact that LinkedIn’s search fields appear bottomless (I have yet to find a limit to the number of characters/terms that can be entered and searched for), I don’t know of many people who try and take advantage of LinkedIn’s limitless search fields.
See where I might be going here?
Read the rest of this entry »
LinkedIn Shows New Search Options, Some No Longer Free
LinkedIn now shows some new search functionality to the masses who use LinkedIn for free. Perhaps of greater interest, some previously free search options are now premium filters.
I first noticed the changes to LinkedIn’s advanced search page on Saturday, June 19th. Did they appear earlier and I just didn’t notice them? Perhaps I missed a press release?
For those of us without a premium LinkedIn account, the advanced people search interface used to look something like this:
Now it looks like this:
Read the rest of this entry »
Why is Google Missing Available Search Results?
When you’re searching the Internet for potential candidates, it’s quite common (and practical) to search for resumes of people who are likely to be local to your opportunity. The two main ways of doing this are searching by area code and searching by zip code range.
While there are limitations of both approaches (not everyone includes a phone number or address), in this post I want to explore an interesting phenomenon that was brought to my attention not too long ago which clearly demonstrates that even when people DO provide a phone number or address, you may not be able to find them by searching for that information.
Yes, you read that right.
Read the rest of this entry »
Searching LinkedIn with Google and Yahoo for Free
When it comes to searching LinkedIn using Internet search engines such as Google or Yahoo, there are many different ways to construct your search string (”X-Ray” or otherwise) and get results.
Ultimately, the goal of any good sourcer or recruiter is to find all of the best available potential candidates that a particular source has to offer.
A short while ago, Gary Cozin sent me a link to an article recommending to “forget complex Boolean strings” when searching LinkedIn using Internet search engines.
I read the article and appreciated the advice to go with the easier, simpler, more elegant search solutions, as well as the suggestion to try “Public profile powered by.” I had never thought of taking that approach – but more on that later.
Read the rest of this entry »
Free Sourcing and Recruiting Resources
I just updated my free sourcing and recruiting resources page!
You can always navigate to the free resources page at any time by using the top nav bar which will escort you to a library of nearly 50 knowledge-laden links!
All in one page you can find a collection of articles related to sourcing and recruiting, including the 5 levels of talent mining/candidate sourcing, candidate sourcing best practices and mistakes, social recruiting, how to search LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Spoke, ZoomInfo and Jigsaw for free, Boolean logic, semantic search, Lean / Just-In-Time sourcing and recruiting, and automated candidate sourcing and matching solutions.
Click the image below to be taken to the free sourcing and recruiting resources page:
Be sure to bookmark or tag this page as I will continue to add more free sourcing and recruiting resources. Also – please “pay it forward” – share this page with anyone who might benefit!
Thanks!
What to do if Google Thinks You’re Not Human
Have you ever been searching the Internet with Google to find resumes or LinkedIn profiles, and instead of getting your search results, you get a nice apology from Google saying that your computer or network might be sending automated queries and can’t process your request?
In the past week alone I have received a number of inquiries from curious sourcers and recruiters as to what to do about this.
Typically, this notice is accompanied by a CAPTCHA that will allow you to enter some characters to prove that you’re human.
You are human, right?
Performing a lot of X-Ray searches of LinkedIn profiles seems to trigger Google to ask me for proof of humanity.
However, just the other day I was searching for resumes online, and when I clicked to see the “cached” version of a search result, I got a different Google apology. This one didn’t even allow me to prove my humanity. Dang!
If you choose to click on “Google Help“, you’ll see that they advise you to #1 Check for malware on your computer, #2 Contact your network administrator, and #3 If the problem persists, have your network administrator contact Google.
Apparently, sending automated queries of any sort to Google is against their Terms of Service, which states that among other things, it is unacceptable to use software to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks on Google for various queries, ‘Meta-searching’ Google, and performing ‘offline’ searches on Google.
Last time I checked, manually searching for resumes and LinkedIn profiles isn’t any of the above.
What To Do
Because I get stopped by Google’s CAPTCHA quite frequently, I did actually contact Google, inasmuch as you can contact Google by filling out their form. Not sure if anything came of that as I have never heard back (not that I was expecting to).
However, what I have found is that simply clearing my browser’s cookies gets this annoying search result interruption to go away, at least for a while. You can be selective in clearing specific cookies or you can delete them all – which will remove your saved settings for sites you’ve previously visited. Small price to pay in order to get your search results from Google.
I hope that helps you if you ever got blocked by Google. Let me know if you have any other suggestions/fixes for this issue.
Thanks!
.jpg)
