In my search to optimize my linkedin searches I came across something interesting for recruiters/researchers that search internationaly. One of the great frustrations I personally have with Linkedin is that it only allows you to search one country simultaneously while for a lot of my jobs I really don’t care where people are coming from. It now means that I have to run a search several times in order to make sure I have the maximum amount of candidates.

I can of course try and search through the search engine of Linkedin directly and see what it gives me but the results have not been optimal. If I add say (Netherlands OR Belgium) to my keyword search I get a lot of false positives simply because of people having those words in their profile. One of my favourite ways of searching Linkedin is not using linkedin at all, it’s the all-mighty X-ray. Be prepared because I’m taking you on a bit of a journey.

X-ray explained
Now, hopefully most recruiters are comfortable with x-ray but for the less boolean-gifted recruiters a quick explanation: x-ray is a Google search string that allows you to focus on one particular site. If I put site:linkedin.com in my Google search it will give me only results from………….right, LinkedIn! There are big advantages to x-ray over a LinkedIn search and that is that you really can see all of the public profiles on linked and you can actually contact them. Reason for this is that a) your search results is limited by the size of your network and b) LinkedIn allows you to see the LinkedIn profile if you come in through this back door where if you did a normal search it wouldn’t allow you if that person was outside of your network.

Whenever you do an x-ray on Google don’t forget to add inurl:pub OR inurl:in -intitle:directory in order to eliminate pages where such a groups and events. To further narrow it down add -inurl:updates. To give you an idea of the power of this string: it gives 30.200.000 hits. I would say much of the population of Linkedin

The international X-ray
For the more advanced recruiter that wants to search internationally there are some ways to limit the search to a specific country or some specific countries. Glen Cathey wrote an article about how to do this after I had contacted him about some international search he had done. To recap his research:

You can do a search on postal codes on Linkedin:

If you take a large city as say Amsterdam, The Netherlands you see that in the city there are several postal codes

Now if we do a search on Linkedin with the postal code 1000 in the Netherlands you will see that all of them have in their profile “Amsterdam Area, Netherlands”. And with that “area, country” we can play.

My own research completes Glen’s list and below a list of all the structures that are being used

“Area, France”
“Area, Germany”
“*, United Kingdom”
“Area, Switzerland”
Area, Belgium
Area, Netherlands
Area, Sweden
Area, Spain
*, Finland
Area, Norway
*, Russian Federation
*, Portugal
Area, Italy
*, Ireland
Area, Denmark
*, Austria

As you can see most countries in Europe follow the “area, country” setup except for the UK but what can you expect from a country where people drive on the wrong side of the road?

Now, let’s say I need a user experience expert in the Netherlands? A what? Yeah, sorry but I had this search recently so might as well take that one. A search on “user experience” in the whole of the Netherlands gives me 1239 hits. I’m not going into how I can increase it by perhaps looking at other job titles, that is not the meaning of this article.

An x-ray on google site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory -inurl:updates (”Area, Netherlands”) “user experience” gives me 2.510 hits. A lot better of course, way too many results and I would need to narrow it down but I’ve just doubled the number of candidates. Now this seams to work but if I’m searching for more countries I may run into the Google limit of 32 words in the boolean search. As well I’ve found that somehow not everybody has a region mentioned in their profile which would render the “area, country” string useless. In a niche market like UX I can’t afford to lose out on a single candidate.

The Holy Grail of international x-rays
So here is what I’ve found and if I’m not mistaken nobody else has blogged about it. So here is my ticket to fame LinkedIn has recently changed all the personal links on peoples profiles. Now, US-based profiles haven’t changed and still are http://www.linkedin.com/in/NAME but as I’m based in Spain my personal link has changed to http://es.linkedin.com/in/tedmeulenkamp. A check on other profiles gives that profiles in the UK now have uk.linkedin.com, in Germany de.linkedin.com and the Netherlands nl.linkedin.com. I have not (yet) compiled a list of all the country codes but they seem to be following the standard country codes used globally. So wow, Linkedin has actually placed a country code in the personal links of all their members! Have I found the holy grail for international linkedin x-rays?

