Here is the second of a series of hands-on examples – based on some specific searches in the UK – on how to use some People Sourcing concepts. The same techniques can be applied to searches elsewhere.

I’d like to discuss following a list of people on Twitter.

Let’s start with creating a list of people, in this case, UK-based recruiters. I think it was Martin Lee who first pointed me to the interesting way Bullhorn Reach constructs their user profiles. Based on what we see, here’s how we could create an email list of UK recruiters:

site:bullhornreach.com/user intitle:uk

Any email extractor can now be used to create a list of email addresses that would look like this:

Here’s a question for the reader: what search would you run on Google to find additional UK-based recruiters who are not included in this list?

(By the way please don’t think that if you have a list of emails it’s a reason to send emails; it’s not what I had in mind at all.)

Now, I would like to follow these people on Twitter. To start with, I import the above list of email addresses into a Gmail account. This, by the way, will show everyone who is already present on Google-Plus:

Then, on Twitter, I point to that Gmail account and get suggestions for following. I can then mass-follow the list.

(By the way, please note how few of these people we would have found by searching their bio’s for the words recruiter or recruitment. That’s a reason why sourcing on Twitter  by searching bio’s may not be as productive as it may seem.)

Good People Sourcing (or Resourcing, as they are called in some places) methods are, of, course, independent of industry and geography. Here is the first of a series of hands-on examples – based on some specific searches in the UK – on how to use some People Sourcing concepts. The same techniques can be applied to searches elsewhere.

Suppose we would like to get to pages that look “like” this one and also collect the info, without much mouse-clicking, copying, and pasting.

After exploring the page closely and experimenting a little with the amounts of asterisks (“placeholders”) in the Google search string, we could arrive at something like this:

site:aerospacewalesforum.co.uk “name * * title * * ” “telephone * *” “email * * *” “website http* * “

(It’s actually more of art than science in figuring out the asterisks.) Here is what the results look like:

Then, using a parsing tool like Broadlook Contact Capture, we can get this in one click: 

It’s possible to do this parsing more precisely simply with MS Excel, but that would be a few more key- and mouse-clicks.

Then, using some magic, we can find some of those people on LinkedIn (there’s no need for a paid account)…

… and do many more things; but let’s stop here for now.

(By the way please don’t think that if you have a list of LinkedIn profiles it’s a reason to invite them; it’s not what I had in mind at all.)

Here is a question to the reader: how would you change the above search string to also show the address as well, as in this screenshot? 

Are you ready for a people sourcing contest? Two (or more) prizes await the winners.

Prize #1. Attendance at the first-ever live 

People Sourcing Certification Training in London UK

on October 24, 2012 – PLUS – continue with 4 weeks practice and tests online in the 

People Sourcing Certification Program in January 2013. 

Optionally, you can continue at

the Level Two instead, starting in February.

Additional prizes for the class in London will be given out to those who solve all of the sourcing puzzles, space permitting.

Prize #2. Attendance at the 

People Sourcing Certification Program in January/February 2013

 at the Level One or Level Two (your choice).

Deadline for the Contest: EOB Pacific Time MONDAY OCTOBER 22. When you are ready, enter the Contest Here:

(Don’t worry if you think you got it wrong the first time and can think of some improvements; we’ll accept multiple entries.)

To warm you up for the Contest, here are a few images you will see in the questions:

To learn the language of search engines it’s best to start with the advanced search dialogs:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search
http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced

If you’d like to keep a reminder handy on the most essential elements of the search engine syntax, here is one:

Which Boolean Strings will bring up company organizational charts? This question comes up once in a while from recruiters who come to my lectures and on forums.

Here’s a brief beginner guide on how to find where to find org charts. The post also has explanations applicable to finding sites to search for any information of interest.

First and foremost, for 99.99% of the companies out there there are no posted full org charts available for easy viewing online by strangers, for obvious reasons: it is proprietary data. Some companies post partial org charts of their management.

For most companies the org charts cannot be found, even with “strong” search strings, because they are not there. While it may sound trivial, so many people try hard to find what’s not out there -and feel that they don’t know how to search properly!

(1) Let’s imagine that there is a site allowing search for org charts, at least for some org charts. The site(s) might show up in Google search if we use the keywords “org chart” and perhaps also the word “search”, since otherwise we’d mostly find tools to create org charts, which is not of interest at the moment.

The search org chart search brings up a good first result: Cogmap Org Chart Wiki. The site doesn’t try to make money; instead, it offers information exchange. It has 17K charts with almost 300K people. The site was created back in 2006.

The second result, Where to find corporate organization charts, sounds great, but notice that the page was created in 2005, so the info may be a bit outdated (and it is, but is worth exploring).

(Take a look at other results and see what you can find.)

(2) Since we liked Cogmap, a thing to do is also to look for similar sites:  related:cogmap.com This brings up another site that is certainly on target and is useful: The organizational charts of the largest corporations 

(This search also does bring up “false positives” but we can always ignore them.)

(3) We can also search the posts on the Boolean Strings group, the Internet Sourcing Community. Search for charts and you will find Source people on wikiorgcharts – Check it out! The post points to the site Wikiorgcharts which is, like Cogmap, a crowd-sourcing site and has over a million entries and was created in 2011.

(4) If we look for sites that would have org chart(s) for a particular organization, we might assume that in many cases the words org chart will make it to the title or the URL of those pages. intitle:”org chart”  brings up quite a few sites, mostly universities and government sites. (You can exclude some words if you like, such as download, how, software, etc., to remove false positives.)

