Why You Must Start Using Google-Plus for Sourcing and Recruiting

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If you are waiting to start using Google-Plus for sourcing and recruiting, you will soon find yourself falling behind your  competition. Google-plus is still smaller than major social networks but its size doesn’t matter that much. It is also a moving target in terms of its functionality, but that makes it even more interesting!

Here are just a few tips.

Identifying/Cross-Referencing Prospects. If you know someone’s email address, you can quickly identify his/her Google-Plus profile (if it’s there) by adding this person to a circle. You can do this for lists up to ~1,000 people at a time. A Google-Plus profile will have many online references and may contain other email addresses and a phone number.

Communicating. Whether a person is on Google-plus or not, you can communicate with the person by adding him/her to a circle and sharing with the circle. Being added to a circle named, say, “Top Software Engineers” should feel nice to your software engineering prospects, the same as if you add them to a list on Twitter or like their page on Facebook. [Correction: Someone pointed out that at this time people do not see the name of your circle when they are added .]

Integration with Gmail is becoming tighter as we speak!

Keeping Information on Prospects Up-to-Date.

  • In your Gmail Contacts you will now see “Connected Profiles” for those who are on Google-plus.
  • You can add anyone who emails you to a circle right from your Gmail Inbox.
  • If you ever add somebody to a circle, that person stays in your Gmail’s “Other Contacts” tab, even if you later remove the person from circles.

Branding and Advertising Jobs. Guess what will be getting higher and higher in Google search results as the time goes.  It is already happening. So it’s time to create your personal and business Google-plus pages and try to get many +1’s (you will need to provide some good content for that 🙂 ). You may get way ahead of competition that is still using the old-school Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods. We all know that so many people start any new project – including their job search – simply using Google search; if you get there fast, they will find your company and your posted opportunities.

’nuff said (for now).

Irina / Brain Gain Recruiting / Boolean Strings on Google-plus

20 Online “Lead Generation” Sites

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Recruiters, sourcers, on one hand, and sales, marketing, and business development professionals, on the other hand, perform this function as part of what we all do: find potential business contacts, or find professional profiles along with the contact information.

In the recruiting world we call it Sourcing (or Internet Sourcing, as opposed to Phone Sourcing; I believe this distinction is obsolete though). In the sales world it’s often called “Lead Generation”. But lead generation, by definition, is more of a marketing term, meaning “attracting people to your business and converting them to buyers”.

Of course, what we do is Data Mining – but it’s very specific data mining. I’ve seen the expression “Talent Mining” but, of course, it wouldn’t apply what sales people do.

So what should “looking for professionals online” be called so that both sales people and recruiters recognize it as one and the same? So that we can exchange tools and advice across the industries? I have asked this question on LinkedIn and on ERE.net but most answers were about the recruiting/job filling-related people searching. I am still interested in figuring it out. (“Peoplesourcing” was an interesting answer on ERE.)

In the meantime, please take a look at a list of 20 sites that provide business profiles and contact information. I list sites that are both free and paid;  they are listed in no particular order.

If you are a recruiter, or a sourcer, do you use some of these?

What are some other similar sites would you add?

THE LIST OF 20 ONLINE “LEAD GENERATION” SITES

www.hoovers.com

Hoover’s proprietary company profiles and industry information.

www.spoke.com

Spoke offers on-demand business to business contact information for sales people, marketers, and recruiters enabling Sales Lead Generation, Business List …

www.manta.com

Manta provides free company profiles & company information on U.S. and International companies, including market research reports, business news, and …

www.infousa.com

Mailing List – InfoUSA has 30 years’ experience providing mailing lists and email lists to businesses of all sizes. Customize our mailing lists to your business …

www.onesource.com

OneSource Business Information: The most accurate source of critical company & executive information.

www.zoominfo.com

Search ZoomInfo’s open directory to find information about more than 50 million business people and 5 million businesses.

www.insideview.com

Products & Pricing · Overview · FREE · CRM+ · PRO · TEAM · Compare Plans · InsideView UK and Ireland Edition · Why InsideView · Customer Success …

www.dnb.com

Get insights on the companies that matter. Reduce credit risk & find new customers. Delivering trusted business credit information for over 150 years.

www.lead411.com

Lead411 provides business email lists, company addresses, executive emails, and phone numbers.

www.referenceusa.com

The premier source of business and residential information for reference and research.

www.switchboard.com

Telephone Directory: Internet Yellow Pages, Internet White Pages – You can find what is generally regarded as the best phone book online at Switchboard.com.

www.netprospex.com

NetProspex is a directory of user-contributed business contacts verified by our CleneStep TM technology. Quickly find targeted business prospects including …

www.crunchbase.com

CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.