So before we bring out the champagne (or cava in Spain) let’s test this.

site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) -intitle:directory -inurl:updates inurl:nl.linkedin.com user experience” gives me 2.990 hits. Not bad as it increases the amount of hits over the previous one because of the before mentioned fact that not everybody has a region in the profile but they surely have had to give their country when signing up. But we are still not there, what if, just imagine, what if the country code is only used in personal profiles and not on any other pages. That would mean we could get rid of inurl:pub OR inurl:in as thus save space.

site:linkedin.com -intitle:directory -inurl:updates inurl:nl.linkedin.com user experience” gives me exactly the same amount of hits as my previous search and that is just awesome! It really means that we can leave out inurl:pub OR inurl:in. But wait, wait, wait. What if we leave out -intitle:directory and -inurl:updates?

site:linkedin.com inurl:nl.linkedin.com user experience” again gives me the same amount of hits. AMAZING!!! We went from a pretty lengthy search string to this compact, easy to remember, easy to use search string! Just to be complete if you want to use this string for a multi country search you just put in inurl:nl.linkedin.com OR inurl:be.linkedin.com OR etc).

So folks, run the following and bookmark it for your international searches:

site:linkedin.com inurl:nl.linkedin.com KEYWORDS”. Change the country code and keywords and rock on!

Conclusion

There is so much more to get out of Linkedin by using an X-ray and now with this new search string you can actually very accurately search per country and profit of the larger network and accessibility of the x-ray search! And dear friends in the US, sorry but because you still have the original profile links you still need to use the full search string.

Hi Folks,

I have a contingency search, and I want to find out what type of sourcing it might require (Internet or Telephone, Level 1 or Level 2, as per: Glen's fine article below which I previously posted) and what you think it might cost for 10-15 hours of work.

I was hoping to get some suggestion from this wonderful group of professionals.  I am currently in the middle of 2 separate searches for Vice President level candidates for our organization.  One is in the IT world the other is much more line of business oriented.  I have certainly interacted with VP's over the course of my career however, I frankly do not have a "pipeline" of potential candidates.  Can anyone suggest great sources for me to target in order to boost my network within that level of candidate?  I am not looking for executive search firms, or agencies or anything of that nature.  I want to fill these positions and I am willing to work for it.  I was just hoping that some of you have already done some of this legwork before and I value your opinions as to a good way to attack this effort.  I thank you in advance for any advice you may be able to provide.

ReferYes Sourcer, the candidate sourcing tool added a new feature to find candidate email IDs. In this post I will explain how this feature works and how it could save you time of doing multiple searches.

Generally, if you want to search for an email address you should know two things, the candidate name and the company name or website. First, you should search for all possible combinations of the email address on the internet. For example, if you are searching for candidates that work at Kforce and you found the profile of John smith on LinkedIn and you want to get in touch with him. To find his email you should search for:

John.Smith@Kforce.com
John_Smith@Kforce.com
JohnSmith@Kforce.com
JSmith@Kfoce.com
J.Smith@Kforce.com
J_Smith@Kforce.com
smith@Kforce.com
Johns@Kforce.com
John_s@Kforce.com
John.s@Kforce.com
John@Kforce.com

ReferYes automates this time consuming process, with only one button click ReferYes will search for all these combinations.

ReferYes will show the search results and the found emails, it also will show the webpage link of where the email was found, and a list of emails from the same company.

If you don’t know the company website , ReferYes also will help you to find it by clicking on the ‘find website’ button.

