Please join me for a new webinar on Custom Search Engines.

Google’s Custom Search Engines (CSEs) have long been a favorite tool for experts searching the Internet. CSEs benefit researchers in many ways: by providing a simple User Interface and lessening the need for advanced Boolean operators; expanding the limits of Google’s search capabilities; and eliminating annoying “captcha”s triggered by complex searches.

Some of the advanced features of CSEs may require a technical background, but anyone can create simple CSEs to make life easier for them and their team. In fact, some useful, specialized CSEs can be built from scratch in a matter of minutes.

Join me for an informative webinar about the creation and use of Custom Search Engines. In my presentation, I will go beyond the basic CSE-building rules, to include some simple to use CSE “hacks” to help stretch your research further.

I will also share more than a dozen of CSEs I have created, along with the steps I used to build them.

Who should attend: Sourcers, Recruiters, Researchers, and everyone who searches the Internet and wants to create CSE’s for themselves and their teams. Note: we expect the attendees to be familiar with the Boolean search syntax on Google.

Takeaways: A library of CSE’s for your research and new skills for building CSEs.

Lecture– October 28th (Wednesday) at 9 AM PDT/noon EDT.
Hands-On Practice (optional) – October 29th (Thursday) at 9 AM PDT/noon EDT.

Seating is limited.

To sign up, please visit our training site.

The recent document Google’s Advanced Search Operators by @dmrussell has a nice, compact overview of Google search operators.  Since the author works at Google, it’s also a reliable source – make a note of it!

Most of the content is not new for those of us familiar with the advanced Boolean search syntax; but one part, at the very end, grabbed my attention. I’ll copy it here, for your convenience:

<quote> Stars in site search.

A search like [ site:*.law.*.edu ] will find all of the .EDU sites with “.law” in the domain name.  

Also try:  [ site:*.nyc.gov ] will match all of the NYC.gov sites with a subdomain.  

Also:  [ site:*.nasa.*  inurl:education ] gives lots of good clues about education sites at NASA.

<end-of-quote>

As we know, the asterisk (or star) can be used instead of a keyword, as a “fill in the blanks” operator. This is the first time though that I see documentation on using the asterisk * in combination with the site: operator. 

It remains somewhat unclear how it works – i.e. what the exact rules are using the asterisk along with the site:

These searches are a little different than those in Dan’s examples, but they do work:

• site:plus.google.com/*/about full stack engineer (find G+ profiles)
• site:plus.google.com/*/posts biomedical data science (find G+ posts)
• site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -site:site:linkedin.com/*/*/* vp operations mining and metals (excluding directories)
• site:linkedin.com/in/*/fr OR site:linkedin.com/pub/*/fr (profiles in French for those members whose main profile is in English or another language, not French; open the results in an incognito window)
• site:twitter.com/*/lists social media manager (searching for Twitter lists)

In several of the above examples, using site: vs. inurl: allows to reach better precision – e.g.

site:plus.google.com/*/about

works better (and looks nicer) than

site:plus.google.com inurl:about.

Further, the following searches, though they do not follow the exact syntax in Dan’s document, also work:

• site:linkedin.com/title/*at-walmart (find job titles at Walmart)
• site:com/*resume graphic designer portfolio
• site:*directory.* CPA
• site:*.nasa.*/*education.

(However, for example, this string won’t work: site:*.nasa.*/education*)

If you play with this, I’d be curious to hear what you discover. (Be aware of a likely Google captcha attack on you.)

P.S. Please note that in response to my post (this one that you are reading), Dan has updated the document Google’s Advanced Search Operators with extra details; see those at the end of the document. I am still not sure we have the full picture though.

LinkedIn is in the middle of switching all groups to either Standard or Unlisted. My previous post addresses what it means to us as group members and moderators.

Not to be missed! As the switch happens, LinkedIn assigns its best guess to be either in the unlisted or standard categories for each group. Moderators can change the category; many won’t. The previously “private” (closed) groups used to be visible on the members’ public profiles. That allowed us to Google (X-Ray) for group members for the groups we don’t belong to.

Obviously, this is a shrinking opportunity. As the Group change happens, we can still see Google still finding the group members for the now-unlisted groups, up until the Googlebot visits the profiles again. But the public profiles have stopped showing that membership in unlisted groups.

Here is just one example: this group, “Business Intelligence Professionals (BI, Big Data, Analytics)” has become unlisted. You will not be able to find it in the LinkedIn group search.

However, as of today, Google still remembers who is a member of the group. Not for too long!