www.corptech.com

Company Information – Put CorpTech company information at your fingertips. Our business information is fast, easy and highly comprehensive…try CorpTech …

www.business.com

Online purchasing resource for businesses of all sizes. Find, Compare & Research products and services you need to run and grow your business. Over 50000+ …

www.thomasnet.com

ThomasNet.com is the leading product sourcing and supplier discovery platform for procurement professionals, engineers, plant & facility management …

finance.yahoo.com

At Yahoo! Finance, you get free stock quotes, up to date news, portfolio management resources, international market data, message boards, …

www.anywho.com

AnyWho is a free service that allows you to search the White Pages by name, or, enter a phone number and find out who owns it using reverse phone lookup.

www.yellowpages.com

Find online Yellow Pages business listings, phone numbers, addresses, maps, driving directions and more in the YP.com online directory.

www.intelius.com

Intelius helps businesses and consumers alike make informed decisions by providing background check and public records services. People search tools can …

www.jigsaw.com

Jigsaw is a prospecting tool used by sales professionals, marketers and recruiters to get fresh and accurate sales leads and business contact information.

Webinar “How to Find Contact Information”

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Webinar is over. Today ONLY:

Pay the webinar price at http://bit.ly/90MIN-Webinar and we will electronically ship all the materials including the slides, the video recording, plus one month support.

 

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/191923978

It happens to many of us that we locate a person who seems like a fantastic potential candidate or a business lead – however we either don’t have the contact info or it turns out to be obsolete or wrong.

In this webinar we’ll discuss a variety of ways to figure out and verify the email, the phone number, or ways to reach that desired person, or a whole list of people – and do it fast!

Who will benefit: Recruiters, Sourcers, Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Account Executives, and anybody who is interested in contacting people based on their professional profiles. Some experience using search engines would be helpful.

Outline:

Finding Phone Numbers and Email Addresses

  •  Search on Google and Bing
  • People Search Engines
  • Google-Plus
  • Membership Sites
  • WHOIS
  • Email patterns
  • Extracting Information
  • Verification

Finding Lists of People with Contact Info
Alternative Ways to Reach People

  • Messaging
  • Sharing
  • Inviting

Resources

Title: How to Find Contact Information
Date: Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM PST/1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EST
Price: $79 includes the slides, a video recording of the webinar, and one month support. (Please wait after registering and you will be redirected to the payment page)

Please note: Current Brain Gain Recruiting retained/contingency/sourcing clients can attend the webinar as guests. Please put #CLIENT in the comments field when registering and skip the payment.

Can’t make the date? No problem. Sign up; we’ll provide a video recording for all.

Excluding Junk Results From Search

booleanstrings Uncategorized 2 Comments

This is going to be a little bit technical… I am going to talk about pages that often show up in Google search results, when I do sourcing, that I’d rather skip. (If you don’t care to go through the technical stuff, please just skip to the last paragraph, or simply try my new Custom Search Engine.)

Many Internet researchers know that there’s the “surface web”, i.e. websites that can be found by crawling, and the “deep web”, i.e. all the other sites. The Deep Web is much, much bigger than the surface web.

Well, several years ago Google started putting some “deep web” pages into its index as well! Namely, when Google ran across forms to be filled out, it attempted entering random information – as if it were a user – and reviewing the resulting page. If the page “made sense” it was included in the index. Today, we can still encounter quite a few dynamically generated pages; try something like this (add keywords if you like) inurl:index.php.src and you will see that.

In a while after this clever addition to its index Google became somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of the dynamic pages. It comes back to re-index them less often than it visits static pages. However, there’s a widely used trick that SEO specialists have started to implement since, called URL rewriting. It works like this: any (reasonable) search executed on those sites creates a page with a static URL.

Here is an example:

Someone searches on pipl.com for Dave Smith. http://pipl.com/search/?q=Dave+Smith is a dynamic page. A side effect of the search will be a static page with a nice, clean URL:

http://pipl.com/directory/name/Smith/Dave

(I must say that I don’t know for a fact how pipl.com creates its static pages. But I am pretty sure they are generated as I describe.)

Further on, websites with “deep web” content that is “deep” because of membership and login requirements expose their content as well, to attract new users. They do this by providing static links that are visible on the “surface”. As an example, LinkedIn has recently generated a large number of special static pages like  http://www.linkedin.com/title/distributor/in-us-752-savannah – that are converted into people search queries if you are logged in! (Try clicking on this link with and without being logged in).

A seemingly “static” page that will lead you to a query is usually an irrelevant search result. Most of the times it will display a list of internal search results that, in addition to being a list, may not even have your search keywords any more. Why rewritten URLs show high up in search results is a mystery to me!

