Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Best Boolean and Semantic Search Tool

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While many people are hungry for specific Boolean search strings to copy and paste and for search tools that make searching for people “easier” and even “do the thinking for you,” there simply is nothing that can come remotely close to what you can do when you think properly and ask the right questions.

Yoda Think Before You Search

That’s right – the most powerful thing you can incorporate into your people search efforts isn’t Boolean logic, a search “hack,” Chrome extension, search aggregator, semantic search solution or anything you can buy – it’s your brain. Your level of understanding of and appreciation for the unique challenges posed by human capital data in any form (social media profiles, resumes, etc.) directly correlates to your ability to extract value from any data source. The same is true of the thought processes you apply before and during your search efforts.

A little over a year ago, I presented for the 3rd time at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect event in London, and I spoke about how to leverage LinkedIn’s massive stockpile of human capital data for sourcing and recruiting. LinkedIn recorded the session and uploaded the video to YouTube, and I recently noticed the video had over 65,000 views. Now, while that is puny in comparison to the nearly 1B views Adele’s Hello video has racked up, I was surprised to see so many views given the niche content.

Although the source of human capital data that I focus on in the video happens to be LinkedIn, practically everything I talk about is equally applicable to any source you can use to find people to recruit.

So, if you use any source of human capital data to find and recruit people (e.g., your ATS/CRM, resume databases, LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, Github, etc.) and you really want to understand how to best approach your talent sourcing efforts, I recommend watching this video when you have the time.

Enjoy, and feel free to let me know your thoughts!

 

Twitter Sourcing Tool Tactics Cloud Shuts Down

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Tactics Cloud NoticeI hope my blog post wasn’t somehow the kiss of death for Tactics Cloud, but in only a matter of weeks after writing about how awesome I thought their Twitter search solution was, they will no longer be offering Tactics Cloud as they have decided to focus our efforts on new opportunities.”

Although Derek Zeller discovered that you could still access and search Twitter with Tactics Cloud via this link, the Tactics Cloud crew said they will be shutting that down shortly. At the time of this post, that link was still working, although I am sure that won’t last long.

Enjoy it while you can, before your only real option for searching Twitter bios is Followerwonk and good ol’ fashioned X-Ray searching. Continue reading →

LinkedIn Traffic Statistics and User Demographics 2013

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Would you like to know more about LinkedIn’s user demographics, mobile traffic, and LinkedIn’s visitor statistics broken down by country, city, and state?

How about real-time LinkedIn unique visitors and page views per second?

http://youtu.be/hvd7riHUFM8

If so, you’ve come to the right place! Continue reading →

First Look at LinkedIn’s New User Interface

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I just stumbled across this YouTube video created by Viveka von Rosen that walks through LinkedIn’s new user interface and functionality.

I don’t have LinkedIn’s new UI, and apparently neither does Viveka – she only caught the new look and feel when she was working with one of her client’s profiles. I thought I would share this video with you because I found some of the changes that Viveka demonstrates quite interesting, and you likely will as well.

 

 

If you watch all the way to the end, you will notice that there doesn’t appear to be any way to access LinkedIn Signal from any menu option, which is quite odd in my opinion, given how powerful and useful Signal is. However, I realize that most people don’t use it, so I can understand why LinkedIn might bury it into obscurity, however unfortunate.

For those of you with the new LinkedIn UI, you can still get to Signal here: http://www.linkedin.com/signal/

Thank you for sharing your discovery Viveka!

 

What’s the most effective way to X-Ray search LinkedIn?

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I’ve recently come across some blog posts and some Boolean Strings discussions on LinkedIn that inspired me to go back and tinker with searching LinkedIn via Google and Bing.

For example, I continue to see people talk about:

  1. Whether or not you should use “pub” and/or “in” (e.g. site:linkedin.com/in | site:linkedin.com/pub)
  2. Whether or not you should use -dir
  3. Using country codes in site: searches
  4. Using different phrases to target public LinkedIn profiles – e.g., “people you know”

My first reaction when people are curious about the most effective ways of retrieving public LinkedIn profiles is to encourage them to experiment on their own first instead of looking for answers to copy and paste. Quite literally 99% of everything I know about sourcing (and recruiting!) I learned through being curious and experimenting.

People learn by doing, and more specifically by failing/struggling, and not by copying and pasting somebody else’s work. Continue reading →

The Moneyball Recruiting Opportunity: Analytics & Big Data

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Earlier this year, I traveled to Australia to present a keynote at the Australasian Talent Conference on the topic of the Moneyball opportunity that exists for companies when they are sourcing, identifying, assessing, recruiting, and developing talent, and how big data and predictive analytics will be the next major area of competitive advantage in the war for talent.

