Boolean Black Belt-Sourcing/Recruiting

How to Search Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting

It appears that many people in the sourcing, recruiting, and staffing industry are all a-twitter about Twitter these days. My professional opinion is that Twitter is best utilized for personal and corporate branding, as well as socializing job opportunities – in other words, PASSIVE sourcing and recruiting techniques. However, even if you’re a Twitter-hater, you cannot deny the buzz and the … Read More

Job Boards Evolving With Social Media?

With the rise in companies effectively leveraging SEM (Search Engine Marketing)/SEO (Search Engine Optimization), vertical job search engines such as Indeed and SimplyHired, and social media campaigns, it seems as if many feel that the ROI of posting jobs on the major job boards has steadily declined. Perhaps this is where the strong anti-job board sentiment comes from within the recruiting and staffing industry. However, there is … Read More

How to X-Ray Search Facebook for Candidate Sourcing

I recently wrote a post on how to search for candidates on Facebook where I featured all of Facebook’s “built-in” search capabilities. Shortly after publishing the article, I received a question from one of my regular readers asking why I did not include searching Facebook using the site: query modifier (as Google calls it), also known as X-Ray search. It was a … Read More

How to Search For Candidates on Facebook

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, you already know I am a fan of highly searchable, “deep” sources of human capital data. Unfortunately, Facebook isn’t deep on professional data nor is it very searchable. When it comes to social media/networking sites, nothing comes close to LinkedIn when it comes to the “searchability” and depth of professional information … Read More

Human Capital Data Analysts – Sourcing Samurai

What’s The Sexiest Job in Recruiting? I recently read this excellent post on the Google blog written by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management at Google, and I was especially excited to read this: “Hal Varian likes to say that the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. After all, who would have guessed that computer engineers would be the cool … Read More

Is Candidate Sourcing Dead?

Why Do Some People Think Sourcing is Dead? Some people believe sourcing is a dying function because it is relatively easy to identify and find information on a large number of people using the Internet and social media. What’s Really Happening First it was Internet search engines. Then it was the job board resume databases. Now it’s social media and … Read More

Challenging Google Resume Search Assumptions

This post is second in a series focused on using Google to search for resumes on the Internet. In the first post I left some unanswered questions, such as why: I didn’t talk about searching for CV’s I didn’t suggest using the tilde ~ operator in conjuntion with the word “resume” I didn’t use -~job when trying to eliminate false positive results I didn’t … Read More

How to Find Resumes on the Internet with Google

Want to learn how to find resumes on the Internet using Google? You’ve come to the right place! Whether you are new to searching the Internet for resumes or you are a veteran Interent sourcer, I’ve included some tips, tricks, and observations for the novice and expert alike. Targeting Resumes When using Google to search specifically for resumes, it’s a good … Read More

Free and Original Content – Let’s Keep it That Way

I had a fantastic converstation with the incredibly knowledgeable and insanely helpful Eric Jaquith the other day, and he gave me a “wake up call” with regard to the content that I publish here on Boolean Blackbelt. Although I have only been blogging for a few months now, I have worked very hard to publish high-value content for everyone to enjoy, use, and benefit from. Call … Read More

Boolean Search Does Not = Internet Search

If you read certain sourcing and recruiting blogs and discussion groups, you might get the impression that Boolean search pretty much equals Internet search – such as searching for people and profiles using Google, Yahoo, or other search engines. Some sourcing and recruiting professionals may be surprised to learn that Boolean logic significantly predates the Internet and even computers – by a couple hundred years! … Read More

FREE LinkedIn Search: Internal vs. X-Ray

While there is a growing number of recruiting professionals and organizations who pay for premium access to LinkedIn, there is still a large number of people who leverage LinkedIn with a free or “Personal” account. If you’re on the fence about paying for increased access to LinkedIn, you’re reading the right post. I’m going to compare searching LinkedIn from the … Read More

Job Boards vs. Social Networking Sites

I follow a number of recruiting blogs as well as many sourcers and recruiters on Twitter and I see a growing trend of job board bashing – typically comparing them (very) unfavorably to social networking sites and applications. I love and leverage social networking as much as the the next recruiting professional, but I refuse to just blindly follow the crowd or … Read More

LinkedIn: Private vs. Out of Network Results

LinkedIn: Private vs. Out of Network Results I recently wrote about how to leverage LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators and I commented on LinkedIn’s relatively new search interface. Aside from search options, one other somewhat new aspect of searching inside LinkedIn using their search interface is that you can now return some results that are outside of your network. These typically appear … Read More

Do You Have Talent Intelligence?

Does your recruiting or staffing organziation have Talent Intelligence? I believe that all staffing organizations should view and value their internal resume/candidate database/ATS as a proprietary business intelligence tool. Business intelligence refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information and help companies develop consistent and “data-based” business decisions — producing better results … Read More

LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators

IMPORTANT NOTE Although LinkedIn’s advanced operators ceased to work properly for a period of a few months earlier this year, I am very happy to report that they are working again. Once more you will be able to harness LinkedIn’s search fields by hand coding your search strings and bypassing the search interface/fields. LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators LinkedIn has made … Read More

Searching Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting

Twitter is cool, but Twitter is shallow. A shallow source of human capital data, that is. As a micro-blogging application, each “Tweet” is capped at a max of 140 characters (hence “micro”), and people fill out their short “bios” to a lesser or greater extent. Don’t go to Twitter expecting to leverage it as a resume database, or even as you would LinkedIn. I … Read More

The Internet has Free Resumes – SO WHAT?

BEWARE: This post takes a contrarian (yet fact-based!) view of the Internet as a sourcing tool that may be unsuitable to some readers. If you don’t want to hear anything other than how awesome the Internet is for sourcing and recruiting, please stop reading now. The Internet has Free Resumes – SO WHAT? Okay, so you can find free resumes on the … Read More

Recruiting Technology is Not Anti-Relationship!

Technology and Relationships are not Oil and Water When I write posts about creating Boolean search strings to source and find talent/human capital – I often get responses from readers and those I train, especially staffing industry veterans who focus on executive search, that state that the foundation of recruiting is based on relationships built by human interaction and networking. … Read More