I’d like to share a People Sourcing Certifications Program update. We’ve had two rounds of the Program, starting in March and in June 2012. The program has been incredibly successful so far!

The next round will start in September. In the meantime, you can get the Program Materials from the June 2012 Program, with a special pricing of $299 until July 10th 2012.

Current

In the first two rounds the Program attendees came from:

• A mix of Corporate Recruiters, including people from Microsoft, Walmart, Verizon Wireless, KPMG, Genentech, Pepsi, OfficeMax, and Oracle, and Agency Recruiters from companies big and small.
• All over the world: France, the UK, Ireland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Canada, the US, South Africa, India, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.

About  55% of the attendees from the US were AIRS-certified (CIR, ACIR, and CSSR). While we had several strong people sourcers attend, more than half of the attendees came with little experience and had never used advanced Boolean syntax.

Feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive. “I feel that you pulled together and verified information that can be found in  numerous places into one concept and it finally ‘clicked’ for me”,  writes one of the current attendees. Two weeks after the graduation from the first round an attendee informed me of placing a candidate that she had found using the techniques that she’d “never locate otherwise“.

Future

The next round of the Program will have the two levels study separately. The Level One starts on September 18th. The Level Two starts on September 25th. We will provide guidelines for deciding which level to sign up for.

We are working on enhancing and expanding the Program. In the next few weeks we’ll launch a dedicated website for the Program; post a list of Certified People Sourcing Professionals; create an online forum for attendees and alumnae; and plan live training in Europe. I am bringing the Program materials to share at my upcoming trip to the Sourcing Summit in Australia, where I am the keynote speaker.

Please keep in touch for updates. Those who purchase the Program Materials will be able to upgrade for the program with lectures, live Q&A, and tests, for the difference in price.

Following up on the great post on “Balazs and his magic sourcing world” – a new blog which you must start following! – I’d like to add just a few more details to be explored. As Balazs points out, we are experiencing fantastic new functionality, provided by LinkedIn, namely, searching and filtering others’ connections.

Balazs is sharing a link for exploring the connections’ connections:

Here is today’s Sourcing Challenge!

Find an Excel file with a list of companies with full contact info, where one column in the table will contain only this in every row (below its title):

OR

(yes, just like the operator OR)

1. Email the URL for the list to [email protected]
2. Also, email the shortest possible search string on Google or on Bing that would lead to finding the list.

The person who sends the longest list wins. In case of a tie, the person with the shortest search string wins.

Deadline: Monday June 25th EOB.

Prize: the Full Set of Materials for the People Sourcing Certification Program – ABT (a $399 value).

• site:plaxo.com/directory/profile denmark systems architect
• site:spoke.com/people “toys r us”
• site:bullhornreach.com/user intitle:oracle.com
• intitle:resume OR inurl:resume Java iphone OR iOS developer “san francisco” OR 415 ext:pdf
• phonebook canada
• ?
• “s skills & expertise” site:linkedin.com marketing training
• “download my resume” procurement
• site:linkedin.com inurl:in OR inurl:pub -inurl:dir firmware “have * * certification”
• site:www.linkedin.com inurl:in OR inurl:pub -inurl:dir “human resources” “attended * * conference “
• intitle:resume supply chain manager gmail.com OR yahoo.com OR sbcglobal.net OR aol.com OR hotmail.com -sample
• intitle:~resume programmer iOS front-end 415 -job
• +pepsi https://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&site=&source=hp&q=%2Bpepsi
• related:pipl.com
• member inurl:gmail ext:com
• contains:pdf resume CISSP engineer
• ext:xls name title company address phone sales marketing development
• site:docstoc.com resume business analyst 214
• site:emurse.com md phd
• blog download my “resume” “executive assistant”
• site:indeed.com/r accenture kpmg
• “3..20 semantic search engines”
• intitle:”about me” “web design” contact | call | phone | email | gmail.com
• inurl:profile “attorney” “public policy OR affairs” site:plaxo.com
• allintitle: association healthcare recruiters
• Verbatim

Participants of the People Sourcing Certification Program go through 60 questions for the Level 1 and 80 questions for the Level 2 at the end of the Program. We use the tests as an additional opportunity to practice and apply the sourcing skills.

As several participants have pointed out, and as one of them wrote, the Program actually makes you “think” instead of just plugging in some answers and forgetting about them a month later like some recruiters/sourcers do.

