Cruiter Talk

ReferYes Sourcer: 5 FREE Licenses & a Review: It’s good.

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:23:42 +0000

So, it’s all over. A month full of outstanding postings and top digital thought leaders in Recruiting and HR leaving their mark on the community here at CruiterTalk. I have to take the time to properly thank the team at ReferYes Sourcer. First off, they were a fantastic sponsor and we’ll be doing some more great things with them in the future. If you haven’t used or signed up for the FREE version of their tool I highly recommend it.

It’s really a great tool and you can see my candid review of the tool below. (You can also subscribe to our Youtube Channel by clicking here)

Now, off to the fun stuff. ReferYes was kind enough to give 5 lucky and random readers full PRO memberships just for commenting on CruiterTalk. We drew the names out of a hat and the winners are: And please follow them!

Gary Cozin @garycozin
Erin Nemeth @ecn99
Joni Fisher FisherSearchGroup.com
Jeremy langhans of Starbucks
Storm Staff @StormStaff

Each winner will receive a full PRO membership and a session on how to properly use the tool.

If you haven’t already, you can sign up FREE for the ReferYes Sourcer here.

Be sure to follower us on Twitter: @CruiterTalk and Subscribe to our weekly updates: Weekly Updates

Locafollow your Tweeps to a better #Recruitment strategy

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:00:49 +0000

Locafollow is another search app that leverages Twitter. To help you locate Twitter users by searching their Bio and Location fields within their profile. It’s very simple to use and pretty effective. It’s a great way to see some return on your time spent “Recruiting” on Twitter.

Pros:

Geo Search enabled
Results come from Google and are than ranked by Locafollow
Quick and easy to bulk follow, message and conenct with your targets

Cons:

A tiny bit glitchy (but not enough to make it useless)
Compared to Followerwonk, it’s not a expansive in sharing Bio based information.

Remember, social recruiting is simply about connecting online and then taking that relationship offline as quickly as possible to close the deal. Take a look at my thoughts here and if you think this tool is good you’ll definitely be interested in Followerwonk to search Twitter a bit more efficiently as well.

Organize and Connect with your LinkedIn Connections

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:49:40 +0000

Big networks, targeted networks, broad networks…That’s always been the looming question for recruiter using LinkedIn to recruit. I don’t have a huge network. In fact it’s pretty modest in comparison to some but the quality of my network has suited me extremely well. Now there is a way for recruiters to manage their networks more efficiently from within LinkedIn.

With the recent updates to LinkedIn’s capabilities, recruiters should be able to manage their connections more efficiently and leverage their connections network to uncover prospective talent they once could not.

Meaningful #Recruiting with Twitter: @Followerwonk

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:11:16 +0000

My take on Followerwonk

The past few weeks for some reason have really been heavy on posts and chatter around Twitter and recruiting. Webinars have gone crazy and basically companies have saturated the recruiting market with useless beginner type webinars.

I’m not going to bore you here with that mess. Here’s another app that I like and have had some luck with over the last few weeks in comparing and sourcing direct talent from Twitter.

2 reasons why I like Followerwonk:

Super quick and clean
Compares profiles and Bio’s live and presents the information in a succinct meaningful manner.

Here’s the review. Let me know your thoughts.

Cuil – Search timelines, keywords and Facebook

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:57:29 +0000

Making sense of your social networks is the difference between success and failure as a recruiter leveraging the internet to uncover key talent. Increasingly we are seeing social networks work to develop features for recruiters. This is by design. I was introduced to Cuil back in August of 2008 and made a small mention of it recently via Twitter. It certainly has not taken off like the founding group claimed that would, but it is useful.

First off, Cuil is social search engine that was developed by a group of ex-Google developers. I will say up front that I am not a big fan of the search results it’s been returning. I’ve not head great luck with anything more than a basic, search. However, I do like the fact that I can search and connect with my Facebook connections which can be extremely helpful when sourcing.

For example, as a recruiter I am searching for an engineer. Through my connection with Cuil, I search “Electrical Engineer”. Cuil understands that “Electrical Engineer” is an occupation and can also be part of a conversation or groups that members may be part of.

Cuil is integrated with Facebook Connect and allows you to index your Facebook friends, news and content into a concise and searchable format. This is key as we know Facebook is not very search friendly as it sits today. It’s not the super uber search I am looking for, but I do use it when researching.

It’s a clean layout and I’ve grown to like it. Take a look at the video. It’s the video created by Cuil but it covers the entire tool.

Whoozy – The People Search Engine

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:44:41 +0000

Two years ago in 2008 I introduced Whoozy to the community of on Recruitngblogs.com. Well a lot has changed since then so I wanted to re-introduce the tool and the new features that make this a success for me. There are few key things that I particularly like about the tool that you should find useful in your research. There are also some limitations. Overall the search tool is very good. Not the greatest but certainly one I recommend working with. I’ll break it down for you here but I encourage you to break it yourself.

What is Whoozy and how does it search?

Whoozy is a search engine focused on people and companies. It’s an aggregater of sorts gathering information from search engines, photo sharing sites and video sites. The information gathered is targeted to your input and will return profiles, videos, blogs press releases etc. relevant to your subject.

Whoozy takes the name or company that you are searching and compares them against complex algorithms. The return is a concise set of results including summary and links.