Additionally, as you might have noticed if you X-ray LinkedIn, we can’t ask Google for a cached LinkedIn profile.

This group membership information will be visible in Google for a very short time.

P.S. Don’t tell anybody, but   the unlisted groups are still listed in the Groups Directory.

There are blogs, explanations, and heated discussions about the upcoming changes in LinkedIn groups. Here are some positive news: members will be able to post images and “talk” to each other by typing each other’s names. Those are welcome Social Media additions, already common on other platforms.

I have also heard, from a reliable source, that LinkedIn will raise the limit of groups a member can belong to, from 50 to 100. Fantastic!

Some of the changes, however, do not feel positive and make group moderators worry. Here are two significant changes regarding sharing content and groups’ moderation:

(1) No more shared content 

Previously, those who are not group members could still review posts on “open groups”. In fact, you didn’t even need to log in to LinkedIn to read that content. Some Google searches brought up relevant content from groups. Enthusiastic members and moderators could share a link to a post outside the group and invite others to join the discussion. None of the above will be possible, starting a few days from now.

As a side note, that seems like an odd decision given that LinkedIn has been enthusiastic about creating and sharing public (Googlable) content. Examples of the growing public content include the publishing system; the “title” pages; and the topic/skill pages, to name a few categories. Hiding the group content is going in the opposite direction.

Outcome: I anticipate that less traffic will be drawn to groups with good content. It may be harder to keep groups interactive.

(2) “Standard” groups allow only after-the-fact moderation

If you haven’t moderated a large group, you may not appreciate the work behind the scenes to keep the group on target. With the new rules, to quote a fellow moderator:

“as I read the changes, we lose control of our membership, we lose control over what gets published, we are left to clean up AFTER people get in and after discussions are published”.

As an illustration, at times, while the moderator is away, just one member can flood a group with dozens of (fake or real) invited profiles, all posting spam. Cleaning up the group after the fact may be labor-intensive. And, even if spam is visible for a short time, for those to happen to see it, it makes the group unattractive.

Outcome:  Due to the lack of spam protection, “Standard” is an inferior option for a group. Group moderators, myself included, currently see making the groups “Unlisted” as the only remaining option to keep the good content and interaction. We can still share the fact of the groups’ existence with others but will have control over spammers before they post spam, not after. With an unlisted group, all the responsibility of adding people to the group is on the moderators; it seems to be limiting but may work out.

I do hope to be able to make our most popular group Boolean Strings – The Internet Sourcing Community “unlisted” while keeping it open and easy to join for all who wish to participate.

Given the changes in Groups’ functionality, many moderators are looking for alternatives.

In these times of uncertainty we are glad to have the public, independent Boolean Strings Social Network and recommend our LinkedIn Boolean Strings members join it if they haven’t. Today’s message to the Boolean group should be live for a few days, and then will stop working.

With all the changes, I find LinkedIn to remain an incredible source for Sourcing professional backgrounds; it may remain a place to discuss Sourcing too – we’ll see!

Remember the Skills pages on LinkedIn? They went away in 2013. Many professionals who are in search for Talent liked the Skill pages while they were up. The pages listed “related skills”, helped to navigate unfamiliar terminology and suggested a variety of keywords to use.

At this time, apparently, LinkedIn is expanding its Topic pages. Topics include Universities, Companies, Industries – and now, Skills as well! You can find the Topic directories here.

The “skill” topic pages’ URLs simply have the format www.linkedin.com/topic/ <skill-name> – as an example, https://www.linkedin.com/topic/javascript.

The layout and content for these pages is still under development. (I’ve been waiting for it to settle before writing this post, but it continues to evolve…) However, one thing is clear – these pages include related skills (or related topics). As an example, the Javascript page lists AJAX, jQuery, Node.js and more as related skills.

At this time, we can see two formats for the pages – randomly depending on the skill name, being logged in or not, and the viewer’s location. I have my vote for the first format because it clearly shows the (other) skills most common among the members with the given skill. In addition, it also lists “related topics”. Very cool!

…Will LinkedIn Developers read this blog?…

The first format choice (preferred, more informative, but may not last):

The second format may have a nicer graphical presentation but it has less interesting content. It does show related topics – at the bottom of the page:

What the final format for these new skill pages is going to be, the future will show. But we can already use the pages to explore terminology and find alternative keywords, just as we used to with the old Skill pages.

The topic pages are worth exploring; they do provide many additional good insights into the LinkedIn Big Data. If you find other interesting aspect, please share in the comments.

…and here’s a trick Sourcing question: where and when did I take the photo above?

