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- Musings (1)
- Strategies (5)
- Techniques (12)
- Tools (14)
- 6. January 2010: Strategies - Unique Web Sites to Leverage Your Recruitment
- 4. January 2010: Welcome to 2010
- 31. December 2009: Top 10 Tool - AutoSearch
- 21. December 2009: Top 10 Technique - The Power of the Word "Resume"
- 18. December 2009: Strategies - Effective Recruiting Begins at Home
- 17. December 2009: Strategies - Online Job Postings
- 11. December 2009: Top 10 Technique - Google Does Math
- 9. December 2009: Top 10 Tool - Glance
- 9. December 2009: Top 10 Tool - ReferYes Sourcer
- 7. December 2009: Strategies - Free Video Tutorials
Archive for the Techniques Category
Welcome to 2010
4. January 2010 by admin.
Let’s usher in 2010 with more giving than asking. A recent search of “advanced sourcing tips” revealed that there are a ton of “self-professed” experts, who for a bit of bling will divulge all their secrets to you. Whatever happened to sharing what you’ve learned freely with others. I have found over the years that this method of exchange returns much higher returns that can’t be measured in just dollars and cents. If you have been reading this blog, you have found numerous examples of search string algorithms to better identify both passive and active candidates. Below are just a few more. I challenge you to devise some new and more radical strings and identify more sources and venues to find those ever elusive A-list candidates.
site:*.craigslist.org/*/res “software engineer” -”this posting has expired”
intitle:resume or inurl:resume (admin or administrator or administration or administer or administered or maintenance or maintained) (server or servers) (mail or email or messaging) (mcse or “microsoft certified systems engineer”)
site:twellow.com “software engineer” and geeks
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Top 10 Technique - The Power of the Word “Resume”
21. December 2009 by admin.
How many resumes can be found using Google? A bunch! The same is true for most any other search engine. My research revealed that when searching for nothing more than any one of the following versions of the word resume, over 3.6 billion were found. Now, of course, there was no additional filtering to remove jobs or other keywords that would return only true resumes, but the potential results far outstrip anything you could find using all the fee-based resume boards.
Variations on the word Resume
vitæ, resumé, rèsumé, rèsumè, resume, résumé, résumè, CV, vitae, vita
Going one step further, I further refined the search with this algorithm:
This produces over 170 million results. However, this is still much too large to work with. Your challenge is to introduce a variety of keywords to further refine your results. All the best.
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Top 10 Technique - Google Does Math
11. December 2009 by admin.
Beyond using keywords and catch phrases to identify candidates with Google, this search engine also employs very powerful computational language that allows you to perform any type of calculation or conversion. Here are some examples.
- 4+3 displays 7
- 9-4 displays 5
- 3*7 displays 21
- 45/9 displays 5
- 5^3 displays 125 (5 raised to power 3)
- 11%5 displays 1 (the remainder after division)
- sqrt, nth root ofx (sqrt(64) displays 8, if you need non-square roots you can use for example 3th root of 27)
- sin, cos, arctan, tan…
Google calculator supports various trigonometric functions, expecting a radians value, that can be expressed also using the pi constant: sin(pi/2), tan (2/3*pi)
- ln: displays natural (base e) logarithm: ln(e^5)
- log: displays base 10 logarithm: log(100)
- !: displays n factorial: 3!
Numbers can be entered also in hexadecimal, octal and binary base, using 0x, 0o and 0b prefixes, for example 5 +0xf+0b1001
Conversions
- in degrees / in radians: convert radians to degrees: pi/2 in degrees or convert degrees into radians: 90 degrees in radians
- in hex / in binary / in octal / in decimal: convert to each of the given bases: 16 in hex , 16 in octal, 16 in binary, 0×11 in decimal
- use 2009 (MMIX) in Roman numerals
- distance conversions: use 100miles in km , 1m in mm, but also 200000 km in light-second etc.
