I have run across some interesting URLs that seem to give us very good approximations for the number of public LinkedIn profiles and their distribution across countries. To benefit, please log out of your LinkedIn account.

All LinkedIn Public Profiles – 144,224,954 as of today.

This gives me the following statistics to view:

Further on, these are the numbers to check out for the listed countries…

• US
• India
• UK
• Brazil
• Canada

…and for all other countries as well (the numbers are as of now):

• Ireland 591668
• Australia 2689314
• South Africa 1474072
• Singapore 691945
• Mexico 2211714
• Israel 585929
• (etc.)

-Irina
View Irina Shamaeva’s profile

P.S. Actually, if you log back in now, the same links will give you some other interesting things to explore.

Remember this recent post on Mashable Google: Sorry, Twitter, We Don’t Index the @ Symbol? Those of us on the Boolean Strings group, who are search syntax perfectionists and are tired of seeing yet another suggestion to search for @*.com or *@ibm.com, etc. to find emails, were glad that this info (that is present in Google’s help as well, by the way) was confirmed once again.

It still remains true, regarding searching for emails. Try these search strings:

• @*.com some other keywords and additions 

• *.com some other keywords and additions

• /*com some other keywords and additions

Now everybody’s talking about Google searching for special symbols. But wait, it hasn’t quite happened yet!

(Let me remind you, how much celebration, tweets, and re-tweets we had just two months ago about Google Showing Results for Punctuation Marks. What happened at that point was that Google started recognizing search strings consisting of just one special symbol such as / or @)

With the necessary reality checks in place (and let’s watch the strings above and hope they will look for emails one day) here is what I have noticed so far.

Google would recognize

• a twitter handle if you put it in quotes: chat   “@braingain”
• a hashtag if you put it in quotes: what is “#Followfriday”

Pretty cool! 🙂

“LinkedIn is becoming just another Job Board.” Is that true?

I think we are mixing up several unrelated things in a statement like this.

1) Job Boards seems to be used as a criticism. But Job Boards, such as Monster.com are still great for sourcing (you may skip the advanced semantic search when signing up if the price is a concern). Why is there a perception that Job Boards are not a place to go to? They have parsed resumes, structured search, and a good sourcer can still dig out a lot.

2) I agree, it’s too bad when LinkedIn is adding new restrictions. I have complained about LinkedIn quite a few times, but I must say that I haven’t been able to stay away from LinkedIn on any of my searches. It has become our top resource, especially given a great rate of response from potential candidates.

With any added restrictions and added functionality targeted at recruiters, LinkedIn will never become a job board, for two main reasons:

• Job boards have resumes vs. LinkedIn profiles, 80% of which are not filled out completely; this is a challenge but is also an opportunity
• on job boards recruiters and candidates are on the “opposite” sides and can’t view each other as members of a network; on LinkedIn we can check each other out and establish trust.

Sure, LinkedIn’s growing limitations are frustrating to all. But so far there are so many great ways to use LinkedIn for sourcing. Hope it remains this way.

The latest Update: Congratulations to the two winners:

• Jeanne Darby of Volt Workforce Solutions
• Debra Quiat of ToysRUs

– welcome to the Program! 🙂

We have a tremendous amount of interest in the upcoming People Sourcing Certifications – and the space is already filling out!

Check the Press Release! http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9302124.htm

This is the first program that will:

• cover all the material that everyone searching for professionals on the Internet needs
• assure that the attendees practice and master the skills they learn
• teach the principals and ideas of peoplesourcing along with the rules and templates
• be a proof of true hands-on people sourcing skills
• be referred for new opportunities

Those who have already signed up know that it’s the real deal.

You will get a beautiful certification to hang on the wall in your office if you pass the test. But even if you didn’t, the program’s pricing is affordable enough to justify the learning alone. For  $599.00 you get all of the following:

• 6 hours of training for your level
• 6 complementary hours of training for the other level
• 3 video-recorded 90-minute lectures and slide sets for your level
• 3 complementary video-recorded 90-minute lectures and slide sets for the other level
• extra materials and documentation
• one month of support
• two attempts to take a test

The free info session – that your colleagues and anybody else who’s interested are invited to attend – is held on Tue Mar 20 at 9:30AM PST/noon EST/5:30PM London https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/171994770

We expect the program to become an industry standard in the upcoming months. In the meantime, please help us spread the word. People who do the following will be entered into a drawing for two free passes to the Peoplesourcing Certification Program. Want to be the lucky one? Here’s the deal:

1) Invite friends and colleagues to attend the info session and have them mention your name in the “Referred by” field https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/171994770

2) Tweet, share on your LinkedIn status line, share and recommend on the LinkedIn recruiter-oriented groups as appropriate, share on Facebook, and share on Google-plus the following:

Win a Pass to the #PeopleSourcing Certification Program http://bit.ly/pass2sourcingprogram

3) Also, optionally, tweet: Add to Dictionary: #peoplesourcing

and (feel free to edit to your liking):

Check out the People Sourcing Certifications http://booleanstrings.com/certifications/ #peoplesourcing

4) By March 22nd which is the deadline:

Email to [email protected]. We’ll be counting the posts but feel free to point us to your social media posts in the body of your email.

