Boolean Strings

By Irina Shamaeva

Sourcing Contest: Finding MD’s In Atlanta on LinkedIn and More

Posted by booleanstrings on January 25, 2012

 

Here is a custom search engine that looks for LinkedIn profiles. Enter a name or a keywords and see the results:

LinkedIn Profiles

Now, let’s search, for example, for

physician cardiology diagnostics MD “Greater Atlanta Area”

Let’s exclude the word “recruiter” from the above search:

physician cardiology diagnostics MD “Greater Atlanta Area” -recruiter

We got fewer results.

Contest warm-up: Did we just exclude recruiters’ profiles or did we also lose any relevant (non-recruiter) profiles in the search results?

CONTEST. Please give an example where excluding a keyword that we don’t want to see on a profile (like we just did) leads to excluding relevant results. Please either use the LinkedIn custom search engine  or a search for LinkedIn profiles using your own Boolean search strings, either on Google or on Bing. Please explain how this happens. (Or, instead, explain why this can’t happen if you believe that it can’t.) Of course, it could be a search for any type of professional in any geographical area.

The first person who sends the correct answer to contest@braingainrecruiting.com gets a guest pass to the 2-part webinar http://booleanstrings.ning.com/events/extract-candidates-from-linkedin-webinar or a pass to a future webinar.

 

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#Google, Punctuation Marks, and False Rumors @sengineland

Posted by booleanstrings on January 24, 2012

It is amazing how “gossip” and false rumors spread online!

This post

Google Search Showing Results For Punctuation Marks

points to this post

Google Search, Punctuation Marks and Other Symbols

and viola – big news is made. Did any of the people who re-tweeted it try it out?

Here is a very simple example that shows it doesn’t work.

As the only tweeter user points out in response to my tweet, GrammarGirl (Mignon Fogarty):

Sad clarification on the “Search Google for punctuation” story. You still can’t search for STRINGS that contain punctuation.

It would take TONs of work for Google to start searching for any special characters. By the way, the very first post didn’t say it worked. It said some changes are visible.

Even if you do not really care whether Google searches for commas – it is quite interesting how everyone repeats after each other without checking, and that includes major publications.

Lessons to be learned! :)

 

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Looking Up a Name on #LinkedIn

Posted by booleanstrings on January 17, 2012

Yesterday morning I got an email from one of my webinar attendees who is a Sales and Marketing Manager. “I search LinkedIn a lot for lead generation confirmation.”, he writes,  ”I would like to select a name and search directly in LinkedIn only. Can you help direct me on the set up?”

Here is how to set this up.

Download Chrome if you don’t have it. Chrome is a great, fast browser.

1. Copy this: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=009462381166450434430%3A-woy8fnynf8&num=100&q=%s

2. In the Chrome search engine options, find this row at the bottom of the page:

add a “new search engine name” and a “keyword” of your choice into the first two fields; paste the copied string from above into the “URL” field.

Make this “search engine” the default. (You can go back to the previous default at any time.)

This is it!

Now, if you:

  • type a person’s name in the address bar, or
  • highlight the-first-and-last-name on the current page and right-mouse click,

you will be able to get to their LinkedIn profile, looked up using the custom search engine LinkedIn Profiles. Of course, this will only work if the person has a public profile.

This can also be used to instantly search for any words appearing on LinkedIn profiles, such as a name plus a keyword, or a title, or target company name(s), etc.

Let me know if it works out for you.

Posted in Boolean | 6 Comments »

Internet Recruiting 101

Posted by booleanstrings on January 13, 2012

I have met many experienced and accomplished recruiters who have been thrown into the rapidly expanding online world without anyone providing adequate basic training or ways to keep up with the most important news.

In this brief post I don’t aim to bring everyone up to speed. Bit I’d like to cover a list of the very basics that you may want to check for yourself. If you are way beyond this, and are open to learning more, please check out the Tools page and please consider attending the Productivity Tools webinar that I will be repeating/scheduling soon.

If you see anything basic missing, by all means, please comment below:

1. It’s time to update your hardware, the operating system, and get a fast Internet connection if you haven’t.

2. The more Internet browsers you have, the merrier. At the very least get Chrome and Firefox and do your best to stop using the Internet Explorer.