Examples:
- 100mph in kph
- 1 month in seconds
- 280 Kelvin in Celsius
- 50 Fahrenheit in Celsius
- 3 euros in $ or 3 euros in dollars
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Top 10 Technique - Basic and Advanced Search Tricks for Google.com
5. December 2009 by admin.
- Google didn’t always understand certain special characters like [#], but now they do; a search for [C#], for example, yields meaningful results (a few years ago, it didn’t). This doesn’t mean you can use just any character; e.g. entering [t.] and [t-] and [t^] will always return the same results.
- Google allows 32 words within the search query (some years ago, only up to 10 were used, and Google ignored subsequent words). You rarely will need so many words in a single query - [just thinking of such a long query is a hard thing to do, as this query with twenty words shows] - however, it can come in handy for advanced searching… especially as a developer using the Google API.
- You can find synonyms of words. i.e., when you search for [house] but you want to find “home” too, search for [~house]. To get to know which synonyms the Google database stores for individual words, simply use the minus operator to exclude synonym after synonym (they will always be shown as bold in the search engine result page (SERP), like this: [~house -house -home -housing -floor].
- To see a really large page-count (possibly, the Google index size, though one can only speculate about that), search for [* *].
- Google has a lesser known “numrange” operator which can be helpful. Using e.g. [2006..2009] (that’s two dots in between two numbers) will find 2006, 2007, and so on until 2009.
- Google’s define-operator allows you to look up word definitions. For example, [define:css] yields “Short for Cascading Style Sheets” and many more explanations. You can trigger a somewhat “softer” version of the define-operator by entering “what is something”, e.g. [what is css].
- Google has some exciting back-end artificial intelligence to allow you to find just the facts upon entering simple questions or phrases like [when was Da Vinci born?] or [da vinci birthday] (the answer to both of these queries is “ Leonardo Da Vinci’s Birthday -
- Google allows you to find backlinks by using the link-operator, e.g. [link:blog.*.com] for this blog. The new Google Blog Search <http://blogsearch.google.com/> supports this operator as well. In fact, when Google’s predecessor started out as Larry Page’s “BackRub” < http://www.smartmoneydaily.com/business/project-backrub-aka-google.aspx> in the 1990s, finding backlinks was its only aim! However, not all backlinks are shown in Google today, at least not in web search. (It’s argued that Google does this on purpose to prevent reverse-engineering of its PageRank algorithm.)
- Often when you enter a question mark at the end of the query, like when you type [why?], Google will advertise its pay-for-answer service Google Answers.
- There is a “sport” called Google Hacking. Basically, curious people try to find unsecured sites by entering specific, revealing phrases. A special web site called the Google Hacking Database <http://code.google.com/p/ghdb/> is dedicated to listing these special queries.
- Google searches for all of your words, whether or not you write a “+” before them (I often see people write queries [+like +this], but it’s not necessary). Unless, of course, you use Google’s or-operator. It’s an upper-case [OR] (lower-case won’t work and is simply searching for occurrences of the word “or”), and you can also use parentheses and the “|” character. [programmer (java | j2ee)] will find pages containing the word (or being linked to with the word) “programmer” and additionally containing at least one of the two other words, “java” or “j2ee”.
- Not all Google services support the same syntax. Some services don’t allow everything Google web search allows you to enter (or at least, it won’t have any effect), and sometimes, you can even enter more than in web search (e.g. [insubject:test] in Google Groups <http://groups.google.com/>). The easiest thing to find out about these operators is to simply use the advanced search and then check what ends up being written in the input box.
- Sometimes, Google seems to understand “natural language” queries and shows you so-called “onebox” results. This happens for example when you enter [goog], [weather
- Not all Googling is the same. Depending on your location, Google will forward you to a different country-specific version of Google with potentially different results to the same query. A search for [site:stormfront.org] from the
- Sometimes, Google warns you about its results, especially when they might seem like promoting hate sites (of course, only someone misunderstanding how Google works could think it’s them promoting hate sites). Enter [jew], and you will see a Google-sponsored link titled “Offensive Search Results” leading to this explanation <http://www.google.com/explanation.html>.