Below you will find my keynote presentation, including a couple of YouTube videos.

Big Data and predictive analytics are just beginning to be leveraged in talent acquisition by a few forward thinking companies, and I am convinced they will both play major roles in the near future.

Unfortunately, at this time there is still some confusion around exactly what “Big Data” is and is not. For example, this Wall Street Journal article incorrectly references the use of personality assessments and other online tests to facilitate hiring as an application of Big Data, when in fact it is really just an example of analytics.

Data from personality assessments and online tests coupled with other human capital data doesn’t represent a combination of high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets, which most experts agree is required for something to be classified as “Big Data.”

In this presentation, I think you will find the examples of how companies are currently leveraging analytics in their recruitment as well as in the analysis of their current workforce to be quite interesting, as well as some of the tools that already exist that do in fact harness high volume, high velocity, and high variety information assets.

You may be shocked to find that data supports the finding that taller and more attractive men and women make more money than their shorter and less attractive peers (especially shocked to find out exactly how much more!) – which gives us a glimpse into how people make hiring and promotion decisions on a daily basis based on unconscious prejudice, similar to how unconscious prejudice, wisdom, and “gut” instincts are and have been used in athletic recruiting – which Billy Beane and Paul Depodesta of the Oakland A’s specifically set out to counter.

As demonstrated in Moneyball, very strong teams can be built with data-based decision making, throwing conventional wisdom to the wind.

Enjoy the presentation, and please do let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

 

 

If you like what you’ve seen in the Slideshare, you may want to read this post I wrote on Big Data, Data Science, and Moneyball recruiting last year.

 

I Return to London For LinkedIn Talent Connect and TruLondon

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I’m writing this from the International terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport – the busiest airport in the world.

I thought I would let you know where in the world Glen Cathey is, and this week – I’ll be in London to speak at my 5th LinkedIn event, LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe.

I’ve cooked up a great presentation for the attendees who come to my session at 2:30 on Tuesday the 23rd.

While I understand Talent Connect Europe will have attendees from all across EMEA, I must say that there is a special place in my heart for Londoners.

Why? Because for the 4th year in a row, London has more unique visitors to my website than any other city in the world, with New York in 2nd and Bangalore in 3rd.

The sourcing and recruiting community is strong in London – check out my Google Analytics map of unique visitors below:

 

 

I also plan to sneak into TruLondon on Monday the 22nd – Bill Boorman has assembled an impressive list of some of the world’s top minds in sourcing, and I am keen not to catch up with those fine folks as well as throw my skills and experience into the mix.

This will be my second TruLondon experience, and Bill always puts together an amazing unconference, so I am very much looking forward to it, even if I can only attend for a few hours on Monday afternoon.

If you’ll be attending either event, please be sure to find me and introduce yourself if you have the chance.

Happy hunting!

 

 

Passive Recruiting Doesn’t Exist!

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Myth BustersWhen most people talk about “passive recruiting,” they’re referring to the practice of targeting and recruiting so-called “passive candidates” – people who are not actively looking to make a move from their current employer.

If you accept that notion – what would be the opposite?

Active recruiting?

Think about it for a moment. Neither phrase even makes sense grammatically. The “passive” in “passive recruiting” isn’t being used to describe the type of recruiting being performed – it’s being used to describe the type of candidates being recruited. 

In this article, I challenge the notion of “passive recruiting,” implore you to retire the phrase, and introduce the concepts of active and passive sourcing.   Continue reading →

What Social Recruiting is NOT

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Social_Recruiting_NotAfter recently writing about moving beyond the hype of social media and recruiting, I took some time to reflect quite a bit on the topic, and focused a critical eye on exactly what “Social Recruiting” is.

While there is no shortage of what people think “Social Recruiting” is, quite frankly – I’m not satisfied with any of the definitions and explanations I’ve found – most are too surface level and one-dimensional, as well as inaccurate, in my opinion. It seems that a large portion of what many people seem to be happy to accept as “Social Recruiting” is really nothing more than traditional job posting and employer marketing and branding in a 2.0 environment.

However, I can definitely appreciate the challenge of trying to nail down an accurate and concise definition of “Social Recruiting” – it’s quite the slippery fish. So rather than trying to answer the question of “What is Social Recruiting?,” I’m going to tell you what I think Social Recruiting is NOT. Continue reading →

LinkedIn Sourcing Tip: Industry Search Issue

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LinkedIn_Industry2Do you ever use social networks to such as LinkedIn to search for people with experience in a specific industry?

If you do, I can almost guarantee you that you are not finding everyone you’re looking for.

How?

There are intrinsic issues associated with any user generated content, especially when it comes to how users of social media identify themselves, and they can actually prevent you from finding the people you’re looking for.   Continue reading →