Sourcing for Active and Passive Candidates on Stackoverflow Careers

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Stackoverflow is part of StackExchange, a “Q and A” platform. At this time it has 2.5 MLN users.

The site Stack Overflow Careers 2.0 offers the users to share their professional information if they are open to new possibilities. Search for these profiles is paid for employers and recruiters. However, you can X-Ray the site (for free).

Here’s what a profile on the “career” site looks like. Once you have found a profile, there shouldn’t be any problem finding additional professional information (if you need it), based on the shared links to social sites, the profile image, the name, and the location.

(Note that these bio/profile pages are separate. and different in structure, from the profiles of Stackoverflow users.)

A straightforward string to X-Ray the bio’s is site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs (add some keywords), for example:

site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs Objective-C PHP MySQL

We can see (interpret) these pages in the same way as resumes on job boards: recent are for active candidates, past are for “passive”.

To find the most recent profiles you can search for

site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs profile “updated * yesterday”

site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs profile updated ..6 days ago

Naturally, when you view the profile showing “3 days ago” in the preview it may be, say, 6 days since it was updated. This gap in dates gives us some idea on how often Google visits the pages.

View the dates when the profiles was last updated by using something like

site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs profile updated on * * *

Now, who can find the profile that has not been updated the longest? 🙂

If you are interested in many more practical ways and examples of sites to search for Software Engineers, feel free to check out the materials for the latest webinar, exactly on that topic.

 

Comments 5

  1. Thanks for the article! Updating a profile can be a strong indicator that someone is about to make a move. I find it helpful to narrow down the geography as well. For example. site:careers.stackoverflow.com -inurl:jobs profile updated ..2 days ago “washington d.c.” gives me the candidates in my market that updated their profile 2 days ago. I can save my search string and run it on a regular basis and keep tabs on candidates that might be making a move in my market.

    Thanks again!

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      Author

      Yes, Mike, thanks for the comment. Unfortunately, Google Alerts seem to be broken (since mid-last year), so running the search on a regular basis does sound like a good idea.

  2. Irina – it is truly uncanny you posted this today! I wrote a piece on the exact same subject on Sunday but don’t have it scheduled to publish until Monday. I’ve been wondering for a while why no one else has picked up on and published the ability to search Stack careers profiles for free. You’ll still have to wait until Monday to see my strings and approaches. 🙂

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      Author

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