- For some search queries, Google uses its own ads to offer jobs. Try entering [work at Google]. Further drilling down revealed a great and current HR position need (Director of People Operations) in
- For some of the more popular “ Googlewashing” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb> results, like when you enter [failure] and the first hit pertains to heart failure; George W. Bush is now second. Google displays explanatory ads titled “Why these results?”.
- While Google doesn’t do real Natural Language Processing <http://research.google.com/pubs/NaturalLanguageProcessing.html> yet, this is the ultimate goal for them and other search engines.
- Some say that whoever turns up first for the search query [president of the internet] is, well, the President of the internet. (I’m applying as well, and you can feel free to support me with this logo.)
- Google doesn’t have “stop words” anymore. Stop words traditionally are words like [the], [or] and similar which search engines tended to ignore. Sometimes, when you enter e.g. [to be or not to be], Google even decides to show some phrase search results in the middle of the page (separated by a line and information that these are phrase search results).
- There once was an easter-egg in the Google Calculator <http://www.google.com/help/calculator.html> that made Google show “42″ when you entered [The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker’s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy>. The easter egg only works in lower-case.
- You can use the wildcard operator in phrases. This is helpful for finding song texts - let’s say you forgot a word or two, but you remember the gist, as in [”Science in the home * Maxwell Edison * *”] - and similar tasks.
- You can use the wildcard character without searching for anything specific at all, as in this phrase search: [”* * * * * * *”].
- Even though www.googl.com is nothing but a “typosquatter” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting> (someone reserving a domain name containing a popular misspelling) and search queries return very different results than Google, the site is still getting paid by Google - because it uses Google AdSense <https://www.google.com/adsense>.
- If you feel like restricting your search to university servers, you can write e.g. [java-tutorial site:.edu] to only search on the “edu” domain (you can also use Google Scholar <http://scholar.google.com/>). This works for country-domains like “cn” or “de” as well.
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Top 10 Technique - Advanced Google Operators
4. December 2009 by admin.
filetype: returns links to documents with the given file type. For example searching for programmers filetype:java will find portable and object-oriented programmers. Supported file types are pdf, ps, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, lwp, mw, xls, ppt, doc, wks, wps, wdb, wri, rtf, swf, ans, txt, but other are supported as well, like xml, cpp, java etc.
site: restricts the results to the given domain. site:panerabread.com will find all indexed page on www.panerabread.com, while site:panerabread.com bagels will find all bagel-related pages on www.panerabread.com
update: you can use the site operator also to find your supplemental results using this query: site:www.panerabread.com ***
cache: shows the cached version of given webpage. Other words in the query will be highlighted in the returned page,cache:www.panerabread.com bagels
link: lists webpages that link to the given webpage. link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/java programmer will list webpages with links pointing to wikipedia’s voice for java programmer
related: returns pages that Google somehow thinks are related to the given page.
info: returns some information about the given web page. Typically website and description.
define: returns the definition of a given word. define:programmer
phonebook: search in residential phone book. phonebook:jones dc
stocks: returns stock info: stocks:aapl
weather: weather information for the given city. weather:
movie: returns all movies related to the search term given. movie:2012 You can also find movies by locations: movie:dc , movie:20817
flights: search for flights inside
SEO-Oriented Operators
allintitle: Search for documents with the given words in their title. allintitle:bagels cheese will find all the documents with title containing ‘bagels’ and ‘cheese’. This operator cannot be combined with others.
intitle: Search for documents with the first word after the intitle operator in their title. intitle:bagels cheese will find all the documents with title containing ‘bagels’ and talking about cheese. Note that the word ‘cheese’ is not necessarily in the title.
allintext: Search for documents with the given words in their text. allintext:bagels cheese will find all the documents with text containing ‘bagels’ and ‘cheese’. This operator cannot be combined with others.
