One
of the best places to find resumes of experienced candidates is on university
sites. Think about it. It isn’t
often that you will find a resume by using the X-ray technique on a corporate
domain, so where are all the resumes? People
are proud of their universities and sororities and fraternities, so they tell
lots of stuff about themselves there (remember the bragging at your 5 and
10-year reunions?). Come to think
about it, high school alumni sites are a great source of information too.
This month we will look at some of the techniques used to find the fresh
resumes (and candidates) you want at universities.
Suppose you were looking for a Java developer in Silicon Valley. You might want to hit Stanford. Let’s try it several ways:
Hey,
what about meta search engines for alumni?
Well, I ran mit.edu + asic + resume on www.mamma.com
and got 15 asic resume hits, but they weren’t from MIT.
I tried the same search on www.dogpile.com
and got excellent results.
PassingNotes.com
“Alternative Fuel for the Recruiting Industry”
Interesting…
was my initial thoughts when first viewing this site. I wasn’t quite sure what
to make of it. We had been contacted by PassingNotes in the hope that we could
offer some press time in one of our articles. Always on the hunt for products
and services for the recruiter, I took them up on it. Go to the home page: www.passingnotes.com.
BAM!
Pretty busy place but it makes more sense when you look at it as a whole and
then pick it apart. For starters, this is user-driven content, meaning that the
people at PassingNotes make the site available for anyone who wants to use it.
Users log on and seek out the information they need then post some of there own
information for others to see while they are at it. From their website: “The
Purpose of this site: Individually,
we all know something substantial about many companies, industries and people
out there...together we know it all - and together we can crack any organization
or industry wide open for the benefit of every single user in our extensive
network. Sharing resources, providing access to free training, and putting forth
personal knowledge and new ideas will allow us all to engender more tightly
focused recruiting activities and lead us to greater individual success.”
Now
let’s pick it apart.
One
of the major components of this site is the Note Boards, that are frequented by
"site guides" who provide volunteer expertise and assistance in their
respective areas (for example: Pharmaceutical Industry, Sourcing Strategy,
Business Development, etc). “This
is a sophisticated messaging board system. It has been customized with critical
features that matter to recruiters working with volumes of company names…”
An excellent starting point for any sourcing/recruiting/research project. If the
information you need (for example - client competitor information) isn’t
there, then post a query in the hope that another user has the information you
need. One of their forums: Recruiting: Techniques/ Q&A, Opportunities,
Industry Rumors, Feedback contains a discussion group called Case Studies,
Techniques and Stories for Getting Information. This forum includes stories,
case studies and other information on X-raying, Flipping, Peeling, and Rusing.
There are other forums on Candidate Development, Names and Titles, Researching,
Internet Search Strategies and that is just in this one category. There are
dozens of these forums all with their own specialty that you can enter, gather
information, leave some information, and be on your way to your next placement.
I counted 15 major categories, each with multiple forums. A lot of information.
On
to the Vectory. “The "Vectory" - a complex directory of links and
resources very specific to recruiting and research. This is the first
Knowledgebase of its kind for the Recruiting Industry.”
This part is a little easier to explain…but no less valuable. There are
five major categories with hundreds of links to resources of potential interest
to our industry. Reminds me of the AIRS home page a bit but these sites are
rated by the users. From lists of names to rumor mill information to assessment
and testing resources to recruiting tools to research material. I assure you
something for everyone. Need a list, grab one…have an extra, post it. This is
how it works.
They
also have a small (at present) career section where you can freely post any job
related to recruiting including positions for recruiters, sourcers, researchers,
etc. Another section for you to post your own resume is also available. Another
feature is free email. This is a web-based (ala hotmail), confidential email
service you can use to communicate directly with other PN users (without going
through the company server) and also use to confidentially communicate with
strangers on the Internet. If you ever have a reason to conceal your true
identity when emailing someone…sign up for one of these accounts. The system
automatically notifies you at your main email address when you have received new
mail on the PN server. Cool. Another section contains surveys and polls that you
can participate in and actually create. They also offer a free newsletter for PN
users. Although I have not seen one myself I imagine it could prove useful in
navigating this site.
Just
for fun I did a search on ‘Fordyce’ and got one message with five replies.
Aside from the fact that three of them were discussing our publisher’s
resemblance to Perry Mason (based on his web-site picture), this was a good
response (two were serious) for someone’s query.
They
say the site is for Executive Recruiters, Executive Search Consultants,
Corporate Recruiters, Contract Recruiters, Technical Recruiters, Corporate
Sourcers, and Independent Sourcers. I think most of us fit in there somewhere.
I
spoke with David Carpe from PassingNotes.com, whose title is “Head Honcho”
according to his profile on the site. Dave couldn’t be more excited about the
prospects of the Project, as he calls his site. For the present, everything on
the site is free…free forums, free email, free chats, free links, etc., etc.,
etc. If you have any questions or comments you can reach Dave at 781/861.9393 or
at his email: dave@passingnotes.com.
In
closing…I highly recommend each one of you visit this site and see if there is
something for you.
PassportAccess.com
“Search
the World’s Largest Technical Resume Database?” An attention getter.