Here’s my new Custom Search Engine adjusted to not show junk results. I have removed dynamic pages as well as a list of “content farms” that I partially copied from the initial Blekko‘s list. (Blekko is now blocking more sites than any CSE would be able to include…but my search engine has a much larger index.) I have also blocked some sites that we have all seen while looking for people, that promise to find “…everything!“.

If you see sites or site templates you think should also be “banned” please let me know.

Happy searching! 🙂

TheSocialCV

booleanstrings Uncategorized 1 Comment

TheSocialCV (“Organizing the world’s largest real-time global talent pool.”) is also a candidate to be the Dream Software. Not only do they have crawled over 100 MLN profiles (comparable to LinkedIn), their profiles come from dozens of places, are in many languages, and they are applying semantic search process when they crawl.

 While they are based in the UK, they collect profiles from around the world.

(The usual disclaimer: This is paid software, I am not affiliated.)

It was interesting to learn that the word “social” is more than just a pointer to social network profiles. The majority of theSocialCV activity collecting data is based on “social” triggers. They start searching when someone posts a status update. As an example, if a Java developer tweets about some cool Java code, they would scan all of the multiple sources for other profiles for the person and create a new record. The semantic algorithms would distinguish between Java as a programming language, coffee, and the island. (Please note, the task of cross-referencing, especially for people with common names, is very difficult.)

TheSocialCV has another semantic search component, for their own database. You can search for “top law schools”, “top consulting firms”, etc. (I believe Monster.com has these types of searches.) They also have the NEAR operator. This is work in progress, but currently the OR operator is the default (as opposed to familiar search places like Google, Bing, and LinkedIn). NEAR has unusual syntax like this: “web developer” ~3 means web within 3 words from developer.

They have the ability to save searches and to place profiles in folders that can be exported or shared within a team. Saving in a folder currently happens only one profile at a time.

You can currently connect your Twitter and Facebook profiles (more to come) and potentially message your connections.

Great stuff, and a pretty ambitious team!

What made me wonder though, is how updating a status is related to someone being a potential candidate. I definitely expect a candidate for all Social Media Marketing Managers to do that, but what about Accountants or Registered Nurses? If updating a profile (on LinkedIn, especially) can be a trigger as well, that would make it even more valuable, I think.

Of course, their success depends on expanding the coverage, successful cross-referencing/merging records, and making the UI work for us across industries and geographies.

Take a look at someone with a very rich profile:

Here’s the best part: we are planning on a Sourcing Event/Contest on the Boolean Strings Network that will let everyone try them out. Watch for announcements!

TalentBin

booleanstrings Uncategorized 3 Comments

TalentBin is one example of a sourcing product that has a potential to become the Dream Software.

(Please note: it’s a paid product; I am not affiliated with this – or any – vendor).

I have been using it for for sourcing for Brain Gain Recruiting and also spoke in some detail with its founder Peter Kazanjy.

Here’s, in brief, my view of the service. It has great back-end; can use some UI polishing; and would be invaluable if export is added). To add more detail:

  • They have a growing database of information, accumulated by crawling social profiles, such as Google-Plus. This includes sites with social profiles specific to software development industry: Github, StackOverflow, and MeetUp.
  • Their search is implemented using the powerful Lucene search engine. This lets them implement predefined quires for the “guided search”, as well as give the advanced user the freedom to create their own searches.
  • Their User Interface (see a screen shot above) could be improved, especially for a beginner user, by doing adjustments in terminology and minor adjustments in the flow of events.

Here’s in brief, what the search functionality is like.

A “resume” in the TB speak is a social/ “distributed” profile. A “job description” serves as a “folder” where some profiles can be “starred” and later reviewed. Some profiles can be rejected, and hidden from further coming up, if the search is refined. While the user is working with the current folder, s/he is free to modify the search to their liking. Each search result shows the link, the name, a headline, and info from one “key” profile (say, at the profile at github).

(I have just learned from Peter that TB pulls information – a headline and a “resume” – from Github that can only be extracted via the API, i.e. can’t be found X-raying Github.)

While reviewing a result, the user can also bring up other crawled profiles with the same person’s name. Though “merged” profiles would make it even more like “dream software”, this works for me. (Merging is an extremely difficult task, I think.)

Here are my current wishes for TB that, I think, will make it killer software. Implement:

  1. An “Export-to-Excel” function for the starred profiles. I’d like to see the person’s name, tagline, perhaps some keywords, and the link to the main profile included. Links to other potential profiles would make it even better, even if “merging” is not implemented.
  2. Ways to sort the search results. Right now the order is defined by an internal relevance algorithm and makes it hard to look beyond the first hundred results or so.
  3. Crawl LinkedIn – which is “the” site many of us use. On the other hand, a dynamic X-ray of LinkedIn with a person’s name and a keyword would work fine for now and shouldn’t be difficult to implement.

