Does staying ahead of the technology curve really place the Internet Recruiter at the front of the pack? The answer lies in how difficult, confusing, or time consuming the entry was into cyberspace. There are so many criteria to consider like the type of Internet service provider to use, how to protect your bread-and-butter candidate database, controlling what goes on your company web site, how to use all the newfangled software in this world, and how to jump in and use the correct charm or netiquette to produced the desired results.

In the 21st century, working smarter means using easy to understand tools that everyone can use, but still pack a powerful punch. Here is a suggested process with examples of powerful applications that are simple to work with, can greatly save you time and resources, and don’t require you to mortgage your business.

Targeting Your Audience

Your job description should give you enough information to determine the skill sets and specific location for the work. Use a search engine to identify groups, associations, companies, user groups, blogs, etc. where you would likely find this talent. If your company has purchased access to one or more fee-based resume services, you can also search these databases for candidates matching your criteria.

Meta-search tool for both fee-based and free resume sources - [1] Platinum Recruiter – Infogist.com

Meta-search tool for free resume sources - [2] Copernic Agent Professional - Copernic.com

Aggregator for identifying multiple sources of passive contacts from URLs - [3] Broadlook ProfilerX - Broadlook.com

Aggregator for identifying multiple sources of passive contacts from using search engines - [4] Broadlook Diver - Broadlook.com

Extracting Your Contacts

It can be very time consuming to copy and paste email addresses from resumes or lists, or any document that contains them.
[5] EMail Address Pro – A1Soft.com

Scrubbing Your List

When pursuing less than active job seekers, it is common that their contact information may have changed or is unreachable. To avoid straining your mail server or possibly being blacklisted as a spammer, it’s important that you daily clean and verify your contacts.

[6] Advanced Maillist Verify – Mailutilities.com

E-Mail Communication

The most used application for sending individual emails is Microsoft Outlook. An excellent mail application, but not yet designed to handle personalized and large quantity broadcasts. Use of the blind copy (bcc) method is not recommended or proven to be totally safe and reliable.

Email blasting to an unlimited number of addresses - [1] Platinum Recruiter – Infogist.com

Filtering Undeliverable/Do Not Send

All external email sent out should give the receiver the ability to opt-out or unsubscribe from any future mailings. Similarly, get in the habit of collecting all mail that is returned as undeliverable.

[5] EMail Address Pro – A1Soft.com

Indexing Your Results

Over time, you will amass both a large collection of resumes and contacts. The easiest program to track your contacts is Microsoft Excel. However, for resumes, you will need a robust relational database, that is not an applicant tracking system, which can index resumes in almost any format, located anywhere on your computer and/or network drives.

[9] dtSearch Desktop with Spider – dtSearch.com