How to Find Active & Passive Software Engineers on Stack Overflow

  Do you source and/or recruit software engineers? Would you like to know how to find software engineers on Stack Overflow who are actually interested in hearing about new career opportunities? For free? If you answered YES!, YES! and YES! – you’re in in luck, because I am going to show you how to find active and passive job seekers … Read More

Boolean Strings, Semantic and Natural Language Search – Oh My!

An entertaining blog post by Matt Charney was recently brought to my attention in which he tells the world to shut up and stop talking about Boolean strings – he argues that Boolean search is a dying art and that “investing time or energy into becoming a master at Boolean is a lot like learning the fine art of calligraphy … Read More

Some Very Interesting Google / LinkedIn X-Ray Search Results

  While I was writing last week’s post in which I explored using Google to X-Ray search within specific LinkedIn groups, I decided to perform some general X-Ray search syntax testing to challenge some assumptions, as well as to compare X-Ray results to LinkedIn Recruiter results. I notice quite a few folks seem to use the “people you know” phrase … Read More

Using Google to Search for People in Specific LinkedIn Groups

In this post, I am going to share with you the journey I took and the discoveries I made while investigating the answer to a Boolean search request for help I recently came across online about using -dir in a Google X-Ray search of LinkedIn. Some of you may enjoy and appreciate seeing my methodology, others will likely learn a thing or … Read More

How to Find the Best Software Engineers on Stack Overflow

  Looking to source and recruit software engineers? One of the best places to find software engineers is Stack Overflow, where nearly 2,000,000 programmers from all over the world ask and answer programming-related questions. How would you like to know which software engineers might be the most talented and skilled? A year ago, Peter Kazanjy of TalentBin published an extensive … Read More

Using Extended Boolean to Achieve Semantic Search in Sourcing

When it comes to sourcing and recruiting, semantic search is perhaps the most powerful way to quickly find people who have experience you’re looking for. Now, I am not talking about black box semantic search (e.g., Google, Monster’s 6Sense, etc.). I’m referring to user-defined semantic search, where you tell a search engine exactly what you want with your query, and … Read More

100+ Free Sourcing & Recruiting Tools, Guides, and Resources

  It’s been a LONG time coming, but I finally got around to updating my free sourcing & recruiting tools, guides and resources page where I now keep a current list of the best of my work all in one place for easy bookmarking and reference. You can find it here on my main page:     Additionally, I thought … Read More

How to Find People to Recruit on Twitter with Google & Bing

  There are over 500 million Twitter accounts with over 200 million represent active users globally. I’d say that qualifies it as a solid source for finding and engaging talent for recruitment. Of course, you can’t engage someone you haven’t found in the first place, and it’s been far too long since I’ve posted an update to how to search … Read More

Google Plus Search Guide: How to Search & Find People on G+

  Do you want to know how to search for people on Google+ by title/skill, company, AND location? If so, you’ve come to the right place – I’m going to show you 3 different ways to find people on Google+, and only one of them allows you to reliably search for and find people based on where they live: Google+’s … Read More

Is LinkedIn Locking Down Public Profiles or Just Having Problems?

  Have you noticed anything different about LinkedIn recently – specifically with regard to viewing 3rd degree profiles, searching for headline phrases, searching by first and last name, and using Google and Bing to X-Ray search for public profiles? I have, and either I am encountering some serious and hopefully temporary errors, or LinkedIn may finally making serious moves to … Read More

Do you suffer from Obsessive Exotic Sourcing Syndrome?

    Okay, that might have been a bit dramatic, but I do expect a strong negative reaction from some folks because I am going to address an issue that might be a tad sensitive to the sourcing community. The issue I would like to address is the apparent obsession of many with exotic sourcing. What is Exotic Sourcing? If … Read More

How to See Full Names of 3rd Degree Connections on LinkedIn

For a while, there was an interesting little method for revealing the full name of 3rd degree and group connections on LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn has changed the “get introduced” functionality and UI for most people and effectively eliminated that method (albeit unintentionally, IMO). Oh well – it was easy and fun while it lasted. Fortunately, I’ve recently become aware of … Read More

All Recruiting Sources Are NOT Created Equal

While there is much written on the subject of how to search the various talent sources available to recruiters and sourcers today, such as the Internet, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ATS/CRM systems, etc., there does not seem to be much written about their ROI as sources of talent/human capital information. I believe that the value of any source of information is 50% based upon … Read More

How to Search Google Plus to Find People by Location

Would you like to find people on Google+? How about find people on Google+ that live in a specific area? If you answered “Yes!” to the above questions, you’ve come to the right place. I will walk you through the problems with Find People on Plus and Google’s own Google+ search before I show you something I’ve been tinkering with … Read More

Why is Google Missing Available Search Results?

When you’re searching the Internet for potential candidates, it’s quite common (and practical) to search for resumes of  people who are likely to be local to your opportunity. The two main ways of doing this are searching by area code and searching by zip code range. While there are limitations of both approaches (not everyone includes a phone number or … Read More

What to do if Google Thinks You’re Not Human

Have you ever been searching the Internet with Google to find resumes or LinkedIn profiles, and instead of getting your search results, you get a nice apology from Google saying that your computer or network might be sending automated queries and can’t process your request? In the past week alone I have received a number of inquiries from curious sourcers … Read More

Google Search: The Asterisk Wildcard and Punctuation

Think you know all there is to know about Google search? I was recently asked a question regarding the use of the asterisk when searching on Google, specifically in conjunction with certain punctuation. This person was under the impression that if you used the equal sign on either side of an asterisk when searching Google, it would function as a multiple word wildcard operator. For example, searching … 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

Resumes on the Internet: Monster vs. Google Round 2

In response to my post of Resumes on the Internet: Monster vs. Google one of my readers commented that “While it may be true that Monster has more resumes than Google, using a zip code search is not a fair comparison for Google. People who post their resumes on Monster are required to enter their zip code, while people who resumes are … Read More