Finally, if the candidate email could not be found on the internet, ReferYes will suggest an email address based on the scheme of the other company emails. For example, if you search for Rami Madi from Kforce, then ReferYes will suggest that the email address is rmadi@Kforce.com

To try the email search at ReferYes, follow the link below: http://www.referyes.com/source_people.htm

- Rami Madi, ReferYes Team

I spent some time trying Autosearch, a web-based application that simplifies search, available for a trial at www.getautosearch.com

The goal of the application is to make searching for candidates and for relevant information simple. If you are someone who is not excited about playing with complex Google or Yahoo search syntax and Boolean operators and are not interested in filtering out resumes from all the results you get, this application might be for you. It provides results of certain kinds based on your keywords: resumes, profiles etc. It can limit searching to just one site, or "blogs", or "alumni sites" etc. It can look within specific geography. If you do want to use Boolean syntax you are free to do so in the keyword window and it will be included in the site's logic. However the real search is hidden (say, unlike the way eGrabber's ResumeFinder does it - there you see the exact string and can edit it to your liking), so you are not quite in control of the search that is being executed - which might be a good thing as long as you get good results fast. (In the end, you are not in control of what Google does either, right?)

I really liked the site's user interface. It is very clean and makes it easy to understand. I recommend trying the product out. For tools like this it makes sense to do a trial run with your own searches to decide whether it's beneficial. They have a straightforward pricing at $100 per month (which seems "nicer" to me than the $30/month fee for Talenthook that comes with $1 or $3 per search, plus an initiation fee).

I imagine as the software develops further they will improve their algorithms, expand/adjust the list of sites to look for profiles and perhaps add an integrated parsing tool. The danger would be to lose the simplicity while adding new options but with the skillfully built UI this might not be an issue.

-Irina http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva

There are many websites that provide information on companies and organizations, some of these services are free, others carry a price tag. In this post I will focus on free sources to find useful business information. If you are a recruiter or a salesman and looking for clients in specific industries or if you are a recruiter searching for passive candidates that work for certain companies, then this post will help you to identify the best sources to find this information and the advantages and disadvantages of each source.

LinkedIn, Jigsaw, and Hoover’s are the top websites that provide free company information. Since June, 2008 Jigsaw provided all its company data for free under their ‘Data Independence Day’ initiative. It has a powerful advanced company search tool and users can browse or download company information for free.

LinkedIn also provides company information for free which they call ‘company profiles’ to help their users explore and find the right companies to work for or do business with. This service is still in its beta version and like Jigsaw it provides information on the company's industry, type, size, addresses, and website.

Hoover's website features a database of information on more than 30 million corporations and organizations, but most of these information are for paid subscribers. It is arguably the largest proprietary company information database with detailed company profiles and information. The database has detailed company overviews, locations, addresses, financial figures, competitors, news releases and key executives for each of these companies.

To compare between the three websites we will perform a simple query on Google to compare the number of indexed results which will give an indication of the real number of company records each website has. Searching in all industries and company types in the U.S., LinkedIn has the largest number of company records and Hoover’s has the smallest number of results. However, this is because Hoover's provides only 43,000 public and non-public US and international companies for free and to access the information of small to mid-sized companies you have to subscribe to their service.

As for the quality of information, all three websites provide similar information, however, LinkedIn and Jigsaw are user-generated content contributed by their members. Another difference is in their search capabilities, where Jigsaw and LinkedIn provide free advanced search features but Hoover’s limits its advanced search to 10 results only for free users.

Finally, ReferYes Sourcer the passive candidate sourcing tool that searches for resumes and candidate profiles on top search engines and social networks, has added a new cross-searching feature to search for business information on LinkedIn, Jigsaw, and Hoover’s. The value of this feature is that it provides search results from the three websites simultaneously in a unified search interface, which makes it easier to find company information and to compare the results.

Try the new business search feature on ReferYes Sourcer at : http://www.ReferYes.com/source_people.htm

-Rami

Want to build a pipeline of qualified applicants to fill your high demand positions?  200k+ veterans transition each year and most struggle to find a job.  This talent pool would be a bounty for any savvy employer who creates an OJT program.   Read the blog @ http://tinyurl.com/lohlfh

I am the recruiter for a 120 person consulting company that provides business and technology strategy consulting to the telecom industry as well as providing mobility solutions to enterprises.  Since we are small, our budget is rather small.  Our positions are scattered around the country so I need tools that can provide us good visibility nationwide.  Since our positions range from strategy consultants to engineers, my picks are Linked in Recruiter and Dice, both of which I've used in the past.  Both together would represent a $13K investment for the year.

