October 1999 Column

Another free tool for us to explore. Like the World Wide Web, newsgroups, sometimes called News or UseNet, are a loose knit group of special interest groups that communicate, in an open forum, over the Internet. There are newsgroups for any interest you could imagine, including many we, as recruiters, could be very interested in. Whether you realize it or not, you probably already have both a newsreader and news service. Backup – like the WWW and Email, News is a separate service your ISP provides for you. The cost is normally included in your monthly ISP fee. Barbara Ling states in her book, The Internet Recruiting Edge, that there are over 40,000 newsgroups. I wouldn’t doubt it. Both ISP’s I subscribe to offer in between 20,000 - 25,000 newsgroups, which is probably normal. Next is the newsreader. Anyone who has Windows or MS/Office installed probably has a free copy of Outlook Express on their system. Outlook Express is an excellent newsreader and your ISP will normally have instructions on their site on how to set up a news account. We searched newsgroups for keywords and found 10 for engineers, 84 for programmers, 192 for jobs, 14 for oracle, and 9 for insurance.

Although Outlook Express is free and a great reader, the best tool for making any sense out of the maze of News resources, check out Deja.com (www.deja.com). Registration is free and only takes one minute. It offers you an interface that ties all the loose ends together. Their motto, “Share what you know. Learn what you don’t.” is very fitting and appropriate. More specifics below.

UseNet Recruiting

Since computer professionals were among the first to use the Internet, there are many discussion groups on topics of interest to them (and those of us who recruit them). In this article you will learn an overview of what newsgroups are, how to find them, “netiquette”, threads, signatures, how to post jobs to the right places and how to do direct recruiting on newsgroups. Credit is due to Mary Ann Pike, author of “Special Edition, Using the Internet” (Que Publishing) for some of the definitions used in this article.

UseNet (newsgroups) is a service on the Internet whereby one can send email to all subscribed or viewing members of a discussion group on a particular topic. The messages are read with special software called a reader. Many readers are available as free shareware.

Your reader software allows you to display a list of all Newsgroups. Thankfully, these are organized into categories to make it easier. The main categories are:

Identifier	Category
Biz	Business
Comp	Computers
News	General news and topical items
Rec	Recreational (Hobbies and Arts)
Sci	Scientific
Soc	Social
Talk	Debate-oriented
Misc	Newsgroups that don’t readily fall into one of the other categories

As technical recruiters, our interests lie mainly in the comp (computer) related Newsgroups. If you have never visited Newsgroups and don’t have a reader, follow along with one example of how to get started:

Go to http://www.deja.com. At the site’s home page, notice that the screen has 3 vertical frames (columns). Stay in the left frame and scroll down, just below the middle of the screen and click the link called “My Deja”. You will be asked to register – go ahead and do it, it’s free. After you subscribe, you will see a new screen that says, “Welcome to My Deja”. In the opening paragraph click a link called “many available” to see the available categories of Newsgroups. For the sake of this example, let’s go find some Java programmers with CORBA experience. Click on the link called “comp” to reveal all computer-related Newsgroups. You need to know Java is a language (or you shouldn’t be chasing Java guys) – so click on the link to the right of comp.lang (today the link says “35 branches”). Scroll down through the 35 branches, which represent discussions on various programming languages and click on the link that says “10 branches” to the right of Comp.lang.java. Well look at that! There is a Newsgroup called comp.lang.java.corba! That is a great place to find Java developers with CORBA experience. Let’s go inside… Click the link called “comp.lang.java.corba”. Inside are lots of postings – some about jobs available, some about technical issues. The format, from left to right, is Date, subject of posting, # of messages (# of people who responded), and who made the most recent posting. Find a message on a technical issue with more than 1 message and click the link. Typically, somebody is asking a question and others are answering. Other times it is an exchange of opinions, or even insults! The “thread” is the group of messages pertaining to the original message. That brings us to Nettiquette.

A few words on posting job orders to newsgroups. Many of the newsgroups are moderated and will normally not allow recruitment advertising in a discussion newsgroup. There are many newsgroups specifically for posting jobs. One for the St. Louis area, STL.JOBS has approximately 50 or so employment ads, mostly from recruiters but also a few from companies. If you dare to post a job order to a discussion newsgroup, be prepared for a barrage of emails from the moderator and discussion group members berating you for doing such a thing. It is an unwritten rule. If it were me, I would post to the job order groups but use the discussion groups to identify likely prospects for either recruiting or marketing calls (or emails) the next day

Read the FAQ file before posting anything in a Newsgroup. A complete guide to netiquette is available at news.announce.newusers. There is more to read than most recruiters have patience for, so here are the basics:

· Keep your postings clear and to the point. Example, when quoting another person’s message, use a partial quote, not their entire message.

· No soliciting, business promotion, advertisement, get-rich-quick schemes, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or similar postings.

· Don’t cross-post (posting one message to many Newsgroups). This is called “spamming” and will get you “flamed” (you will receive very nasty emails from a potentially large number of people).

· Do have a “signature” on your message postings. New users have their name and sometimes an email address. That is not the way it’s done on UseNet. Instead, most postings have a several-line block at the end of the article that has the poster’s name, email address, and a saying of some sort. Having a witty or clever signature block is a source of prestige on the network. Most reader software and email clients allow you to store a signature so you don’t have to type it every time.

How do you post jobs in Newsgroups?

