To learn more about LinkedIn from this post, simply start at the home page. Log out of LinkedIn and you will then see some extra links of interest at the bottom of the page.

I already wrote about the LinkedIn titles in a recent post. The Title Directory provided on the LinkedIn home page doesn’t have the search function, but you can navigate using searches like this.

Another welcome addition is the LinkedIn Updates page. Before this page surfaced on the open web, all we could do is notice the 1st level connections’ updates and recommendations given to and given by the 1st level connections – that is, while we are logged in.

Are you a recruiter? Guess who is likely to update their LinkedIn profile! To view more updated profiles, you can either go through the pages listing updated profiles, using the LinkedIn navigation, or search on Google and (important!) view cached pages.

The Groups Directory shows the open groups (I think; it seems just a little buggy). We couldn’t previously search for open groups. Yet another positive change is that all discussions for the open groups are now on the surface web. To explore that, look at an open group URL while you are still logged out.

Want to do some SEO for your site or for your job posts? Create an open group and share the URLs in the discussions. You can automate that by submitting a news RSS feed to the group.

It seems to me that before the IPO LinkedIn was moving more data into the deep web (and charging for it), and now it’s doing the opposite, bringing some data to the surface web. Hope they will continue doing this! It’s good for us and, I am sure, it does an extra marketing job for LinkedIn.

It’s time to update your X-ray “cheat sheets” if you keep them.

BeKnown is good news! There are lots of posts out there with facts and screen shots, so I skip that.

Here some initial thoughts.

1) It’s fantastic to see potential competition to LinkedIn; Moster has been one of the few big players capable of that. LinkedIn’s quality has been hurt by not having competitors. Maybe LinkedIn will now do some fixing bugs, cleaning up user interface, and keeping features up and prices down as a result. Maybe we’ll even see last names shows in full for 3rd level connections again, what do you think?

2) There’s a large crowd of people that are, like my daughter Jane, on Facebook all the time and rarely or never  on LinkedIn. Looking at the statistics, many of those folks seem likely to get engaged in BeKnown. They will be building profiles from scratch. But LinkedIn already has millions of profiles. Will people will have to choose LI or BK, or will there be a way to mix/sync them?

3) Privacy comes across as the largest perceived threat to BeKnown. Monster’s architects have done quite a bit to protect privacy but users may keep privacy concerns up even if you try to talk them out of that.

4) BeKnown carries an attractive, powerful referral functionality, where friends refer friends to jobs. We haven’t yet seen a referral system in software at this scale. It’s interesting how it will evolve.

5) BeKnown allows companies to show a different side of themselves: their working environment, culture, and hiring, as opposed to marketing that was usually fan pages’ purpose.

It’s not yet clear what “sharing” functionality is going to be like. Can I post a job and share outside of BeKnown? It also remains to see what the surface/open web component is going to be like.

Good luck to BeKnown. I have joined and hope you will, too.

Hi All:

Here’s my business partner’s Julia Tverskaya‘s entry for the SourceCon challenge. Julia and I have been Partners at Brain Gain Recruiting for 6+ years- and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. Julia is also (like me) a former Software Development Manager and (unlike me) a Chess Master.

Please check it out and vote for her:

CSE Challenge — Julia Tverskaya

This search engine automatically triggers search for resumes of Software Engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s no need to enter complex Boolean. Try entering keywords like C++ or Java and see the list of matching resumes!

The search engine has two refinements, one for senior and one for junior people.

Hope you like it. If you do, please don’t forget to vote!

This is recent: LinkedIn has exposed more of its data to search engines than before, thus allowing us to do some people search using X-ray (i.e. the operator site:). I am talking about a large set of data below the URL “linkedin.com/title” (please note: “title” here is simply part of the URL – not an operator or a keyword).

To see what I’m pointing to, first, log out of your LinkedIn account. Next, try a search like this, for example:

site:linkedin.com/title “mac developer” (or add your own keywords instead of “mac developer”).

You will see pages and pages of results that are lists of people with URLs like this

www.linkedin.com/title/team-lead/at-softvision, i.e.

www.linkedin.com/title/<title keywords>/at-<company-name>

And, of course, people who are your third level connections or are outside your network will be shown with their full names and info included.

This give us an opportunity to explore titles and explore lists of people at a certain company.

Here’s an example: site:linkedin.com/title inurl:at-ibm

Here’s another example: site:linkedin.com/title/software-developer

Cool, isn’t it?

Here’s a new Custom Search Engine for you! 🙂

Hidden Resumes

The #sourcecon 1st challenge is out. It’s time to figure out Google Custom Search Engines!

Here is a custom search engine I have just created:

Document Finder

(also posted on the Boolean Ning network)

It has refinements for eight kinds of files: Word, PDF, Text, PPT, and more. Check it out!

And here’s another new little search engine, perhaps useless for practical sourcing, but educational: Bingle 🙂

As promised, here’s an essay on variations in searching.

Suppose I am looking for Mobile Software Engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area. (As a matter of fact, I am!) Here are some ways I would be looking for my candidates on LinkedIn:

• In the Current Title, put Software (Developer OR Engineer OR Lead OR Architect OR Consultant) and in the keywords, put (Mobile OR Android OR iPhone OR iOS OR Blackberry) (and yes, I know that I will get some false positives with the word mobile but it’s not a problem) or
• In the keywords, put Software (Developer OR Engineer OR Lead OR Architect OR Consultant) (Android OR iPhone OR iOS OR Blackberry) and in the title put -Recruiter -Manager (etc), (see the “Just Say Not” post) or
• In the Current or Past Title, put Software (Developer OR Engineer OR Lead OR Architect OR Consultant) and/or
• In the Title add (Mobile OR Android OR iPhone OR iOS OR Blackberry) or
• In the keywords add (Mobile OR Android OR iPhone OR iOS OR Blackberry) and/or
• In the keywords add Resume and/or
• Set the “current companies” to <my list of target companies> by using the check-boxes or
• Set the current company field to <my list of target companies’ names, separated by OR > or
• Set the “past companies” to <my list of target companies> and/or
• Look for members of relevant groups (if you have a basic account, join the groups or use X-ray on Google or Bing) and/or
• In the search results, check only the first level connections and my group members – then I can send messages to all, – and
• Change the order of the search results displayed (relevance, connections, etc.) so that I’ll see different results on the first few pages, or
• Select a small radius around my zip code and do a loose search, or
• Select a larger radius around my zip code and do a tighter search, or
• Search using the Skills search, or
• X-ray LinkedIn on Google and on Bing (variations for that would be a subject for a whole separate blog post!) or
• Find prospects along with their email addresses elsewhere and cross-reference on LinkedIn, or
• Search on Google or Bing/Yahoo for blogs, twitter IDs, etc. that have my keywords and point to LinkedIn profiles