I need to present/defend my choices to the management team on Friday.  I was wondering if any of you out there also use these two for similar purposes or generally have some good info that might help me with my presentation?  Do you use anything different you'd recommend? I have already gathered my position, but fresh input outside my bubble would be very valuable!  :-)

Thanks in advance!

I'm planning to send out a a few-page flyer of useful information to help recruiters and sourcers get work. What information would be most useful? Do you have any information that you'd like me to send out?  

Thanks,
Keith D. Halperin,
Sr. Recruiter and SPHR Emeritus
415.586.8265 keithsrj@sbcglobal.net

I am negotiating a retained search agreement with a client for a couple of C-level positions.  They are a long time customer and I've always worked with them on contingency (25%).  I want to make a competitive offer or maybe come a bit lower than the going rate.  Given the current economic times, can anyone provide current rates for retained searches?

The company is an early stage tech firm in NYC, growing and with 2008 revenues of > $50M.

---------------------

Marcelo S.

Demand Worldwide

Craigslist.org, the leading classifieds site is a good source of resumes if you are looking for local jobseekers. I said local jobseekers because craigslist is designed in a way to conduct local community searches only rather than a countrywide search. Actually craigslist consists of over 500 craigslist sites in all 50 US states, and over 50 countries, in which each site has a unique sub-domain and content.

For example if you want to search for resumes in New York City, you have to select New York which will open a new page with a list of all cities, then you have to select New York City from the list that will redirect you to http://newyork.craigslist.org which includes resumes from New York City only. Now, to search resumes click on the resumes link at the bottom of the page, a new page will open up with two search options, either to search resume titles only or to search all the content of the resumes. If you are looking for local jobseekers then craigslist is a practical tool and an excellent source of resumes.

How to conduct a countrywide search on craigslist?
If you want to search for resumes anywhere in the US on craigslist, then you have to select the state, city and then the resumes section every time for the 500 different cities. I am sure no one will do this, it's not practical and time consuming process. So is there an easier way to do this?

To overcome this time consuming process, the easiest technique is to use search engines to X-Ray craigslist using the site: command. For example, to do this on Google, if you are looking for a construction project manager then the search string will look like this:
site:craigslist.org "construction project manager" inurl:res

And if you are looking for resumes in a specific state then the search string would become:
site:craigslist.org "construction project manager" (California | CA) inurl:res

Unfortunately, this search string will produce irrelevant results because this will return all the resumes that contain the word California or CA even if the jobseeker address is not in California.

How to use ReferYes Sourcer to search for resumes on craigslist?
Recently, ReferYes Sourcer which automates Boolean search strings added craigslist to its list of sourcing websites that includes the top social networks and search engines. ReferYes Sourcer handled this in two ways, the first way is by X-Ray searching on Google which I've explained earlier.

The other way that ReferYes Sourcer searches resumes on craigslist is by selecting the cities from a dropdown list which saves a lot of time and effort of going back and forth between craigslist sites. The question you might ask yourself now, if I can X-Ray craigslist why should I use the city search tool? The answer is simple, because if you are looking for more relevant results for a specific location then using the city search will return more reliable search results.

Now, to start searching for people on craigslist with ReferYes Sourcer go to: http://www.ReferYes.com/source_people.htm

What are the most important skills to make a best-in-class sourcer?  Background history from corporate world? Strong internet mining skills or can that be learned? Strong deductive reasoning skills to identify when a search is or isn't working?  I would appreciate your thoughts as I  begin to build my hiring competency list.

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone had ideas for finding companies based on their growth % for the past years?  For example I was interested in finding manufacturing companies (or individual plants if possible) in certain industries that have had an increase of 10% or more in sales in the past 1-2 years.

Any help is much appreciated!