Here is a sample test question. It is in fact easy but, unless you think before and while you search, it looks like a pretty complex challenge!

I’ve decided to run a little contest around the question and support two sourcing enthusiasts to attend the Program.

Please email your answers to [email protected] from now till EOB Thursday May 31st to be included in a drawing to attend the Program as a guest (a $599 per person value).

We will randomly select one person for live attendance in San Francisco June 6-7 and one person to attend online (the online program starts June 12th). Please indicate live or online preference in your email.

Ready?

1. Find a file containing several lists of employees from many companies, including: Amgen, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and Astrazeneca. The lists are dated from 2000 to 2010. What is the file’s URL?

2. One of the people taking the test couldn’t initially find the answer, but did right away, after he and I discussed one sourcing idea. I didn’t give him any additional info but he found the file. What was the idea?

Irina

Join us for a webinar on May 22.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/309565442

Google-Plus presents excellent tools for searching, sourcing, and reaching out, and it’s time to master them. Let the Facebook numbers not fool you; Google-Plus is the second top place on the Internet to figure out, if you are looking for professionals, after LinkedIn. Waiting till it grows or till it becomes a “better place to hang out” will put you behind others who already use it to their advantage.

Join me for a webinar on Tuesday May 22nd and learn how to use Google-plus to find and cross-reference target professionals, and to make initial contacts. This webinar will cover some unpublished sourcing tips, along with the basics of Google-Plus.

Who should attend: People Sourcers, Recruiters, and anyone who searches and contacts professionals on the Internet.

Outline
Google-Plus vs. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest
Overview of Features and Changes
People Search on Google-Plus
* Targeting Companies
* Targeting Geography
* X-raying and Custom Search
* Searching for Circles of Professionals
Cross-Referencing
* “Finding Friends”
* Benefits of Integration with Gmail
* Discovering Contact Info
Getting in Touch
* Sharing Opportunities
How Google Search is Affected by Google-Plus
* Google Search Personalization
* Semantic Search
* Boolean Syntax Changes
Optimizing Google-Plus Pages
* +1’s
* Direct Connect
Resources

Date: Tuesday May 22nd
Time: 11AM Pacific/2PM Eastern
Duration: 90 minutes
Price: $79 (includes the slides, a video-recording, and one month of support).
Cannot attend the webinar live? No problem; you will get a video-recording.

Certification Program Special: sign up for the People Sourcing Certification Program before the Google-Plus webinar and attend the May 22nd webinar as a guest. If you have already signed up for the certification program: please enter #CERTIF when registering and skip the webinar payment.

What Level People Sourcer (One or Two) can you expect to achieve if you join the Certification Program?

I believe that everybody who searches for professional people online – recruiters, sourcers, sales, marketing, business development people – need to aim to answer yes to these 20 questions below, to remain competitive and productive:

1. Do you search for professionals on Google?
2. Are you familiar with the Boolean logic in searches (AND/OR/NOTs)?
3. Do you use advanced operators on Search Engines (like intitle: or site: )?
4. Would you know how to locate resumes posted online?
5. Would you know how to locate LinkedIn profiles (or some other online profiles) using the site: operator on Google?
6. Would you know how to look for associations and events relevant to a particular type of professionals?
7. Would you know how to locate a list of people posted online, such as “members” or “attendees”?
8. Are you aware of some changes in Google’s search syntax in the last 6 months?
9. Have you used other search engines, such as Bing or Blekko?
10. Is your profile on LinkedIn filled out up to ~70%?
11. Do you search for people on LinkedIn using its advanced search dialog?
12. Are you a member of many professional LinkedIn groups?
13. Do you use messaging on LinkedIn?
14. Do you know what InMail stands for on LinkedIn?
15. Do you know the difference between private and public profiles on LinkedIn?
16. Do you have a profile on Google+?
17. Do you have a profile on Twitter?
18. Have you used “lead generation” sites such as jigsaw.com?
19. Have you used people search engines such as pipl.com?
20. Would you know how to look for contact info for a person?

For those considering signing up for the People Sourcing Certification Program: If you have answered “yes” to most of these questions, you might be able to get to the Level 2 in the Program. If you have answered “no” to most of them, you will probably answer “yes” to all – and will reach Level 1 if you sign up and complete the Program.

The great part is, you can decide which level test to take toward the end of the program; all participants get the material for both levels.