3. Update your LinkedIn profile with a photo and fill out the details. Get at least several hundred connections. Invite only those who is likely to accept your invitations; this means either people who know you or people who claim to be “open networkers”/LION’s/Toplinked.com, etc. Join a good number of LinkedIn groups; 50 is ideal.

LinkedIn is still the place number one for recruiters to be. But take marketing messages from LinkedIn with a grain of salt.

4. Learn to use at least a few advanced capabilities in Google and Bing search. Keep in mind that the Yahoo.com search is identical to Bing’s.

  • Quotation marks around several words mean search for a phrase (or search for a specific word exactly) in both.
  • The operator site: (lower case, no space between the operator and the URL) means search within a specified site. Recruiters call it X-raying.
  • Play with the advanced search dialog on Google to train yourself to use its operators; it will guide you.
  • New! Turn off the “personal” search on Google: Log out of Facebook when you search on Bing.

5. You don’t necessarily have to be on Twitter. You definitely don’t need to catch up on SEO (search engine optimization); it is changing dramatically anyway as we speak. You will need to get a profile on Google+, the sooner the better.

One last thing, don’t rely on tools that search for you automatically based on your requirements!

Posted in Boolean | 4 Comments »

Productivity Tools and Techniques for Internet Sourcing – Jan 11, 2012

Posted by booleanstrings on January 4, 2012

Training Special: Now by Jan 10, 2012: get two or more prerecorded classes and get a complementary pass for this webinar, “Productivity Tools and Techniques for Internet Sourcing”

Join us for a Webinar on January 11

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/818321178

Productive searching for professional peoples on the Internet does not equal learning advanced Boolean search syntax on Google.

To become a Master Internet Sourcer it’s necessary to be an expert at:
- knowing what to search for (which is never just a piece of the job description)
- where to search (search engines, social media sites, each with their own search syntax)

PLUS:
- how to sort and parse search results
- how to cross-reference
- how to contact potential candidates

The last three skills are critical and are often neglected in the hunt for “the best search string” or the best site to search. The good news is that there are tools and techniques that can be applied to make sourcing productive, especially in the stages of processing search results.

On top of that, staying organized and reusing collected information and methods present their own challenge.

So how do you identify productivity tools? The area of sourcing tools is cluttered with misleading marketing messages on some of the tools; persisting under-appreciation of the sourcing function; and the pressure to perform as a recruiting function. What you pay is sometimes not what you get.

Join me at a fast-paced webinar that will go through:
- a wealth of quick short-cuts to speed up your work
- suggestions on ways to save, share with your team members, and manage the volumes of generated information
- descriptions of selected productivity tools, as well as ways to classify and assess existing and future tools.

Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: 10AM PST/1PM EST
Duration: 90 min
Price: $79 – includes the slides, a video recording, and one month of support.

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Cross-Referencing with Crome

Posted by booleanstrings on January 3, 2012

Anyone who looks for people on the Internet knows that rarely do we encounter information complete enough to instantly qualify the person as a potential candidate or a potential client. Say, if I am browsing a forum with posts on the desired technology, I see the names of members; there’s a need to cross-reference those names to find out more.

Here’s how to cross-reference names using Chrome.

Taking the tip from  further, we can speed up cross-referencing and avoid boring and time-consuming cutting and pasting. Let me show you how.

To start with, you can designate the “find everything” search, described in the post referenced above, to be “the default” in Chrome. Then, if you run across the name of a person who is potentially a candidate or a business contact, you can select (highlight) the first and the last name, right-click, and Google that person right from the page you are currently browsing.

This may work wonders for unique names but wouldn’t do well for common first-and-last names. To continue getting relevant results, no matter how common the name is, you can add a keyword or two relevant to the current search.

As an example, I am currently looking for Websphere developers (true story; we need about 20 of them). In the Chrome search engines options, I edit the string for the default search by adding, in my case, +websphere at the end:

Now I can either initiate a search with the automatically added word websphere - either by typing w (w, then space) in Chrome’s address bar, or right-clicking on someone’s name – like Dave Smith - and selecting the “webpshere” search from the context menu. This would search for Dave Smith Websphere on Google:

Of course, you can add words other than websphere, several keywords at once, or something like site:linkedin.com - depending on what’s most likely to help you cross-reference.