From the first few minutes of searching we would find lots of those for sites ending in .gov; .edu; .org; and .mil

Here are a few samples of org charts in .gov and .edu sites

• Organization Chart | Department of Energy
• Organizational Chart: About Us: Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
• Federal Aviation Org Charts and Contact Info
• Texas Department of State Health Services
• LSU Organizational Chart
• A collection of org charts for the University of California

Note that some org charts are posted as images, so you can’t Google any names within them; an example is here: NYCHA Organizational Chart (jpg image)

(For those of you who are advanced sourcers: can you figure out what org chart is used for the image above?)

If you have a basic or a low-paid account on LinkedIn, you can’t see the full names of people who are your third level connections. You can’t see the names of people outside your network. In LinkedIn Recruiter, which is the solution for corporations, you can see all names.

I didn’t realize up till I was at the #sourceIn event yesterday at the LinkedIn HQ in Mountain View, that agencies with the top solution wouldn’t see the names either. Now, LinkedIn has decided to open up the names to agencies as well. GREAT! It should be available soon. (They also have some really cool features coming up in the Talent Pipeline.)

However, if you don’t have that advanced type of account or don’t want to wait until the new feature is implemented for agencies, here is what you can do.

(1) Go to the profile in question.

(2) Share it, using the share function, with someone you know who’s OK with it, or with me. (We need to be connected for that; I am gladly accepting all invitations.)

(3) Look for the message you had just sent, in your “Sent Items” under Inbox.

(4) In your message, see the link to the profile with the name that you couldn’t see? Click on it.

There’s no need to have a paid account for it to work. It works in exactly 100% of all cases.

ADDITIONAL INFO. Added on 9/17/2012

Some people can no longer see the “share” link as on the screenshot above. Here is a workaround.

1. Look at the profile in question and copy its LinkedIn ID (a large number in the URL)
2. Start sharing a profile that you can share (such as your connection, or share my profile)
3. Paste this ID into your sharing dialog (in case of my profile the number to replace is 1769200)

This works just like before. Of course it’s a bit more mouse and key clicks but it works.

Also you get to see a link to the person’s public profile if it exists and that one will give you even more info in some cases.

Or, just use this link. Here is the exact link that should work (paste the LinkedIn ID where it says so):

http://www.linkedin.com/forwardProfileMsg?displayCreate=&profileID=PASTEIDHERE&network=I

Remember this look-and-feel of Google search above?

As Google search engine progresses and offers new features and some new syntax, the older search dialogs are not easily accessed anymore. If you discover such a search screen you’ll see older “look and feel” and even “©2011 Google” at the bottom of the page. However, these search dialogs are still around, work beautifully, and, in some cases, provide extra search facets that are gone from the “official”, supported searches with the new look-and-feel.

1. Advanced Patent Search
2. Advanced Scholar Search,
3. ~ which also points to the Legal Opinions Search
4. Advanced Book Search
5. Advanced Product Search
6. Advanced Video Search (different from the new Video Search) – Also, some advanced searches have been recently upgraded, but are not easily found from the home page:
7. Advanced News Search (available at the bottom of the news search)
8. Advanced Image Search (available under the settings icon if you do an Image Search)
9. This one is Copyright 2009! Advanced Group Search

Here are some sample test questions for the People Sourcing Certification Program:

Level One

• How many people currently working at Microsoft have the word Ninja in their current title on LinkedIn?
• There’s a “Racquetball League” site that lists a person who works (or used to work?) at ToysRUs. What is his job title?
• How many members of the site http://www.meritalk.com are women?
• Does Google accept the operator NOT (capitalized)?
• What is the last name of the Zone II Director of the National Pharmaceutical Association?

Level Two

• There are several people with the current title including the word Ninja, working at Microsoft, on LinkedIn. One of them works in software development, is involved with Bing, lives in Seattle, and has one duplicate profile on LinkedIn. What is his last name? When did he join Microsoft (year)?
• Does any type of Google search (including its special searches) have these operators?

1. inpublisher: 
2. near:
3. infile:
4. ininventor:

• How many people on this list have LinkedIn profiles? http://email-format.com/d/accenture.com/
• What is the name of the person whose connections are shown here: http://thebalazs.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/xray22.jpg?

You can register for the upcoming round of the Certifications today at our new site (just launched!): http://sourcingcertification.com/pricing-and-registration/

(This is just a partial list.) If you work for one of these companies, please know that one or more of your co-workers or managers are attending the Info Session for the People Sourcing Certification Program coming up in September 2012. Contact your colleagues and perhaps you can arrange a whole team attend the Program and get your sourcing function to a new level.

It is wonderful that the Certification Program is raising the awareness of importance and global interest in People Sourcing.

We would be very happy to accommodate teams of people and address team’s specific sourcing requests. Please get in touch with me to discuss.

It’s quite international also! The countries represented tomorrow are, so far: the US, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel, Japan, and Australia.

If you have any questions about the Program and how to sign up, please contact the Program Customer Support Manager George Glikman or 510-384-8262.

I have just returned from the Sourcing Summit – 2012 (see the report: Sourcing in Australia).

The photo below is from a session in Brisbane. The search string on Google that we were exploring is

site:http://adia.com.au/suppliers “contact * * phone * * * * * email * *”

This is a demonstration of sourcing techniques that make things wonderfully fast. Suppose we are looking for people who are likely to be members of this Association. If we run the search above; then scroll through the three pages of results, forcing them to the screen via Fastest Chrome or Fastest Fox; then use the Contact Capture (find it on the Tools tab on my blog if you don’t have it), the result will be obtained in approximately 15 seconds and will look like this. I have also attached it as an excel file to a copy of this post on the Ning network.

Further on, we can cross-reference the list of people on Facebook:

 …on LinkedIn…

…and pretty quickly decide whom to call, based on the wealth of the collected information.