PassportAccess.com is primarily a searchable resume repository. If you feel you
could take advantage of some of the Internet’s more passive candidates and do
not feel you have the time to commit to learning advanced Internet recruiting
techniques, this service may be worth a try.
They
claim to have over 562,000 technical resumes in their database that are easily
searchable by a simply, yet comprehensive interface. Using Internet robotic
technology, they continuously scan public Internet sites for technology resumes
that are first pre-screened for content then added to the database. This
accounts for approximately 70% of the resumes. The other 30% are from candidates
posting directly to the site. You are able to save searches and candidates in
your own folders on the PassportAccess server. You are also able to set up 10
‘auto-agents’ to automatically email to you any new resumes posted matching
your criteria.
I
was offered their 24-hour free trial and performed my standard St. Louis
searches searching 314, 636 and 618 area codes with no keywords) I did not put
any aging limitation on my search and received 1000 returns, which is the
maximum allowed. I reviewed the first 200 or so individually and probably culled
15 +/- local candidates worthy of further contact. I also noticed a number of
duplicates and visa-type candidates. Still…not bad at all for trying a new
service. Since it was only a 24-hour trial I am unable to comment on new
postings, which is very important when considering an Internet service.
I
spoke with Sandra Louie, the PassportAccess.com Account Manager. Pricing is
$1,295.00 per year for unlimited access to the resume database (includes the 10
auto agents). They offer you the ability to post jobs to their site as well.
This service costs an additional $1,400.00 per year. Anyone interested in more
information or giving the site a try for free can contact Sandra direct at
888-425-2816, x103 or via email at sandra.louie@equest.com.
You can also check out their website at http://www.passportaccess.com.
FlipDog.com
I
never tire of writing about these services. FlipDog.com was another service that
sought out the Fordyce Letter to help tell the recruiting world about their
service. I must be easy to please as most of you have probably noticed I
normally like the products and services I review. FlipDog.com is no exception. A
wonderful service worth looking into.
I
was granted access to the site for several days to do a thorough review, which I
appreciated. Their premier product, at least to most of us is their superb
resume database. Again, I ran my typical St. Louis-oriented searches and maxed
out at 200 hits allowed. Again, I review all two hundred individually and was
very pleased to see many candidates I had never seen on the Internet before. As
you all know, I have tried many of these services and was more impressed by the
quality of these hits as opposed to other services I have tried. They have two
ways of populating their database.
The
first, is by scanning all public internet sites for resumes. Their ‘spider’
or ‘robot’ technology must be superior to others as they have been able to
uncover candidates not surfaced even using my own AltaVista/Boolean, AIRS
SearchStation or Top Echelon sourcing/recruiting methods. Not only that…I did
not notice a lot of duplicates or visa-type candidates although there were some.
They call this the Web Candidate Search.
The
second is by having candidate visit their site and post their resumes directly,
more of the ‘active’ type of candidate. Again, I saw a lot of resumes not
seen on Headhunter or ComputerJobs, more expensive services. They call this the
Member Candidate Search.
These
are two different databases are priced separately.
They
also offer job postings for review. Candidates can visit their site and preview
over 600,000 open jobs. These are mostly from scanning employer sites and
loading the jobs directly from the employer’s website to the FlipDog server.
They also allow recruiters and employers to post jobs directly to the site.
Of
further interest to recruiters is their Resource Page. Offers everything from
research on potential clients and employers to advise to events to relocation
information to salary surveys, etc., etc., etc…
I
highly recommend this service to anyone wanting a source for high quality
Internet candidates, both ‘active’ and ‘passive’ without having to learn
advanced Internet recruiting techniques or spending hours of recruiting time
searching five different search engines with 10 different Boolean strings each.
I
spoke with Brett Walker, vice president of marketing for FlipDog.com who filled
me in on the pricing. The Web Search database has an annual subscription price
of $2,995.00. The Member Search database, which is priced separately as noted
above, also has an annual subscription price of $2,995.00. Brett also told me
that if anyone mentions this article in The Fordyce Letter, they will receive a
one-year subscription to both Web Candidate Search and Member Candidate Search
for $4,995, a savings of $1,000.00. More than pays for the entire Fordyce Letter
subscription price for several years to come.
In
closing, there are less expensive services out there performing the same basic
function but I was very impressed with both the quality and quantity of the
resumes delivered by this service. I also think that they should offer some type
of trial or maybe a monthly service so one would not have to commit to the
entire amount up front. Having said that I would encourage anyone needing this
type of service give these people a call. Their main sales line is
1-887-877-FLIP, then select option 2 to be transferred to sales. You can also
visit their website at www.flipdog.com.
Tip
of the Month
Mark and I have often used Deja in our examples of newsgroup searches. On February 12th at about mid-day, Google (www.google.com) purchased and took over operation of the beloved newsgroup search engine Deja News (www.deja.com). Deja will be down for a few months while Google re-tools it. Until then, if you need to do newsgroup searches, try these alternate newsgroup search engines: www.newsone.net and www.forumone.com. They won’t replace the advanced features we love in Deja, but they are better than nothing.