(Please note: if you have questions on the program, email me instead, [email protected])

We’ll notify two winners on March 23rd. (If you have paid for the program by then, we will reimburse you.)

Good luck! 🙂

Please note: here’s the NEW SITE with all the up-to-date info.

We have a huge volume of inquires about the Certifications and sign-ups are on-going, and I am very happy about it!

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. What are the dates for the next training?

A. I will provide materials and video-recordings for all sessions. There will be live Q&A sessions convenient for everyone’s time zones.

Training in San Francisco, CA, USA at the Talentbin HQ (1550 Bryant St, San Francisco):
Level 1: Wed, June 6, 2012
Level 2: Thu, June 7, 2012

Alternatively, Online:
Level 1: Tue, June 12
Level 2: Thu, June 14

Q&A Sessions; weekly homework June-July 13th
Test week July 13th-July 20th.

Q. What is the cost?

A. The cost for the Certification program is $599.00 payable via a credit card or via paypal at the link, or send a check to: Irina Shamaeva ~ 201 Vista Heights Road ~ El Cerrito CA 94530

For this price you get all of the following:

• 4.5 hours of training for your level
• 3 video-recorded 90-minute lectures and slide sets for your level
• extra materials and documentation
• one month of support
• two attempts to take a test

 Q. I will probably not be able to attend when you are giving the presentation live but would like to view them after work and take your test afterwards. Is it possible?

A. Absolutely! The lectures will be recorded. The materials and the recordings are yours to keep.

Q. Will other dates be available in the future?

A. Yes. We will be offering the program on a regular basis.

Q. Is it possible to only pay for the testing? Also I am not interested in the beginner lectures.

A. You can skip any lectures that you feel are not relevant to you (of course!), but we are not offering only material for either level, or just the tests. If you are interested in purchasing prerecorded classes on a particular topic we have them available.

Q. Is it possible to buy the materials only and perhaps join the program and go through testing later?

A.  Yes, we have made this available! You can get all the materials (“All But Tests”) for $399. You will get six 90-min lectures (slides, recordings).You will have an option to upgrade to the full program for the difference in price.

Q. How is this certification different from AIRS?

A. Great question!

• The major goal of our certifications is to boost productivity and to reflect true knowledge and performance of those who pass the tests.
• The material provided will teach attendees to understand the principles of peoplesourcing and to stay up-to-date.
• The certification program will provide you will a solid foundation to succeed in any of your people sourcing activities.
• I do not believe in specialization such as “social recruiting” vs. “Internet sourcing”; a true specialist needs to know it all. Therefore we only offer levels, not specializations.
• We offer hands-on practice (a key to getting hands-on skills!) to by providing practice sessions and one month of unlimited support
• It is more affordable than AIRS certifications; I offer more material for lower cost.
• Those who get the Certifications will be listed on this site. (Check out the current list of Experts). I will recommend them for future projects, including “extra” projects coming my way that I can’t accommodate at this time.
• This is simply the real deal.

Q. Would the Level 1 be appropriate for a true beginner of sourcing?

A. Yes! Level 1 is appropriate for “true beginners” and “old school” recruiters.

March 12, 2012

I am happy to announce our Sourcing Certification program.

Terminology

Instead of using the term “Sourcing” (as we are used to in recruiting), and per a great suggestion I got, I will call the discipline “Peoplesourcing”, which means finding information about professionals.

(Recruiters call it “Sourcing”, “Candidate Sourcing”, “Talent Sourcing”, or “Internet Recruiting”; sales people are not familiar with the term “Sourcing” and call it “Name Generation” or “Lead Generation“.)

“People Sourcing” or “Peoplesourcing” is finding information about professionals. We do Peoplesourcing so that (either we or our business partners) get on the phone – or, perhaps, on Skype or on Google-plus-hangout 🙂 – with just the right people and  as soon as possible. Peoplesourcing is also helpful for making a cold call warm.

Those of us who do that could be called Peoplesourcing Specialists.