intext: Search for documents with the first word after the intext operator in their text. intext:bagels cheese will find all the documents with text containing ‘bagels’ and talking about cheese. Note that the word ‘cheese’ is not necessarily in the text
allinurl: Search for documents with the given words in their url. allinurl:bagels cheese will find all the documents with url containing ‘bagels’ and ‘cheese’. This operator cannot be combined with others.
inurl: Search for documents with the first word after the inurl operator in their url. inurl:bagels cheese will find all the documents with url containing ‘bagels’ and talking about cheese. Note that the word ‘cheese’ is not necessarily in the text
allinanchor: Search for documents with the given words in an anchor. allinurl:bagels cheese will find all the documents with anchor text containing ‘bagels’ and ‘cheese’. This operator cannot be combined with others.
inanchor: Search for documents with the first word after the operator in an anchor. inanchor:bagels cheese will find all the documents with anchor containing ‘bagels’ and talking about cheese. Note that the word ‘cheese’ is not necessarily in an anchor.
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Top 10 Technique - Using Boolean Logic in Search Strings
3. December 2009 by admin.
With over 15 billion web pages and over 40,000 job boards and resume databases, how does a recruiter sift through the data to discover the candidates who truly shine?
The answer lies in effective search methods. One of the most popular methods is the use of Boolean logic in the search criteria. Click here to download a MS Word file that lists some of the most common Boolean operators.
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Top 10 Technique - Finding Resumes on Twitter
3. December 2009 by admin.
Here is my latest search string to identify more resumes than jobs on twitter.com using Google search. Please feel free to share your enhancement to this string to derive better results.
site:twitter.com <keyword(s)> resume OR “my resume” OR vitae -recruiter -job -jobs -submit -apply -”looking for” -recruiting -hiring -send -”email to” -”email resume” -opening -”to resume”
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Top 10 Technique - Boolean Search Cheat Sheet
28. November 2009 by admin.
Search engines can be considered as a cluttered resume database. Using detailed searches with Boolean search operators can drill down and find the information you are looking for faster. These operators are used to weed out irrelevant pages thereby narrowing your search results to find exactly what you are looking for.
Each search engine is unique so review the help section on each of the search engines to determine what Boolean operators are supported.
Boolean Key
AND - The AND operator delivers results with the terms you requested. For example, searching resume and j2ee will return pages with both terms - resume and j2ee.
OR - The OR operator delivers results with either of the terms you requested. For example, MCSE OR M.C.S.E.
NOT - The NOT operator will not deliver certain words in your search results. For example, Java NOT coffee will deliver closer results for JAVA Programmers and not Java Coffee.
NEAR - The NEAR operator locates words that are located in close proximity to other words. For example, Java NEAR Programmer. Not every search engine supports this operator.
( ) Parentheses - The ( ) operator allows you to group terms and build longer search strings. For example, NOT (submit AND employer) will avoid pages with both names.
* - The * operator is a wildcard. Adding a wildcard will find words containing the wildcard. For example program* will help so you do not have to run separate searches for words similar like: programmer, programming, program
Example of Complex Search String
resume AND (java or j2ee) AND program* AND (Virginia or VA or 703) AND NOT (apply or submit or jobs)
* In some case we recommend to go to the advanced search option within the search engine.
Definitions:
X-Raying - searches for pages that are all on the same host.
Flipping - searches for pages that link to a specific page.
Page Title - searches for pages that has specific words in page title.
URL Search - searches for pages that has specific words in the URL or web address.
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Top 10 Technique - Search Google by Area Code
28. November 2009 by admin.
Using the following template (for Google) would improve things by getting rid of resumes with street addresses led by 703, etc.:
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) j2ee polygraph (
The search algorithms change over time, of course, and so while that template may have helped then, it doesn’t now. Thus his question is worth revisiting.
You want to eliminate not only apartment/suite numbers matching your area code, but things like house numbers, sites that blind resumes (e.g., just show “Area Code: 703″), etc.