Here are mythoughts both good and bad:

Upside:

Quick and mostly relevant search results
Provides links and source information to your search
Searches pdfs and docs on your subject and presents them in a downloadable and clickable manner
Searches across multiple platforms including social networks, video sharing sites, photo sharing sites and generic search engines
Provides a results set of “Common Tags” that are searchable within the returned results. Great for comapny research
Easy to use interface and runs very quickly.

Limitations:

Full Boolean is not supported though it does seem to pick up some searches
Results are sometimes not all relevant but this is true for most tools supporting generic searches

Similar to Google and other search engines, it’s a basic search box:

You can see below various options and returned search results:

When searching for companies you are returned docs and pdfs including tags that are relevant and searchable:

2 Pretty Cool New Features with Twitter

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:39:25 +0000

A little different type of post today. It’s sticks to the tool theme, but it’s written with a little curiosity. If Tweetdeck or your favorite Twitter client did not exist would Twitter be what is today?

As with all sites social, Twitter aims to keep ahead of the game integrating much requested features. Ironically the main site Twitter.com is surprisingly boring and really not all that interactive. It’s a challenge that I find to be pretty silly since apps like Tweetdeck have changed the way the Twitter game is played.

An interesting question would be if Tweetdeck were to go away, would you still tweet?

Just today on the Twitter blog, @jennadawn talks about a new feature that will surely help to create a better user experience. It’s called Hovercards. It’s in beta now so not everyone will see this but essentially it’s a feature that will allow you to hover over the username of a follower to see more information. Pretty basic stuff.

The addition here is that you will now have the opportunity to interact with the tweet. By hovering, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with, follow and learn more about those that have been re-tweeted without having to leave the page you are on. Now that’s useful.

But I haven’t tweeted on Twitter.com for a very long time and I do not think this will bring me back.

Which leads me to the second pretty cool new feature. Recently released and not so talked about Local Trends. I’ll admit that I like this one personally. But that because I like to keep up on my local area. Will it get me back to Twitter.com, no but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

Look, in the end Tweetdeck among a host of other clients have so many more rich features and esthetically pleasing UI’s that it may be the end of the rise for Twitter.com (The site). Now I stress that because I trust the team here will not stand pat. Something big is on the horizon people. Trust me on this one.

I’ll tell you about it soon.

Here is the newer Local Trending Topics

You can find the local trends box about 3/4 down the sidebar on the left

Select your city. Not all are avaialble yet…Just the cool ones.

And than you can see, choose and Tweet about your local trends.

Sourcing with LinkedIn’s advanced search features

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:06:08 +0000

Advance Search Filters

Recently revamping their advanced search features LinkedIn has given you as a recruiter a fairly good opportunity to leverage some strong filters to narrow you search. Not everyone will understand or have the ability to manipulate search scripts to uncover hidden talent. There is certainly a skill involved in understanding the genetic make up of search and how as a sourcer you need to manipulate data (in a good and ethical way) to meet your search.

If in fact you have this ability, kudos to you. I personally find a pleasure in creating and breaking scripts for a living. If the opposite true, and you can learn how to create simple basic Boolean scripts within LinkedIn, the advanced search filters can be a great help to you.

Take a look at this short video depicting how to leverage the advanced search features within LinkedIn. It’s simple to understand but if used properly will be very effective in your search.

Sourcing with LinkedIn’s profile organizer

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:55:24 +0000

The LinkedIn profile organizer is a neat little feature that LinkedIn has added into the free features of their service. In my opinion it’s to entice the recruiter to trial and ultimately purchase a license to their corporate accounts. Though the feature is handy and certainly serves a purpose, it’s free version is limited. I’ve had the opportunity to use multiple variations of LinkedIn recruiter and though I understand the benefits of the intended features, I am not sure I am sold just yet.

I won’t encourage you one way or the other to purchase, but if you are playing with the idea, a trial may be a good service to run with. I will caution you that, though it is more economical than the job boards it is very expensive, thus not justifying it’s cost to me.

With that being said, the LinkedIn profile organizer does serve as a nice compliment to your

Do you actively use LinkedIn’s Profile Organizer?

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search efforts. It’s slightly archaic in that its folder based as compared to similar services that leverage tags, but in the end the search is what matters and the openness of LinkedIn search platform is certainly worth the investment. Profile organizer allows you to effectively leverage your strong LinkedIn searches by save and grouping profiles that meet your search criteria.

Take a quick look at the video to understand the profile organizer in greater detail.

Understanding LinkedIn’s Network Statistics

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:04:19 +0000

Understanding the DNA of your LinkedIn network is a critical step in recruiting with LinkedIn. Now when I a say that understanding your DNA is critical, I am directly referring to what steps you have taken to build your network. Did you build your network based on your business needs or do you simply accept all invites that come your way?

In my opinion, there is really no right or wrong way to build your network. There are certainly compelling arguments on both sides. Regardless it’s imperative that you understand the genetics of your connections when leveraging your network for sourcing and recruiting. Now, I agree that as your network grows larger it’s hard to keep track of who is in your network, let alone what verticals and industry make up your connections as well as location. And that’s ok.

LinkedIn provides us with a simple yet very effect measurement tool to help us understand our network to leverage how and where we’ve become connected. It’s called LinkedIn Network Statistics. Take a look at this short tutorial and let me know your thoughts.