Certification

We will be offering the People Sourcing Certifications at two levels:

• IS-CPS-1 – Irina Shamaeva Certified People Sourcer Level 1 (or Certified Peoplesourcing Specialist Level 1)
• IS-CPS-2 – Irina Shamaeva Certified People Sourcer Level 2 (or Certified Peoplesourcing Specialist Level 2)

Level 1 is designed for all Recruiters, Sales, Business Development professionals, and for junior Sourcers. Level 2 is designed for all Sourcers and anybody who wants to take their People Sourcing skills to the next level.

For each of the two levels we will include:

1. Three 90-minute webinars in one day, with breaks between them, covering the topics briefly outlined below. For Level 1, I will cover the basics of People Sourcing, go slowly, and provide many details and examples; for the Level 2, I will briefly go through the basics and add more topics, concepts, tools, and tips. This is the outline of the topics for either level:

1. Internet Research. Search Engines: Syntax, operators, options; people search engines.
2. Social Networks: LinkedIn (in-depth); Facebook; Twitter; Google-Plus.
3. Productivity Tools: Parsing, Filtering, Browser Extensions, Verification; Use Cases (Peoplesourcing Scenarios)

For each class I will provide materials and video-recordings.

2. [several days after the long training day] A 90-minutes Q&A session; discussing example test questions.

3. One month of Q&A over email.

4. Test:

• 60 multiple-choice questions for Level 1
• 80 multiple-choice questions for Level 2.

The test will be “loosely” timed: you will need to complete it within one day. The Test needs to be taken within 90 days from the training day. It can be taken twice. (Please note, we will have variations of test questions for each level.)

Here’s the great part! If you sign up for a Certification Package, you are welcome to attend both programs. You will have to decide for which level you will take the test.

Pricing

Certification Package (includes log-ins to two full days of training, Level-1 and Level-2, along with the materials and video-recordings; two 90-min Q&A sessions; one month of support; and two chances to take a test, at either Level 1 or Level 2): $599.00

There’s no separate pricing for just the program or just the test.

Discounts. Those who have AIRS certifications (either current or expired) relevant to People Sourcing: CIR, ACIR, or CSSR, get $150 off.

Those who have taken two or more of my 90-minute classes get $150 off.

Those who have won any contests at http://booleanstrings.ning.com, Sourcecon contests, or were runner-ups: $150 off for the program, or take the Level 2 test free of charge.

Group Discounts are available. Please contact me at 510-233-9493/[email protected]  or our Director of Client Support Doug Bakke at 510-685-6111/[email protected]

Certification is valid for one year. Starting next month, we will also be offering an upgrade package from Level 1 to Level 2 and will provide information on renewals. (We will make it easy and inexpensive to renew.)

Benefits:

• Certified Peoplesourcers will be listed on my site & recommended for future projects
• The class will cover all the basic/intermediate material that you need to be competitive today; the materials are yours to keep
• The program attendees will learn the peoplesourcing concepts and ways to stay on top of ever-increasing Internet tools and sites

More Info

I will hold two free information sessions. Please bring your questions.

• Wed Mar 14 at 9AM PST/noon EST/5PM London https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/743717242
• Tue Mar 20 at 9:30AM PST/noon EST/5:30PM London  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/171994770

The tentative upcoming dates for the Certification program:

• Wednesday March 28, 2012: Training Day for Level 1
• Wednesday April 4, 2012: Training Day for Level 2
• Thursday April 5: Both Tests become available online
• Tuesday April 10: Q&A for Level 1
• Tuesday April 10: Q&A for Level 2
• May 4: End of one month support
• July 6: Deadline for passing the Test

Please watch the Certification page for further details.

Also, please check out, just posted:

Certifications FAQ

Reasons for Sourcing Certifications

The Boolean Strings Group and Network have become by far the largest community of sourcers online. Together with two other groups I moderate, Twitter, Google-Plus, and Facebook for Sourcing and Recruiting and Social Media Recruiting Group we have 30K+ members interested in sourcing technologies.  This blog is also part of my contribution to the sourcing community; it has had 140K+ visitors and is enjoying ~400 daily visitors on average.

Members of our large community, my blog followers, and recruiters who have taken my classes have been asking me about Sourcing Certifications over the last two years. Apparently there’s evidence that existing certifications do not necessarily mean good performance.

What has triggered the upcoming introduction of certifications now, is that I’ve been getting more sourcing requests than I can possibly accommodate. We might expand the research branch of our business in the future. At this time I would like to be able to recommend others for extra sourcing projects, as well as for any jobs that require sourcing skills.