It didn’t use to be some years ago, but now searching for online resumes on Google is a bit of a pain. We need to use advanced operators (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) and add keywords. Then, we need to exclude job posts (-job -jobs -careers …). Need to exclude resume samples and templates (-sample -example…). Even then, the results will be populated by partial resumes and search pages from the sites that will try to sell us access to their resume collections. We can narrow the search down by specifying the format (filetype:PDF OR filetype:Doc…), but if we do so, we’ll be missing the resumes shared in online document storage sites… Not easy!

However, there’s a free resume database, easy to search, that few know about. It is quietly built and populated by hundreds of records daily.

Here’s (an amazing, unexpected) resume search example; before you read further, just go ahead and try it!

resume “risk management” consultant “gmail.com”

Note that I didn’t use any advanced Boolean operators and didn’t need to exclude tons of “false positives” such as job posts and resume templates.

This search is very broad; to find target resumes we would need to narrow it down or filter the results. But the results are almost all resumes.

Here’s what the search screen looks like:

The secret of easily finding resumes is that I used Google Image Search instead of the Google web search.

Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it.

Here are a couple more examples, for your surprise and enjoyment:

• resume account manager e-commerce “gmail.com” OH
• resume it auditor “gmail.com” FL

For this type of sourcing to be more on target, we can narrow the results down… by color. Let’s look at the black-and-white results only:

resume SaaS B2B account executive

Here’s what this search looks like:

Narrow the search down to JPEG files only, for even better precision:

resume iOS SDK gmail 408

(408 is one of the San Francisco Bay Area phone codes).

So why does the image search work so well to find resumes? The reason behind it is a top business network’s acquisition of a document storage site. The Social Network encourages its members to add resumes to their profiles using the storage site. While the Network doesn’t give Recruiters any way to search within those resumes (either free or paid) – Google does. We just need to switch to the Image search on Google vs. the general Web search. These documents are ranked quite high in Google search, so we’ll find many.

I would be glad to connect – please check out my profile on the Social Network.

Hello and welcome back to my blog posts. Hope many of you had a nice summer vacation! I took a break in posting blogs and giving webinars in the last few weeks for long weekends in the mountains and also working on a big Sourcing Project that I will write about soon.

This post is the “Back to School” sort, explaining how to source simply yet efficiently.

For those who shy away from using advanced search syntax AND for those who may be “overusing” it:

Let’s explore “Plain English” search and the cases when it produces better results than advanced Boolean search.

If you have a job description or a long email from someone defining what they want to find – you cannot paste the long description into Google and get the right profiles. (Google is not there yet!) However, if you can describe the information you are looking for in a short sentence, chances are, you will find just what you need using keyword-only search, without X-Raying or any such techniques.

Case 1. Finding definitions and facts

At this time, Google has become smart enough to interpret and answer many short questions. If you have one, you can try searching like this (the question mark is optional):

• what is cloud computing?
• what are most common names in the us
• where is Intuit HQ

Sometimes, you can just reduce the question to naming the category you want to learn about – the results may impress you:

• banks in montreal
• unemployed in europe

Case 2. Finding the sites to explore

You can often find professional sites such as sites for associations and conferences just as quickly; then, collect their member and attendee directories if they provide those to outsiders – which is sometimes the case. Here are example searches:

• association sawing drilling
• british columbia Wastewater Association
• Engineering and Construction project manager attendees conference

Case 3. Name three objects (such as company names) to find more “like” them. As an example, name three competing companies to find more:

• McKinsey BCG Deloitte

Case 4. Find email lists by naming email domains and perhaps adding a few keywords. Examples:

• “gmail.com” “yahoo.com” orthopedic surgeon kansas
• “astrazeneca.com” “merck.com” “lilly.com” “research scientist”

These are just a few of the many ways to find information for sourcing using simple searches.

Join me for the upcoming webinar, where I will present many more techniques and will provide one month of support for everyone who signs up to practice Sourcing in Plain English, “with NO Boolean”.

To help fellow Recruiters, Sourcers, and Researchers in creating Boolean Strings and searching the Internet – here is a basic search operators comparison chart for Google vs. Bing from our Sourcing Guidebook.

Using the correct search syntax is critical for sourcing productivity.

Avoid some common mistakes. Note that AND is not a Google operator (don’t include it); parentheses are ignored on Google (you can use them but it won’t matter); and the asterisk * stands for a word (not a part of a word) on Google.

Want to learn more? Join me for the Intro to Sourcing Webinar to get other helpful tip sheets and charts, materials, and access to one month of support on everything Sourcing.  Dates: August 26 and 27, 2015.

