Monthly Archives: January 2013

Facebook Graph Search Sourcing and Recruiting Initial Test Drive

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For those who don’t yet have access to Facebook’s Graph Search – I put together a video detailing 5 live searches for:

  • product managers who work at Microsoft and live in Seattle
  • software engineers who work at Google and live in New York
  • (developer OR programmer OR engineer)
  • underwriters in Charlotte
  • accountants who live near Alpharetta

I must say that playing around with Graph Search’s natural language query functionality and long list of search options is quite fun. You can easily search for diversity, current titles and employers, years of experience, and of course education.

However, as you can see in the video, my main concern about the limitations of Facebook’s usefulness in sourcing and recruiting is the lack of professional information and the the shallow depth of what is there to be found.

Being able to search for and match people by title and company is useful for some recruiting needs and completely useless for others who need to find professionals with specific experience that cannot be reliably predicted by title alone.

Of course, the allure of the potential of using Facebook for recruiting is largely based on the fact that Facebook has over a billion users globally.

However, Facebook’s challenge in any effort to become a major player in the recruiting solution space is that many people don’t view Facebook as a place to put their professional information so they don’t enter work information on their Facebook profile. Even if they did, they do have the opportunity to hide it from people they don’t know, which is great for them, but bad news for sourcers and recruiters.

What I found especially interesting from my initial test drive of Graph Search is that the number of results for each search was a small fraction of what I know has to actually be available, at least in theory, given the number of Facebook users.  For example, Graph Search returned less than 100 people for a search for people who are accountants in the Alpharetta, GA area, while LinkedIn has nearly 6,000. That’s a massive differential!

Do you think that the accountants on Facebook who live in the Alpharetta area just don’t put their work experience on their profile, or that they hide the info from being retrieved by people other than their friends? I’d argue the former at this point. Keep in mind that this issue not only affects search, it also affects advertising. You can’t use Facebook PPC ads to target people who don’t give you critical information to target.

I’ll be posting more videos soon – so stay tuned to see more practical Facebook Graph Search sourcing and recruiting examples.

Oh, and if you didn’t have time to watch the video, no – Facebook’s Graph Search doesn’t currently support Boolean logic.

 

No, Facebook's Graph Search doesn't currently support Boolean search. I am hoping the operative word is "currently," because the ability to run more specific and precise conceptual queries is critical to what sourcers and recruiters need to accomplish

 

 

Why Facebook Graph Search is No Threat to LinkedIn…For Now

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Facebook's Graph Search options of special interest to sourcers and recruiters: Employer, Position, Employer Location, Time Period, School, Class Year, ConcentrationAs with all new and bright shiny objects, people are quick and eager to make blind and wild predictions, and Facebook’s Graph Search is an excellent example.

Facebook announced Graph Search on January 15th, and there are already 100’s of articles published on the possibilities, including how Graph Search will challenge Google in advertising, Match.com & eHarmony in online dating, Yelp and others in services, travel and entertainment, and yes, even LinkedIn and Monster in recruiting.

When Mark Zuckerberg himself says “One of my favorite [Graph Search] queries is recruiting. Let’s say we’re trying to find engineers at Google who are friends of engineers at Facebook,” it’s hard to not get excited about the possibilities of tapping into the data Facebook has on over 1,000,000,000 users globally, and over 167,000,000 users in the U.S. alone.

Don’t worry – this isn’t another Facebook-Graph-Search-is-an-awesome-disruptor article.

Rather than throwing fuel on the Graph Search fire, I am happy to throw a wet blanket instead.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m excited to use Graph Search, and I know sourcers and recruiters will be able to make use of it. However, there are some major limitations to Facebook and Graph Search specifically that I want to recognize and bring to light that will clearly explain why it isn’t a threat to LinkedIn. Continue reading →

How to Find Almost Anyone’s Email Address with Rapportive

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Sourcers and recruiters are always looking for different, easier and more effective ways of divining the email addresses of people they are looking to engage.

While there are many ways of researching, guessing, and verifying valid email addresses, did you know you can find almost anyone’s email address using Gmail?

I didn’t, until I stumbled across a very interesting post in the blog section of Distilled.net, the website of a PPC/SEO consultancy, and they demonstrate quite clearly how to find almost anyone’s email address using Gmail and Rapportive.

The technique is so simple and effective that I wanted to share it with the global sourcing and recruiting community.

Here is the original post, and below you can view the YouTube video that demonstrates how to use Gmail, Rapportive, and a Google Doc email permutator to reveal and confirm email addresses.

I highly recommend that you view the video in full screen mode and change the quality to 720p.

 

 

Of course, in order for you to leverage this method of email divination, you will need a Gmail account and the Rapportive plugin for Gmail. It would also certainly help to use an email permutator to quickly generate all of the most common email address formats, and the Google Doc spreadsheet created by Rob Ousbey from Distilled.net is the best I’ve seen so far.

If you’re not already using Rapportive, you should be. In addition to rewarding you with verifying correctly guessed email addresses, Rapportive imbues Gmail with some social CRM functionality, allowing you to see recent social activity, follow people on popular social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and even leave notes about specific people to use in future interactions.

 

 

As an added bonus, here is yet another blog post written by a non-sourcer/recruiter on how to find anyone’s email address, which details the Gmail/Rapportive technique, as well as MailTester.com, Jigsaw/Data.com, and a few other methods, including calling and asking.

Imagine that!

:)