There are people in the HR/recruiting industry who believe that searching databases, the Internet, and social networking sites to source talent is relatively easy and that it can be automated through the use of technology. While those people are actually right (to an extent), I am happy to say that unfortunately for them, it’s not that simple. While anyone can manually write or automate basic searches and find … Read More
LinkedIn’s New Non-Boolean Search Functionality
I originally published this post on LinkedIn, but am reposting here to ensure my blog readers catch it. When I attended LinkedIn’s Talent Connect 2015 conference in Anaheim, CA and I was able to take some video of Eddie Vivas, Head of Talent Solutions Product for LinkedIn, formerly the Founder and Chief Product Officer at Bright.com (acquired by LinkedIn), talking about … Read More
Important Facebook Graph Search Developments
It is difficult to ignore the potential of Facebook when it comes to sourcing and recruiting given that it has 1.38B monthly active users and 890M daily active users. When Graph Search was introduced back in 2013, it was an amazingly powerful people sourcing tool. However, recent changes have somewhat reduced its efficacy. While some people might think that … 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
Is Boolean Search Boring and Less Effective than Semantic Search?
Do you think Boolean search is boring, tiresome and ineffective, and that semantic search delivers faster results that count? I was struck by the image Marc Drees used in his #SOSUEU: the day after post, which you can see above. I would have loved to sit on that panel discussion and contribute my experience and thoughts on the subject – I was actually … 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
How to Find Military Veterans for Sourcing & Recruiting
In a similar vein to my recent diversity sourcing article, I wanted to create a resource for people looking to effectively search for and identify military veterans for recruiting. While this posts focuses on the U.S. armed forces, I encourage folks from other countries to create and distribute similar searches to identify their own military veterans. If you’re interested in … 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
The Guide to Semantic Search for Sourcing and Recruiting
If you have nearly any tenure in HR, sourcing or recruiting, you’ve probably heard something about “semantic search” and perhaps you would like to learn more. Well – you’ve found the right article. As a follow-up to my recent Slideshare on AI sourcing and matching, I am going to provide an overview of semantic search, the claims that semantic search … Read More
Talent Sourcing: Man vs. AI/Black Box Semantic Search
Back in March 2010, I had the distinct honor of delivering the keynote presentation at SourceCon on the topic of resume search and match solutions claiming to use artificial intelligence in comparison with people using their natural intelligence for talent discovery and identification. Now that nearly 2 years has passed, and given that in that time I’ve had even more hands-on … Read More
Why So Many People Stink at Searching
The trouble with search today is that people put too much trust in search engines – online, resume, social, or otherwise. I can certainly understand and appreciate why people and companies would want to try and create search engines and solutions that “do the work for you,” but unfortunately the “work” being referenced here is thinking. I read an article … Read More
Bing’s Semantic Search, Phonetics and Undocumented Operator
I was recently performing some searches on Bing and came across something curious that I had never noticed before. I’m not exactly sure if what I found is new or simply something I’ve overlooked in the past. I updated Twitter with “Did you know that Bing supports the + query modifier?” on November 10th, wondering if it was something that other people … Read More
What is a Boolean Black Belt Anyway?
I’ve been blogging nearly 3 years now, and I realized I’ve never come out and actually defined the term “Boolean Black Belt.” The concept seems pretty self explanatory, but there has been at least 1 person who’s taken the opportunity to point out (and gain some traffic in the process – but it’s all good!) that it could be perceived as a bit of an oxymoron to … Read More
Beyond Boolean Search: Proximity and Weighting
Beyond Basic Boolean Most sourcing, recruiting, and staffing professionals are familiar with the basic Boolean operators of AND, OR, and NOT. However, I have found that few are familiar with what some refer to as “extended” Boolean functionality, such as proximity search and term weighting. Proximity and term weighting, where supported, are not actually logical (Boolean) operators – they are … Read More
The Future of Sourcing and Talent Identification
If you listen to certain people in the recruiting industry, you’d think that being able to leverage information systems for talent discovery and identification will be an obsolete skill for recruiters and that sourcers will have to find another profession in the near future. According to these folks, people with sourcing skills won’t be necessary because the future of sourcing … Read More
Sourcers and Recruiters – Don’t Fear Watson or Semantic Search
I’ve read a few articles recently talking about IBM’s Watson and how the technology they developed may be the harbinger of unemployment for people in many professions. Here’s one from Fortune magazine, asking if IBM’s Watson will put your job in jeopardy. Here’s another suggesting that those who train others in Internet, social media, ATS, and resume database sourcing techniques … Read More