Do a narrow test search for the positive case, i.e., try to find the thing you want to eliminate with other narrow criteria so you only get a few results. This way, you can quickly scan to see if your fix is successful.
For example, try
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) j2ee 703.*.street
then
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) j2ee 703.*.st
and see if/how the results differ.
Since 703.*.street yields different results than 703.*.st , you must account for both in searches (hardly anybody uses Av for Avenue, so Ave is the only alternative needed). Similarly, very few resumes include the Ste abbreviation for Suite, so
Again, before I receive complaint emails, let me clarify: I know the word “Ste” appears on web pages. But if you’re searching for individual resumes, the number of appearances of Ste (or even Suite, for that matter) is insignificant. Make sure to run the same kind of search as your desired search.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t let you eliminate the number in a list (e.g., 703 644 …) with -703.644, nor does it differentiate between #703 and 703 (see for yourself), so there’s no point in trying to eliminate results with content formatted in those ways. Ditto for the inability to rid of 703 results where it’s the local phone prefix (e.g., 703-555-1234).
Also, using Dr as an abbreviation for Drive is problematic, because it tends to include people whose resumes have your desired area code number in it, but used in a different way, and within a few words is Dr., as in the Doctor abbreviation. You can eliminate good results using that, so just stick with Drive, to be safe (the number of extraneous results added is trivial).
Here is a way to avoid page number references. This yields the following template (substitute your desired state/province name, abbreviation and area code for those values below, as well as any skill terms):
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) j2ee (
The last NOT term is to eliminate results from free-for-recruiters.com, which blinds resume results.
Using Google Alerts, you can set multiple searches for each state/area code combination you want. You may need to create additional strings if you’re adding more than a few skill and/or job title keywords, anyway, since this template is close to Google’s 32 keyword/string limit.
This search string template is geared to Google. It is not the only way to find resumes on Google, nor is Google the only place you should search for resumes, so adapt this template accordingly. The results overlap between the search engines is surprisingly and extremely low. In other words, the same search on different search engines pulls up entirely different candidates! Don’t only search one engine.
Even if you search PageBites for resumes, which pulls resumes off the web using Google (PageBites created a Google API), it yields completely different results than the above Google template. For example, try j2ee (keywords) and
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Top 10 Technique - Peeling Back a URL
23. November 2009 by admin.
The following ten URLs all point to a specific resume. However, can you spot any other information in the URL that would lead you to many more resumes?
1) http://www.arch.virginia.edu/career/resume/resumes/mco5y.pdf
2) http://members.nova.org/~jamesf/resume.html
3) http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~kapild/files/docs/resume.pdf
4) http://www.free-for-recruiters.com/Resumes/NY/1707886-Resume.html
5) http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jmg336/html/resume_7__cv_2002-06-19.HTM
6) http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~levow/jim/resume.html
7) http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lisetsky/resume_may_09_web.pdf
https://www.student.gsu.edu/~jan5/it2010_webpage/Resume.htm
9) https://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/Design/D4P/EGR486/ME/06-Projects/Webbing/Danielle%27s%20resume.htm
10) http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/resume.html
Search Strategy 1:
Peel back the URL. For example, in URL 1, peel back or delete the filename of “mco5y.pdf” and see the new results of personal resumes, dated from 12/6/04 to 7/11/09.
You can do this again for URL 4, by peeling back “1707886-Resume.html”. This will display all the resumes from New York. Try swapping out NY with another state abbreviation such as VA and see your new results.
Search Strategy 2:
Perform a domain site search in Google, AltaVista, or other robust search engine. Since each URL has the word “resume” in the URL, simply insert this word in your search string, followed by the AND operator and lastly the SITE: command and the corresponding domain information.
URL 5: resume and site:homepages.nyu.edu
URL 6: resume and site:people.cs.uchicago.edu
URL 7: resume and site:physics.arizona.edu
URL 8: resume and site:student.gsu.edu
These are just two of many creative strategies you can use to uncover passive candidate resumes on the web.
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