Circles on Google+ present excellent people sourcing capabilities. Without looking closer, you may at first think that circles are like groups on LinkedIn, or maybe like lists on Twitter, but they are not. The interesting thing about circles is that only you, the circle creator, know what any circle is about and how you have named it. “Outsiders” can see a list of everyone in several of your circles together, even if your circles are public.

You can add people to circles who are not on Google-plus, by adding their email addresses. Only you will know about this inclusion, until those people warm up to joining. Google-Plus is very happy if you “share” news with a circle containing those non-member emails. It will mass-email notifications on what you had shared, plus, will invite these people to join. Obviously, this can serve as a way to deliver a link to a job post to a list of emails. As always, we need to select those, to whom we email, with care.

So, Google-plus is happy to email large numbers of people who are not members. But it will not let you email your sharing notification to more than 100 members (guess, why?). Therefore, to share with Google-plus members with a notification, create circles with fewer than 100 members.

Using Google+, you can “share” not just a link but you can also “share” a circle. Those with whom you share will then see everyone who’s included in the circle, sans email addresses of outsiders and the name of the circle.

Here is an example of a shared circle.

Some sourcing techniques may be based around existing publicly shared circles of experts in your target area/industry. Circles that have been shared publicly are not hard to find.

In Part 2 I will talk about finding people for your circles.

-Irina

P.S. I’d say Sourcers can safely ignore yet another announcement, posted today, about  Google’s semantic search (unless we need to source for celebrities). If you are curious, see Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings.

Congratulations to our very first Level 2 Certified Peoplesourcer – Jing Wang, a Sourcer and a Recruiter from Goldbeck Recruiting in Vancouver, Canada.

Based on Jing’s work through the Peoplesourcing Certification Program and on her Test Level 2 results, I would recommend her as a strong up-and-coming Sourcer, able to work hard, to absorb new material in high volumes, and to creatively apply a variety of tools and methods to get to the desired information.

Here’s what Jing wrote to me this morning, after receiving the news:

I can definitely say that Sourcing is something that I am passionate about and I have been following you (Irina) from the beginning, learning from you and other Master Sourcers out there. I am very happy and honored to be the first one to pass this certification program. The test was definitely challenging but extremely rewarding!

As for feedback on the course, I think it was very helpful in showing me the thought processes that are behind searching. I had been learning about Sourcing from so many different places, jumping from one article to another, reading up on blogs all the time but I didn’t know for sure whether I was going the right way. So your course has combined all the threads of knowledge and now I am very clear on the areas I need to keep on top of as well as the areas that I understood properly. The test was quite challenging as I said, and I must say that I kind of panicked a couple of time thinking that Oh my gosh, I am not going to be able to answer these questions. But then, I re-watched your slides and I feel like I was able to make use of all the things you taught us. I am happy that I was part of this progress in the People Sourcing industry with the launch of your certification program and being in the first batch of graduates! Thank you for creating this program and I will make sure to keep on learning, reading and practicing!

Congratulations, Jing! The best of luck to you in your career.

Irina

Personal search is the type of search that takes into account what your online friends favor. For a researcher who wants to be objective it makes no sense to have it on.

We can (and should) turn off personal results, as Google lets us.

Personal search implemented by Google is at its highest power when we are logged into Google-plus. At that point anyone who is in our circles is a big influence. But there’s more. People from extended circles, from social networks connected to the Google+ account in the about section, and the Gmail contacts all come into play to tweak the search results.

Strangely though, due to the very “social” quality of the way it affects search results, I have recently thought of a couple of scenarios when keeping the personal search on may be a good thing!

Scenario number one. Include only people in your industry and profession in your circles. (Google+ will quickly sense what this is about and will start suggesting other members “like” the ones you have included, to be added to your circles, so you could take advantage of that, too.)

This way, if you search, you will see some of the relevant items those influential people in industry have posted or shared, at which point you can a) learn from trusted sources and b) say “hi” to them by adding a +1 to the post or commenting.

Scenario number two.  Create a different Google+ account and only include your target candidates and people from target industry and geography.

This will be your, shall we say, “talent community”. (For non-recruiters this would be a target audience.) Now, when you search for anything of interest, you will find what those folks had to say or what they +1’ed or shared – and it’s your chance to communicate with them by adding a +1 to the post or commenting or re-sharing.

How does this sound? I have not heard anyone suggest this.