If you’d like to have access to several “context” search options, you can create several entries in Chrome’s search engines and switch between them, declaring them as “defaults” as needed. This would be a bit clumsy though. Much cooler would be to install the Chrome extension called Selection Search:

- and define variations of your search, all of which would be available from the right-click menu.

As an example, you can add items that would: search Google for the selection plus a keyword; search Google for the selection X-rayed on LinkedIn; and a search for the selected name on pipl.com:

What I personally find the most valuable in this productivity technique is the ability to narrow down your cross-referencing to particular terminology, thus staying focused on the search.

Speeds up my work many-fold.

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“Why Google-Plus Has No Competition” (post on Technorati)

Posted by booleanstrings on December 31, 2011

Per their rules I can’t copy the content from Technorati; I invite my readers to check out my blog post there, “Why Google-Plus Has No Competition“.

 

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How to Find Software Engineers for Your Openings

Posted by booleanstrings on December 20, 2011

Software Engineers are in high demand these days, at least in some geographical areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and for some “hot” skills like Java/mobile engineering. However, it is not easy to find true software engineering talent anywhere.

Here are some suggestions.

Keywords

  • For better search, make sure you know how software engineering terms relate to each other. As an example, Java and JavaScript are two very different skills. A person who is a C++ developer will definitely know C, but may not know some specific C libraries. Front End is like User Interface. Back End usually goes along with Server. Perl and Python are both scripting languages. A person who works with J2EE certainly knows Java but may lack some core Java skills. The Linux operating system is a variation of UNIX.
  • Some skills, while being required on the job description, are unimportant, go with the job, and shouldn’t be included in search. I am talking about systems to track bugs, or to track software versions.
  • Some skills are hard to search for because the words are so common; an example would be a Windows Engineer. In cases like this use keywords that are specific, such as Win32.

Places. Here are just a few places where you might want to look for developers, when you start getting desperate:

  • The search engine Blekko has slashtags for a large variety of programming languages, along with a /people tag. Check it out.
  • Browse your local Meetup groups.
  • Definitely look on Google+.
  • Github has contact info for many folks but is hard to search. Few people know that it allows resume search via its API. To access resumes, hire a coder or use TalentBin.
  • Try http://stackoverflow.com/users.
  • Look for specific mailing lists, forums, yahoo and Google groups. The logos above give you an idea of what those places can be about.

If all else fails please give us a call at Brain Gain Recruiting!

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Why You Must Start Using Google-Plus for Sourcing and Recruiting

Posted by booleanstrings on December 13, 2011

If you are waiting to start using Google-Plus for sourcing and recruiting, you will soon find yourself falling behind your  competition. Google-plus is still smaller than major social networks but its size doesn’t matter that much. It is also a moving target in terms of its functionality, but that makes it even more interesting!

Here are just a few tips.

Identifying/Cross-Referencing Prospects. If you know someone’s email address, you can quickly identify his/her Google-Plus profile (if it’s there) by adding this person to a circle. You can do this for lists up to ~1,000 people at a time. A Google-Plus profile will have many online references and may contain other email addresses and a phone number.

Communicating. Whether a person is on Google-plus or not, you can communicate with the person by adding him/her to a circle and sharing with the circle. Being added to a circle named, say, “Top Software Engineers” should feel nice to your software engineering prospects, the same as if you add them to a list on Twitter or like their page on Facebook. [Correction: Someone pointed out that at this time people do not see the name of your circle when they are added .]

Integration with Gmail is becoming tighter as we speak!

Keeping Information on Prospects Up-to-Date.

  • In your Gmail Contacts you will now see “Connected Profiles” for those who are on Google-plus.
  • You can add anyone who emails you to a circle right from your Gmail Inbox.
  • If you ever add somebody to a circle, that person stays in your Gmail’s “Other Contacts” tab, even if you later remove the person from circles.

Branding and Advertising Jobs. Guess what will be getting higher and higher in Google search results as the time goes.  It is already happening. So it’s time to create your personal and business Google-plus pages and try to get many +1′s (you will need to provide some good content for that :) ). You may get way ahead of competition that is still using the old-school Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods. We all know that so many people start any new project – including their job search – simply using Google search; if you get there fast, they will find your company and your posted opportunities.