To add to that, I believe that a sourcers’ value and importance is still misunderstood and under-estimated at many companies out there. Hopefully the Certifications would both help individuals get higher rates for their work and promote the sourcing function and its importance.

Five Concepts

To start with, I will be offering Sourcing Certifications to individual Sourcers, Researchers, and Recruiters. We will be offering certifications to corporate teams later this year.

I’d like the new certifications to reflect true Internet sourcing skills and performance. Here are, in brief, 5 main concepts I believe in. (I could easily write a blog post on each!).

1) A modern Sourcer needs to excel at all available resources (not just Google or just Social Networks) and be able to identify and combine the right resources for a given project.

2) Modern Recruiters need to be Sourcers as well. They must be familiar with the basics of Internet research, no matter whether they work with sourcers or not.

3) Sourcers need to have conceptual understanding of the technologies behind tools and information.

4) Sourcers must practice skills they have learned.

5) Sourcers need to be able to stay up-to-date and modify their tools as necessary.

The Certification Program will consist of webinars, hands-on practice, and tests. I will list Certified Sourcers on my site and recommend their work to others. The details will be announced shortly.

It seems that changes to online search happen so quickly now that the only permanent skill we need to have is the ability to be on top of the news.

Google search is changing as we speak. Pretty much all of the available online “cheat-sheets” or guides to search are outdated. Even Google’s own help pages say  “Some of this content may be outdated”, making it very confusing:

Here are some news that you may have missed. Nothing in the list below makes us happier when we search on Google; thus, the post title “Google-Minus”. I have included some advice, along with the listed changes, on how to keep control over your search results.

• Google search now shows personalized results -“Search plus Your World” – by default. As a researcher, you need to set your preferences to not using personal results. Log out of your gmail account as well.
• Instant search is the default. It slows us down; disable it in your preferences if you haven’t.
• New Google’s Privacy policy just went into effect on March 1,2012. This is nothing too scary but it means that Google unifies data collected about you across all of its services. As a result, your search might be affected by your use of any Google service, such as Calendar or youtube. Go onto your dashboard to control the data that is being collected.
• Google increasingly uses synonyms to “improve” your search experience. To control it and use keywords exactly as you have typed, use the quotation marks around the word(s) or the Verbatim option.
• The Advanced Search Dialog is harder to find, but it is still there for those who want to be guided. Unfortunately for “beginners”, it has just stopped showing the Boolean search string as you type keywords.
• The number of search results displayed is just as unreliable as it has been (why do they show the number? I have no idea). In some cases Google search now never shows the final number even if it’s smaller than 1,000.
• Google shows dynamic pages in its search results and often ranks them high. (I hope it will take care of the issue and fix this eventually.) Here is more detail in a past post: Excluding Junk Results From Search. To avoid this, you can use this search engine: No Junk Results.

That’s it for now. 🙂 (Google-plus, of course, provides a fantastic way to control search results for others, but that is not the current topic.)

There are signs of special characters being somewhat counted for when they are the first symbol in a search; I will report in detail in a future post.

Recruiters and Sourcers:

Do your potential candidates reply to your introductory messages? I’d like to share our experience on what works and what doesn’t.

• It seems to us that email as a way to initially reach “passive candidates” is quickly dying, if not dead already. In rare cases – and only when when it’s personalized – do we get replies.
• The phone works, of course! But I’d recommend calling only close-to-perfect candidates as the initial contact.
• As I predicted back in September of 2009 “social” messaging has become the most productive way to reach “passive” candidates.

I love LinkedIn for providing us with InMails and messages. We get replies to them 10x more often than with “plain” emailing. (Inmails and messages are ways to reach others on LinkedIn, that are very similar, with only one difference.)

When I source, quite often I would find a potential candidate elsewhere – on a forum, on a blog, etc. – and message on LinkedIn. (Why not just search on LinkedIn, you ask? That’s a different subject that is quite interesting.)

There are other platforms work well for messaging.

Here are a few tips on writing messages, based on our experience, that create good response rate. The number one, obvious, tip is to only send messages to qualified people.

We use three approaches to messaging, with variations.

• Ask for help finding the right person for a hard-to-fill position (include the position title, location, a very short description)
• Ask for a good time and a number to call to discuss an opportunity ((include an even shorter description)
• Provide a link to a job description and make a statement that the person is an excellent match; ask to confirm.

In all cases our messages are very brief, they have either no links or just one link to one of our jobs. Messages do contain enough info to reach us months later if the person felt like.

We usually try to check back again in a week or so and often get replies on the second try.

Any other suggestions from my readers?

Many thanks to Hung Lee, the @Wise_Man_Say, for triggering this heated discussion on the Boolean Strings group: