September 1998 Column

Review of the Advanced Internet Recruiting Strategies  Seminars
 (AIRS I and AIRS II)

Always interested in the latest thinking in Internet recruiting, recently flew to Boston to attend the AIRS I and AIRS II seminars by Intelligent Search. Our seminar leader was Bill Craib – a former placement consultant himself.  In addition to demonstrating a solid understanding of the search/placement business, Bill demonstrated practical Internet search strategies to increase the number of qualified candidates on a job search assignment. 

AIRS I dealt with finding resumes and getting organized to use the Internet effectively.  This one day seminar included a comprehensive review of the Career Sites on the Internet, how to set up your desktop computer to manage the data from your search, where resumes are on “the net”, and how to use search models, keywords, search engines and directories. Other benefits of the seminar included:

·         In AIRS I, Intelligent Search saved us all a great deal of time by evaluating over 300 career sites on the web to identify the best return on investment options.

·         AIRS I demonstrated how to find local candidates that fit your search criteria.

·         How to find email addresses, phone numbers, addresses of prospects found in your search.

·         How to build employee lists of targeted companies.

·         Sorting out all the search engines and meta search engines with funny names like AltaVista, HotBot, DogPile and InfoSeek, as well as utilities such as WebFerret Pro.  By the end of the AIRS I seminar, you will understand their functions and how to employ them effectively in your searches for qualified prospects on recruiting assignments.

·         Finally, an overview of what is coming next, like Internet robots, and other useful tools.

Bill Craib didn’t just cover the material, he related it to actual recruiting work, often asking recruiters in the audience to share their search problems and demonstrating on the spot how to resolve them – including giving the recruiter the results of the search for free!  When asked for a demonstration of how to find a large supply of Tuxedo (a middleware architecture tool in distributed computing from BEA Systems) prospects, was shown a demonstration of techniques that has completely resolved search problems. 

Stayed on Boston for an additional day to attend the AIRS II seminar.  Thinking AIRS I was as good as it gets, AIRS II proved to be an excellent time and money investment – again exceeding my expectations.  AIRS II really got into the Internet version of penetrating a target company.  As a young recruiter years ago, was taught how to cold call and map phone directories off voice mail systems – AIRS II shows you how to produce similar or better results from the Internet in a fraction of the time.  Seminar topics included: 

·         Planning your search to avoid pitfalls common in the Internet

·         Changing how you think about what you are looking for in order to find what you need

·         How to find your client’s competitor’s key employees and attract them to your client for that “perfect match” to your job order or staffing requirement.

·         How to find qualified alumni from key universities of interest to your client.

·         How to get attendee lists from important conferences in your client’s industry.

·         How to do U.S. only versus international search work.  How to do international work is also covered.

·         How to get the most out of Usenet (newsgroups) and Listserve (mailing lists).

·         Data mining for fun and profit!

·         How to do mass mail on the Internet without spamming with spectacular results and much more.

 Conclusion:

Intelligent Search puts on the best Internet Recruiting seminar I’m aware of in the industry today.  They follow up the seminar with a web site full of resources for the attendees, technical support, search assistance, free software, and monthly on-line conferences to cover new challenges (free to seminar alumni).  AIRS II is a very deep seminar and is too meaty for a novice Internet recruiter to chew.  If you are new to Internet recruiting, AIRS I is an invaluable investment and should be followed up with AIRS II after you get some experience.  If you consider yourself an Internet savvy recruiter and are hungry to get to the bleeding edge of Internet recruiting, take the time to attend both AIRS I and AIRS II.  You won’t regret your time and money investment.  For a complete listing of AIRS I and AIRS II seminar schedules and locations, go to: http://www.intell-search.com/, or contact them by telephone at 888-999-8844.

 Let us know of any Internet seminars or tools you would like us to review – we appreciate your feedback.

FROM THE MAIL

A reader wrote to suggest that we mention Junglee.  Junglee is an exciting technology whose chief benefit is to replicate your job postings in all of your Internet career hub accounts.  This saves you the considerable burden of maintaining current listings in a large number of places on the Internet.  You simply enter or change a position on your web page and the change is reflected in your career hub accounts.   About 550 companies currently use the technology.  It looks like some major hubs (Online Career Center, DICE) haven’t adapted to Junglee yet, but many other career hubs have.  For a good overview of this exciting technology, go to: http://www.junglee.com/.

Another reader tried the Headhunter.net site we suggested for construction industry prospects. He was getting search results fine but having trouble viewing the resumes. Here’s how: click on the blue link in the ‘Title’ column and you should be viewing the resume in a few seconds. If the link is not blue OR if it is blue and nothing happens when you click on the link, it might be a browser issue.