Ten People Search Engines

booleanstringsBoolean 3 Comments

Ten People Search Engines… and Two Custom Engines

Which people search engines do you use?

The first four in the list below are my favorites. One extra criteria for me, in addition to getting good info, is convenient and friendly user interface.
  1. ZoomInfo
  2. Jigsaw
  3. Pipl
  4. Tweepz (for Twitter)
  5. www.peekyou.com
  6. http://wink.com
  7. www.123people.com
  8. www.zabasearch.com
  9. http://people.yahoo.com
  10. www.spokeo.com
I also X-ray spoke.com, looking for email addresses, and X-ray LinkedIn. (You will find custom search engines implemented by X-raying those sites under the links.)

Search Strings That Do Not Work

booleanstringsBoolean 3 Comments

The main reason why Boolean search strings don’t work is syntax errors – that are, in fact, easy to fix. Google, Yahoo, Bing, LinkedIn are very picky about the ways we express what we are looking for – but it’s not hard to adjust to ways they want us to talk to them. Let’s take a look at some examples of strings  from the Boolean Strings Network:

  • (intitle:resume | inurl:resume | intitle:homepage | inurl:homepage) Accountant AND CPA (Atlanta | GA) (770 | 404) ~-jobs ~-apply ~-submit ~-required ~-wanted ~-write
  • “business development” or sales and “staff augmentation” or “staff supplementation” or “staff agency” or staffing
  • “structural engineer” AND (licens* OR regist* OR certif*)
  • ((home OR any) resume OR resume.htm))
  • *@companyemail.com JOB TITLE on any search engine
  • ~cv (“, RN” OR “, BSN”) 75001..76670 -apply -job -jobs -send -submit -example -you -your
Why do these strings don’t work on Google? It’s simple – but often overlooked. Here are the reasons why the above strings don’t work as expected:
  • Google doesn’t understand ~-
  • “or” needs to be capitalized on Google: OR
  • * means a word, not part of a word on Google
  • Google can’t work with nested parenthesis
  • Google ignores special characters, including @
  • Google ignores special characters, including comma; can’t search for “, RN” OR “, BSN”
Have unexpected or “wrong” search results? Come to my webinar “Search Strings That Work” hosted by Bill Radin this week for extensive hands-on work on your strings. I promise you will get to the next level in searching if you attend, and maybe even find a candidate or two along the way.
(Whether you can make it or not, remember to check your syntax when you search – it helps a lot.)

Control Google Search Results via the URL

booleanstringsBoolean 1 Comment

Google allows us to keep the preferences for the number of the results per page, but there are no user-friendly ways to keep some other favorite options.

One way to do that is through the URL of the search page. It may look cryptic at first but let’s be brave and try to alter the URL and see how it affects the results.

First of all, if we examine the URL, we will see our Boolean string included in it after q= ; as an example, part of  the URL for a search may be q=intitle:resume+or+inurl:resume+%22san+francisco%22++java+developer+-sample+-job+-jobs+-apply+-need

If you are looking at 100 results per page, part of the URL will be &num=100.

Here are a few other helpful additions to the URL. You can add them to the search URL on the fly, to affect the results, or keep your strings as URLs to re-run them with all the options conveniently included.

  • &newwindow=1 — open the results in a new window
  • &filter=0 — show all the results, include omitted results
  • &tbs=qdr:10y,sbd:1 — “search by date” (here’s why I am also including a big date range of 10 years: &tbs=sbd:1 would mean “search by date” – but it doesn’t work unless you select a date range)
  • &tbs=prv:1 — show page previews

To combine the last two options, write &tbs=prv:1,qdr:10y,sbd:1

There are other useful options but I will save those for another time.

Here’s how to try this technique out. Run your search, then add this to the end of the URL:  &num=100&newwindow=1&filter=0&tbs=prv:1

Or, if you want to also sort by date, add &num=100&newwindow=1&filter=0&tbs=prv:1,qdr:10y,sbd:1 and see what happens.

Sorry, folks, this is a little technical but it saves you a lot of mousing and clicking. Besides, this is the only quick way I know of to sort the results by date.