In conclusion, if you have a sourcing budget, I do recommend checking TalentBin out. I wish them the best of luck in growing their business.

The 40+ Sourcing Tools We Cannot Live Without

booleanstrings Uncategorized 5 Comments

We’ve had a great list of tools contributed by 80+ members of the Boolean Strings LinkedIn group to the question:

“What are the sourcing tools you can’t live without? Please list some favorites.” and another 30 or so on the Boolean Ning Network – http://booleanstrings.ning.com/forum/topics/what-are-the-sourcing-tools

I thought I’d list some of the tools I use daily, to add to the discussion. Of course, there’s some overlap with those listed already. I am only listing free tools here, or tools where there’s a nice free option. Here you go.

URL shortening

Storage and sharing

Browser Add-Ons (Chrome and FireFox)

  • Fastest Chrome
  • Fastest Fox
  • Clickable Links
  • iMacros

“Manage search engines” in Chrome

Parsing, Filtering, and Sorting

Search Engines

Custom Search Engines

Here are some CSE’s we’ve built:

People and Company search

Real Time Search

Past Search

Twitter

Job Sharing

And finally,

General Purpose (thanks to Martin Lee for contributing!)

  • Coffee Mug

Please let me know if I missed something really cool. Thanks!

Temporary Errors on #LinkedIn

booleanstrings Uncategorized 2 Comments

When I was a Software Engineer at a biotech company years ago, one day we got a new manager whose background was not software but Biology. She walked in and asked us: “So, when can we expect to have no software bugs in the application you guys are building?”

Are you kidding? Anybody who deals with building software systems knows that some bugs are always there. Modern software is interactive and takes in a variety of data. It’s virtually impossible to test all possible user actions on any data set and any supported software platform. However, since the old days, the Quality Assurance field has also gathered clever tools that can automate testing and can provide collaboration between test engineers and developers. By all means it’s possible to clean up any commercial system to the extent where bugs are rare exceptions.

We use LinkedIn daily. It’s the professional network with wonderful features, the largest self-entered set of data on professional people, and friendly, safe environment to interact on business matters. Its code quality could be improved though. To explain what I mean I have pasted some images from my work last Friday.

(Don’t take me wrong, I love LinkedIn! I have a paid account and feel it’s money well spent. I just felt like complaining a bit, hoping that some QA folks will hear.) Here you go.

The Plus Came Back

booleanstrings Uncategorized 3 Comments

We have suspected that Google killed its Plus operator for a reason.

The Plus Came Back came back the very next day (almost), and in a very clever way:

  • When a search on Google starts with a + it will search those pages on Google+. This type of search is called Direct Connect; it doesn’t require crawling and is easy for Google to implement for the simple reason that Google hosts these pages itself.
Only a few of those searches work at the time of this post (like +google and +pepsi) but this is going to change soon!
Here are some consequences:
  • This is a serious threat for Twitter and for Facebook business pages.
  • Brand names become very important for all, much smaller players than Pepsi included. SEO converts into brand names competition.

Pretty interesting!

The Dream Software

booleanstrings Boolean 3 Comments

If I imagine the coolest piece of software for searching for candidates on the Internet, here’s what I would like to have available. (Please note, I said searching, not sourcing; sourcing has more to it.)

The Dream Software would search for “distributed profiles”. By a “distributed profile” I mean professional information about a person collected from many sources where she has some presence, such as the evidence of her skills, experience, location, current employer, certifications, education, contact info, or any other info.

Do you cross-reference? Picking a promising profile in one place and cross-referencing elsewhere (at least Googling!) is always a good idea, because we want to be both productive and considerate and only contact “the right” people. Now, imagine all that cross-referencing work done for us ahead of time! That would be dream come true.

My dream software would find talent using data distributed across many networks and sites, and only help validate the info. I would also be able to pick the easiest way to contact the person. Say, I may find a super-C++ Engineer on his blog and send him a message on LinkedIn, where his profile has very little info besides the title and the company (and where I’d never find him by keyword searching). If the software also knew about my memberships and highlighted the links where I can easily send an introductory message… that’s probably too much to ask at this point.

It’s a hard task to design and develop this software. Here are the two major challenges, as I see them.

1. Developers have to choose between crawling the web and sending queries to sites and networks and cross-referencing on the fly. Crawling is gradual due to the vastness of info and expensive due to storage needs; sending queries is limited and slow.

2. Gluing together pieces of a distributed profile is always a challenge if the person’s name is not unique. An easy way to identify two profiles as belonging to the same person is an email address, but this doesn’t scale well.

At this point I know of  two packages (both paid, am not affiliated) that do things along these “dream” lines; each chose to crawl the web:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

— I’ll write in some detail about each in the upcoming posts. I would be very interested in hearing from you if you are a user of either, or if you know of another piece of a dream software.