First of all, stick to the job related newsgroups, not the technical discussion newsgroups. If you must post into a technical discussion newsgroup, identify yourself as a recruiter and ask for referrals or help, don’t actually post a job. We’ll discuss a better way (how to directly recruit in Newsgroups) in the next section of this article. If you are dealing with only a small number of specific jobs, you may post them manually. If you are already inside a specific Newsgroup, just click “Post” at the top of the screen to start a new message. There are services that post for you in multiple Newsgroups, such as DICE or Headhunter will do it for you – or software like Resumix Internet Recruiter can manage large numbers of postings at your desktop.

One way to do it is to write a message, save it (advanced users will save it as a template or form or draft, depending on their email client software. Then, copy the email addresses of Newsgroup postings (potential candidates) that seem to fit and paste them into the “To” line of the message header in your recruiting message and hit send.

If you are always seeking the same type of candidate, like a Java developer, you might want to save the contacts you find into a list in your database or in a spreadsheet. All you need is the name, email address and Newsgroup. Then you can use a mass mailing software program to parse the list for the names of the people who belong to a particular group and send them all a message. Each person will get the message as though they are the only one it was sent to. Some of us are tempted to enter all of the prospects (even what they wrote in a Newsgroup!) into the candidate tracking system. Hey, I don’t have time! If they respond and are qualified/interested, then I can get their resume and enter them in the database. Another way to get the contacts you want is with an off-line newsreader. There are many available, but the market leader is FreeAgent, by Forte software. You can get your free download at http://www.forteinc.com/. The problem with making lists is that it takes time to harvest the contact information from the Newsgroup and populate the database or spreadsheet. I’ve done it for thousands of names and love the results. I’m currently searching for a shareware program (there must be one!) that parses the name, email address from the Newsgroup and enters it into a database or spreadsheet. If you know of one, let me know! I remember one search a few years ago for a Sybase 11 DBA with a year of Replication Server (when rep server was only just over a year old), with all Macintosh clients experience. I sent a detailed message to 1,000 Sybase people and got 3 DBAs that fit and wanted the job within 72 hours. The hiring manager was astounded! He said nobody else had found anybody that even came close and I had produced 3 perfect matches! (I also produced a lot of new candidate leads as a spin off benefit of the search). I did a quick search this week using this technique to find a team leader for customizing modules in Oracle Financials 10.7 and got 4 candidates in 4 days – one client interview so far. Generally, this type of search will produce a good result if you write a detailed message about what you want.

Conclusion

Newsgroups are a great place to start in Internet recruiting, all for free. Your spouse or secretary or a student can cut and paste the names, email addresses and newsgroups (or profiles) into a spreadsheet for you, so you don’t lose your productivity. You write the messages and let a shareware program send the mail. You will LOVE the results!

NEW AIRS SERVICE

AIRS, the seminar people, are now offering a free, daily news release. You can sign up for this service at www.airsdirectory.com. Some recent headlines…

· Solving the high-tech credential crisis...Off the beach and back to work...Navigate the brave new world of Internet recruiting...Guiding workers home...and the importance of relocation.

· CompUSA eliminates 50% of sales force... Luxottica closes Ray-Ban plant...Italian telecom giant slashes 13,000 jobs...Sabre cuts 300 jobs.

· Reaching out to more job candidates...Monster stories in the news...Resumix gets Dicey...Latest Internet traffic report...and the power of words: savvy employees secure 50% more..

· Hands-off recruiting...One company’s trash is another one’s treasure...One-on-one contact with candidates

PC RESUME UPDATE

PCResume, a recently review product, has announced a few updates to their product. As follows:

This feature allows you to export the results of a search into one html document. This document can then be sent via email to other recruiters for import into PCResume.

PCResume now has the ability to search the local database. By using PCResume on a regular basis, you will begin to accumulate thousands of resumes in the PCResume database. The entire resume is stored locally on your machine in the PCResume database. Now, you can search through this database at anytime to check for matches on new or existing searches. Since the resumes are stored locally on your computer, the local database search will run very fast.

TIP

Closure on last month’s review of Jealously Guarded Recruiting Methods by ComputerWorld and Judy West: Executrain will teach the seminar. The number to call for information and scheduling is 888-605-8384 – ask about the ComputerWorld Internet Training seminar. Classes are limited to 14 students per 2 day session, and everyone gets a computer to use during the class. Students will spend the 2 days applying the techniques to their own company’s job orders with the help of an instructor and should come home with a lot of candidates! Students will take home a CD ROM with tons of links and instructions. ComputerWorld has decided not to sell the book (reviewed in September’s article) separate from the seminar. The book is included in the price of the seminar.

· Should I go AIRS I and AIRS II or Jealously Regarded Recruiting Methods – which is better? We haven’t seen ComputerWorld’s seminar yet, so we can’t say. They are taking different approaches.

· Can’t I buy Barbara Lingstar’s “Internet Recruiting Edge” and get by for a lot less money? It is a great place to dip your toe! Eventually, if you like Internet recruiting, you will want to attend AIRS or ComputerWorld’s seminar.

NEWSGROUPS – LURE THEM IN FOR FREE

UseNet Recruiting

Identifier

Category

How do you post jobs in Newsgroups?

Conclusion

NEW AIRS SERVICE

PC RESUME UPDATE

TIP

CORRECTION