Did you know you can control search results in social networks as well? Come to my Advanced Social Network Search webinar to find out…

List of 24 Large Corporations Interested in Sourcing

booleanstringsBoolean Leave a Comment

Resumes and interviews have not changed a whole lot, but sourcing has, and there’s a big need for recruiters to get up to speed. I believe that all companies, especially large corporations, need either to help recruiters to learn web sourcing skills, or hire sourcers, or do both. If you “post and prey” you might still be just fine but not for too long.

I will be presenting the basics of Internet-based candidate search in a webinar on Friday. Here is a partial list of corporations whose employees have signed up. Look how much interest there is in acquiring web sourcing skills. (So far we have 600+ sign-ups from 350+ companies.)

  • 7-11
  • Accenture
  • AT&T
  • BMC
  • CA
  • CDI
  • Cigna
  • CSC
  • Dell
  • Deloitte
  • EY
  • GE
  • Google
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • KPMG
  • LinkedIn
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Microsoft
  • PayPal
  • SAP
  • Starbucks
  • Visa
  • Verizon

How to Find Candidates Using the Internet (an Overview)

booleanstringsBoolean 7 Comments

Join us for a Webinar on July 16th (Friday). Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/303840850

This webinar is for Boolean “beginners”, beginner-to-intermediate level sourcers, “old-school” recruiters wanting to jump on the web sourcing bandwagon, and for those who use the web for sourcing but are questioning whether they are using the best available tools in the best possible ways.

We will go over:
• Sourcing on Google and other search engines,
• Sourcing on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks,
• Sourcing terminology such as semantic, deep web and real time search.

The purpose is to create a mental “map” of sourcing tools and possibilities. After attending the webinar you might decide to venture out with Google advanced operators if you haven’t yet, to get deeper knowledge on a specific tool – or perhaps delegate your sourcing work to someone else.

Come prepared for a fast-paced webinar. All attendees will receive the slides. We will include a Q&A period at the end.

Part of this webinar’s profits will be applied towards maintaining the Boolean Strings Ning network.
Title: How to Find Candidates Using the Internet (an Overview)
Date: Friday, July 16, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM – 10:50 AM PDT / 1 PM – 1:50 PM EDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Search for Talent Within Your Groups

booleanstringsUncategorized Leave a Comment

LinkedIn Groups was a great invention and, I think, remains the best way to source on LinkedIn. A member can belong to up to 50 groups, send messages within the group for free and post jobs for free.

The groups are undergoing a major redesign where the News are now blended with Discussions. You also see a moving row of posts with images and can vote on the posts you like. At the moment of this writing – July 9,2010 – some groups are keeping the old user interface and some have moved to the new user interface.

Another major change is that now you can’t include a group membership in your people search if you are not a paying member. The pay for searches that include groups is quite high.

It’s useful to narrow down on group members! Do you have to upgrade now? Here are some points to review, before you do.

1. You can search members within a group and get up to 500 results even if you are a basic member:
2. You can narrow down your advanced people search to only members of the groups you belong to. In the results, you will see which groups those are. You will be able to send a message to each person in the results list:

3. You can use X-Ray. This is how you can find people belonging to a group on Google:
SAP “Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting ” site:linkedin.com
(replace “SAP” for your own keywords).

It’s interesting to see what is the next feature to become paid on LinkedIn. What are your guesses?

Numbers of Results in Search Engines

booleanstringsUncategorized Leave a Comment

This is a very important point for a sourcer or anybody who uses search engines.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing will never show more that 1,000 results per search.

Many of us know that, but with that comes the fact that an announced approximate numbers above 1,000 cannot be trusted.

Any “number of results” displayed by each of these search engines is just a wild guess, and the approximation that can be off by orders of magnitude . The engines are not trying to fool us and don’t claim the numbers have close relevance to the reality either.

Numbers of results, especially if there’s more than 1,000, change as you go through the pages of results, based on the search engine trying to make a better guess (try it).