We’ve recently had a good (and still ongoing) discussion on the Boolean group on How to find LinkedIn profiles that have a resume embedded into the page via slideshare.net. I thought it might be useful to summarize the main points.

While Slideshare is now part of LinkedIn, there’s not a whole lot we can do regarding searching for the Slideshare documents attached to LinkedIn profiles, because “Only your 1st-degree connections on LinkedIn can see your SlideShare presentations.”

On the other hand, most Slideshare documents are public, so you can search for them from Google:

site:slideshare.net intitle:resume CPA IL (773 OR 312)

Slideshare has its own search, that is somewhat limited, but can serve as another search option: “Resume”  “CPA” “773” “312”  “IL”

Here is an interesting twist on X-Raying Slideshare. The documents on Slideshare are represented as images, with text “transcripts” at the bottom of the pages. Based on that knowledge, we can X-Ray for images on Google and get nice visual previews of the search results:

(image search) site:slideshare.net intitle:resume CPA IL (773 OR 312) – this is what the search results look like:

For those who don’t like using advanced Google search operators, here is a Custom Search Engine to search for Resumes on Slideshare – just add your keywords: public link

To get up to 1,000 results, use this CSE (just enter your keywords):

http://bit.ly/Slideshare-Resumes

For those who are looking for people in Academia or in Europe – the ones who name their professional bios “CVs” – here’s another Search Engine:

http://bit.ly/Slideshare-CV

Author: Arron Daniels

Disclaimer: These views are Arron’s and not necessarily mine, but I think it’s a great topic to discuss. Big thanks to Arron for offering the post and also for recently holding one of the most engaged Bi-weekly Chats on the Sourcer’s Network.

(photo credit)

I had the privilege of co-moderating Boolean Strings Network’s  Bi-Weekly People Sourcing Chat last week. Our chats can vary from tools, best tips/tricks, hacks, etc., but last week we spoke quite a bit regarding texting. There were many members who did not use texting as part of their communication with prospective candidates, and some who used it for follow up.  The biggest point of contention was the use of text messaging if there was no response from initial phone calls, or as cold texting as a first attempt.

I am a fan of texting at any point in the conversation, but it all depends on the user and their comfort level.  I wanted to share a few points of why I believe texting is relevant and how you can use it in your outreach process.

Before you text…

• Understand your target– A smart sourcer once told me, “For us (sourcers), candidates are our currency. It doesn’t matter how we initiate conversation, as long as the message is clear, respectful of the person, and we know what we’re talking about…”  When you text someone, do your research. Once you get an opportunity to speak to this individual, it makes the conversation go a little smoother.
  • Know the role – Understand a “day in the life” as best you can to include a basic understanding of the technology/skill you are going to eventually ask this person about
  • Know “who” they are – Publications, white papers, college/certifications, awards, and anything else that can distinguish you from other recruiters/sourcers

• Don’t blather- No one likes a rude, uninteresting, or long winded message. Test your messages with co-workers or professionals that you know in the same business as your target candidates.

Text with care…

• Leave an impactful message- Don’t beat your prospective candidates into submission with a “apply here” link or even worse, sending the job description (even by text) when they don’t know who you are or they never asked for it. Here is an example I used in our chat:

• Get to the point- Let them know who you are, what you want, and something to garner their interest. You’re not writing a book; you are getting them to call you/schedule a time to call you.

Texting isn’t for everyone…

There are still recruiters and sourcers out there who will not embrace texting either out of comfort or their candidate market doesn’t align with texting (and in some places outside of the United States it’s illegal). If you haven’t tried texting because you think it’s “spammy” or impersonal, I have a few questions for you.

Have you given it an honest try?

• Texting one or two people without result is not an honest try. Build it into your outreach methods and track time to response and response rate

What’s the difference?

• What is the difference between an impactful message in an unsolicited email versus an unsolicited text message?  Response rate.  Depending on the article/study you read, they will differ, but text messages are consistently in the 90%+ open rate while emails (on a successful campaign) are anywhere from 60%-75%

Are you texting from your phone?

• Texting from a phone (personal or company) is a pain. This is a chief complaint I get from non-texters. Why jam your fingers into a tiny screen when you have the ability to send messages from Google Voice (great Chrome extension for Google Voice)?

Texting isn’t a revolution for everyone, but it can be a new beginning if it’s uncharted territory. Give texting a try and comment below on what text platforms you use and your thoughts about texting prospective candidates.

Be sure to tune into next week’s chat on July 23, 2015, 11:00 am EST where @Megan Calimbas will be the moderator.  Happy Sourcing!