So I return from vacation only to find 300 invitations in my inbox on Linkedin. Normally, I would be happy to accept all these invites since I am an Open Networker. As I attempted to check all and click accept I noticed something was awry. I clicked Accept, I clicked again, and again, an again. I logged off and logged back in and clicked again. But they weren't "Accepting". So after trying off and on over several days I figured Linkedin was having one of their typical programming problems and wrote customer service explaining the problem.

Below is the reply I received: > Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support. You are no longer capable of mass accepting invites. You will need to go in and accept them one by one. > We apologize for any inconvenience. > Have a great day Jeff! > Regards,

I have not received a reply as to why I am unable to mass accept but I think it's pretty save to assume that Linkedin is attempting to stop Open Networkers by making it massively inconvenient. (FYI I have over 9400 first level connections)

By my count that's at least 4 or 5 attempts at shutting down Open Networkers.

This wil obviously dramatically change how Open Networkers work on Linkedin. Be prepared to Accept each and every invite individually if you are "tagged" as an Open Networker by Linkedin.

Jeff Weidner Typically I would sign my post with my Linkedin email address but then I'd have to go in and Accept all the damn invites I'd get from people reading this post. Ehh I'll put it in anyway just out of spite but don't expect me to Accept for several days, possibly weeks, maybe a month. Worst case 2 months.

jeffweidnerlinkedin@gmail.com

We all know, there are people on LinkedIn that are open to connecting with you and connecting you with others. (LIONs, open networkers etc.) If you are interested in locating those open networkers that might help you do your business, here's a way. Use Broadlook Diver, include your specific keywords and get a list (including the contact email) in seconds. I just searched for "corporate recruiter" as an example and am listing the first few records of the results below.

Download free Diver trial at www.broadlook.com/braingain this week and get $100 of the regular price.

-Irina Irina@braingainrecruiting.com

* Name Title Company Email * Chase Scott Human Resources Director/Manager/Generalist, Senior Corporate Recruiter Sales Partnerships, Inc. chasescott@salespartnerships.com * Craig Osmond Corporate Recruiter Health Dialog craigdosmond@aol.com * Dominic Bagnulo Corporate Recruiter CARQUEST/GPI mdbagnulo@gmail.com * Remco Staats Corporate Recruiter, Managed Operations Unit Outsourcing Atos Origin rs.staats@gmail.com * Steve Dobbs Human Resources Representative/ Corporate Recruiter General Physics sdobbs@gpworldwide.com * Steve Rath Corporate Contract Recruiter IGT steve_rath@yahoo.com * Vickie Gilbert Corporate Recruiter Retail Industry MRI vgilbert@mgmttalent.com

I need some advice from this group!

Last week I was contacted by a researcher in California who had seen a posting of mine on LinkedIn. She was very hyper on the phone and excited by the fact that I am unfamiliar with the Minnesota market and insisted that she could help. I told her that my experience with "researchers" in the past was not positive as they tended to do sloppy work - ie. not verify information, have typos or wrong numbers/emails on their lists and so on. She insisted that she was properly trained and knew how to call in to companies and was certain she could help me - at a discounted rate even!

I agreed to work with her for a start of 5 hours and explained that because our client was in consumer packaged goods, ideally we would focus on that market. The search is for a Human Resources Manager with no more than 7 years and I gave her titles of HR Rep, Consultant and HR Manager to source as well as a list of companies of interest in CPG. I indicated that I was unaware if they had offices in Minnesota but certainly surrounding states would work. I also indicated that it was important to verify all information and to please format the spreadsheet.

What I received was what I felt to be, a mess. The numbers provided were not functional after hours with no employee directory or opportunity to leave messages. As well, a number of emails bounced. The final straw to me was that the majority of information on the spreadsheet was contacts at the VP level.

She had the nerve to send me a bill via email which she wanted paid immediately, prior to confirming with me that the work was at least what I expected. I couldn't believe it and franky I am frustrated and angry that I'm paying for information I didn't ask for. I never asked for VP HR and was specific about that.

I received the bill on Monday and she is calling me every two seconds asking for payment which I told her she would get next week when we do our payables. She is furious and has left me nasty messages and emails telling me I have no idea how to work with a researcher.