It’s unfortunate, but we can never rely on the numbers that are over 1,000 for any conclusions. As an example, you cannot tell which of two search strings bring more results, or which of the two search engines found more results based on the numbers (if they are large). The only reliable numbers that we see are less than 1,000, and only with the “omitted results included”.

Note, that I am not even talking here about results that are relevant but have not been found.

Why wouldn’t the search engines display the correct numbers of results? The answer is simple. It is just not possible with the huge amount of info to go through, large – but still limited – storage and reasonable time frame to respond to our queries.

If you search, for example, on Google, you will find some interesting articles dedicated to the matter and also more than a thousand articles making mistakes on the number of results assumption.

Of course, this made our “how many resumes are there on the internet?” contest pretty difficult. 🙂

Twitter is a Tool for What?

booleanstringsUncategorized Leave a Comment

Do you know of all the ways to use Twitter? Let’s do a simple search and we will find out that…

  • Twitter is a powerful tool for learning & sharing. …
  • Twitter is a great tool for small business – especially restaurants…
  • Twitter is a really great tool for finding business
  • Twitter is a great tool for communicating with current and new users of your website
  • Twitter is a fantastic aggregation tool for the wealth of content out there
  • Twitter Is A Powerful Tool For Hypnotists
  • Twitter is a great tool for marketers.
  • Twitter is a fantastic tool for your IM business
  • Twitter is a simple tool for communication and improving your social network, and for influencing people
  • Twitter Is A Great Tool For Bloggers
  • Twitter is a great tool for communicating. If a user is trying to get ‘paid’ results from it and not being successful, maybe they need to rethink …
  • Twitter is a great tool for government transparency. I’m well aware politicians are regular human beings…
  • Twitter is a fantastic tool for many things. You can use it to talk to your friends from work.
  • Twitter is a fairly clunky tool for the delivery of customer service, …
  • Twitter is a great tool for brand awareness and their interest is to use this to extend brand reach
  • Twitter is a powerful tool for spammers because a single infected Twitter account could broadcast to tens of thousands of people
  • Twitter is a great tool for direct marketing. The more followers you have, the more people who will be exposed to you product/message
  • Twitter is a great tool for nonprofits. At the Genesis Network, we have been experimenting with new ways to utilize Twitter more effectively. …
  • Twitter is a great tool for increasing your social media awareness on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, etc.
  • Twitter is a great tool for social bookmarking. …
  • Twitter is simply a niche tool for communications junkies.
  • Twitter is a good tool for getting your site indexed and ranked.
  • Twitter is a revolutionary tool for businesses who are trying to create a community
  • Twitter is a great tool for Museums to build communities around their brands online
  • Twitter is a great tool for improving your writing by helping build buzz about yourself and forcing you to edit your work. 
  • Twitter is a wonderful tool for self promotion.
  • Twitter is a great tool for companies that want to engage in conversation with their current and potential customers.
  • Twitter is a valuable tool for job-seekers. Most recruiters are on Twitter right now, so it’s important to start developing an online …
  • Twitter is a priceless effective business tool for marketers, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, event planners, …
  • Twitter is a great tool for research
  • Twitter is a great tool for activists to network with other activists.
  • Twitter is a great tool for following far away events (live) such as riots, revolutions & red carpet events.

There’s a lot more…

How to Expand People Search Options for a Basic User

booleanstringsUncategorized Leave a Comment

Here’s a LinkedIn  tip. If you copy a people search URL from a premium member and use it for a basic member, it will work just fine. Of course, you will need to decide whether you are up for using it or not.

Let me illustrate it. Compare the two sides of the screenshot below . They were both created using the URL http://bit.ly/dB7cqY (paste it in your browser).

On the left  side you see a piece of a premium holder search screen with some choices picked; on  right side you see a screen shot ot a basic user account with the exactly same premium (though visually disabled) options selected.

(Someone could probably create a table of substrings that need to be used in the URLs  per each premium field, per each of its  options. It looks pretty strightforward;  you need to add something  like

…keepFacets=keepFacets&page_num=1&facet_P=1&facet_SE=0+5&facet_F=5…

to the URL of the advanced search page.)