’nuff said (for now).

Irina / Brain Gain Recruiting / Boolean Strings on Google-plus

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20 Online “Lead Generation” Sites

Posted by booleanstrings on December 5, 2011

Recruiters, sourcers, on one hand, and sales, marketing, and business development professionals, on the other hand, perform this function as part of what we all do: find potential business contacts, or find professional profiles along with the contact information.

In the recruiting world we call it Sourcing (or Internet Sourcing, as opposed to Phone Sourcing; I believe this distinction is obsolete though). In the sales world it’s often called “Lead Generation”. But lead generation, by definition, is more of a marketing term, meaning “attracting people to your business and converting them to buyers”.

Of course, what we do is Data Mining - but it’s very specific data mining. I’ve seen the expression “Talent Mining” but, of course, it wouldn’t apply what sales people do.

So what should “looking for professionals online” be called so that both sales people and recruiters recognize it as one and the same? So that we can exchange tools and advice across the industries? I have asked this question on LinkedIn and on ERE.net but most answers were about the recruiting/job filling-related people searching. I am still interested in figuring it out. (“Peoplesourcing” was an interesting answer on ERE.)

In the meantime, please take a look at a list of 20 sites that provide business profiles and contact information. I list sites that are both free and paid;  they are listed in no particular order.

If you are a recruiter, or a sourcer, do you use some of these?

What are some other similar sites would you add?

THE LIST OF 20 ONLINE “LEAD GENERATION” SITES

www.hoovers.com

Hoover’s proprietary company profiles and industry information.

www.spoke.com

Spoke offers on-demand business to business contact information for sales people, marketers, and recruiters enabling Sales Lead Generation, Business List …

www.manta.com

Manta provides free company profiles & company information on U.S. and International companies, including market research reports, business news, and …

www.infousa.com

Mailing List – InfoUSA has 30 years’ experience providing mailing lists and email lists to businesses of all sizes. Customize our mailing lists to your business …

www.onesource.com

OneSource Business Information: The most accurate source of critical company & executive information.

www.zoominfo.com

Search ZoomInfo’s open directory to find information about more than 50 million business people and 5 million businesses.

www.insideview.com

Products & Pricing · Overview · FREE · CRM+ · PRO · TEAM · Compare Plans · InsideView UK and Ireland Edition · Why InsideView · Customer Success …

www.dnb.com

Get insights on the companies that matter. Reduce credit risk & find new customers. Delivering trusted business credit information for over 150 years.

www.lead411.com

Lead411 provides business email lists, company addresses, executive emails, and phone numbers.

www.referenceusa.com

The premier source of business and residential information for reference and research.

www.switchboard.com

Telephone Directory: Internet Yellow Pages, Internet White Pages – You can find what is generally regarded as the best phone book online at Switchboard.com.

www.netprospex.com

NetProspex is a directory of user-contributed business contacts verified by our CleneStep TM technology. Quickly find targeted business prospects including …

www.crunchbase.com

CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.

www.corptech.com

Company Information – Put CorpTech company information at your fingertips. Our business information is fast, easy and highly comprehensive…try CorpTech …

www.business.com

Online purchasing resource for businesses of all sizes. Find, Compare & Research products and services you need to run and grow your business. Over 50000+ …

www.thomasnet.com

ThomasNet.com is the leading product sourcing and supplier discovery platform for procurement professionals, engineers, plant & facility management …

finance.yahoo.com

At Yahoo! Finance, you get free stock quotes, up to date news, portfolio management resources, international market data, message boards, …

www.anywho.com

AnyWho is a free service that allows you to search the White Pages by name, or, enter a phone number and find out who owns it using reverse phone lookup.

www.yellowpages.com

Find online Yellow Pages business listings, phone numbers, addresses, maps, driving directions and more in the YP.com online directory.

www.intelius.com

Intelius helps businesses and consumers alike make informed decisions by providing background check and public records services. People search tools can …

www.jigsaw.com

Jigsaw is a prospecting tool used by sales professionals, marketers and recruiters to get fresh and accurate sales leads and business contact information.

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