So, am I out of my tree? Maybe I have high expectations? Can someone educate me on how to spot a professional researcher and one who is just desperate for money.

What is ‘Google Profiles'?

According to Google it's the way that people can control how they appear in Google by creating personal profiles. When people search for a name on Google, it will show a list of the Google Profiles that users have setup under that name. This is a great feature for people who want to control what will appear when others search for their names on Google.

Recently, Google introduced a new feature to give greater control over what people find when they search for names, they've begun to show Google profiles results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. They've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.

What does all that mean to recruiters and sourcers?

Profiles are multiplying every day and Google profiles are becoming a great source to find people. The quality of information in the profiles are reasonable, and most profiles include a brief about the candidate, job title, location, a link to send a message, name of the companies that the candidate have worked for, and links to the candidate's website, blog, and other social media accounts. Unlike the quality of the information you can find on Twitter, the ROI for sourcing people on Google Profiles is high and will increase more as people are creating more profiles.

How can I source candidates on Google Profiles?

Either you can go directly to http://www.google.com/profiles and use their search box, but this works fine if you know the name of the candidate. The other way to do this is to use the Google search to set your criteria and X-ray the profiles. For example, if you are looking for a Project Manager or a Product Manger that have worked for Microsoft use the following search string:

site:google.com/profiles (project manager | product manager) ("Companies I've worked for * microsoft" | "Companies I've worked for ** microsoft")

If you are not familiar with Boolean and X-ray search strings, you can use ReferYes Sourcer which automates Boolean search strings. Recently, ReferYes added Google Profiles to their list of websites, which includes top social networks and search engines, to give it a try go to: http://www.ReferYes.com

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on where I might be able to source talent in the Boston Market for HP UX Unix Administrators.

If anyone has any good networking associations that they would recommend for this type of position, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss further..

Thank you,

Charlene Cote Manager of Talent Acquisition & Diversity ARAMARK Uniform & Career Apparel (WearGuard) 781-763-4383 (P) 781-982-2861 (F)

Todd Rapheal posted on his blog a video about the "dev life" with salesforce.com.

I commented that Salesforce.com continues to be the best "remedy" for getting recruiting teams off of spreadsheets with the claim that you will never move your team "forward" if you use spreadsheets to manage them. 

I've never met a recruiting spreadsheet I couldn't convert.  As I love challenges, if you have one that you would like to see converted...please..challenge me...I dare you. :)

Here is a link to Todd's blog, http://bit.ly/BZ3Bf

If you were to put together a training program where graduates would earn the designation of Black Belt Recruiter...what 3rd Party training would you include as required elements? For example, would you include Maureen's training? ...or Shally's? ...or others? If you could list out 5 different training programs and stipulate that a Black Belt Recruiter has successfully completed at least 3 of those programs, what programs would they be? ...and would those programs be split into different types of training (for example, Sourcing, Business Development, Employment Law, etc.)? What are your thoughts/ideas? Without inventing any new programs/coursework, what kind of training would be fair to for an outsider to assume that a Black Belt Recruiter had successfully completed? What makes a Black Belt Recruiter a Black Belt?

I'm interested in feedback on the "representative" or "standard" fees (structure, percentages, amounts) for referring a candidate into a short-term (3 months to 1 year) contract consulting engagement with a professional services firm.

Please assume that the professional services firm will pay the referred consultant $1200/day and bill the client $2000/day.

In those circumstances, what are you thoughts on a fair fee for connecting the professional services firm with the contract consultant?

Thanks,
Kip Pagach
---------------
K. I. Pagach
Sourcing & Supply Chain Consultant
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kpagach
office +1.757.489.5810   |   mobile +1.757.748.1457   |   pagachk97@alum.darden.edu

I would like to start a focus group to discuss best practices around internal Employee Referral Programs. If anyone is interested please contact me at jilian.snavley@nationalcity.com

Have a great day!

If a recruiter conducts a comprehensive phone screen with a candidate, do they also interview the candidate when the come in for onsite interviews? Are there any Pros / Cons to adopting this process?