Welcome to the 2023 Boolean Beginner’s Bash with your host and party animal Brian Fink, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at McAfee.

Brian crashed RecruitingDaily with a hardcore Boolean hoedown, and we’ve saved the recording for you. You’ll learn logic and techniques to locate, attract, and engage groovy talent on the web.

You’re about to find a wealth of information on Boolean searches and complex dorks.

What You’ll Learn

• Use Boolean operators, modifiers, search characters, and commands to create candidate searches.
• Explore Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and You to uncover profiles and the people behind them.
• Deep dive into a dance floor of alternative social networks
• Build keyword strings to enhance search results to find technical, marketing, sales, and medical professionals.
• Find free – yes, free – resumes across the web and inside secret spaces!
• LIVE Sourcing during Q&A

The post Brian Fink’s Boolean Beginners Bash 2023 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It’s time for the 2023 Boolean Beginner’s Bash with your host and party animal Brian Fink, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at McAfee.

On February 28 @ 2 PM ET, Brian will crash RecruitingDaily with a hardcore Boolean hoedown. He’ll show you logic and techniques to locate, attract, and engage groovy talent on the web.

This shindy isn’t just for noobie boolean builders.

Brian is bringing strategy that will blow the disco digs off of anyone in the industry—regardless of talent level.

In this session, Fink will lay the foundation for sourcing and recruiting professionals who want to transform their talent acquisition capabilities. And you can bet your booty we’re gonna have a killer time doing it.

What You’ll Learn

• Use Boolean operators, modifiers, search characters, and commands to create candidate searches.
• Explore Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and You to uncover profiles and the people behind them.
• Deep dive into a dance floor of alternative social networks
• Build keyword strings to enhance search results to find technical, marketing, sales, and medical professionals.
• Find free – yes, free – resumes across the web and inside secret spaces!
• Random Abba lyrics.

Everybody…

Get those party pants on. See you at the webinar.

These educational events are recorded! If you don’t think you’ll be around for the live performance, just register, and we’ll email you a link to the full presentation.

The post Brian Fink’s Boolean Beginners Bash 2023 appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It’s a good idea to pay attention to your notifications in LinkedIn from your connections’ posts anyhow. A recruiter or sourcer in your network may share a tip that could be useful, especially in the comment section.  

Mikey Weil is a 1^st connection of mine, and he is posting a Boolean string a day. JK (Jung Kim) shared a Twitch Boolean X-ray search string of his own in the comment section!

FYI: JK was a 2nd connection for me not 1st, which meant I now have another person I can reach out to and connect with in the sourcing community!

If you look at the string shared from the comment section, there are some formatting issues. So, pay attention to that. Always make sure before adding a string to a search engine, to check for formatting.

Let’s break down the string: 

• • The string is x-raying into the Twitch website by using the site command (site:) and website domain in order to target a specific website (in this case, Twitch)
  • If you were to look at a profile, you will notice that the userid is included within the URL. So, for the purpose of the string, an Asterisk is put in place so that you can pull up multiple users in a result
  • Next in the URL, you will notice the word about . This is because when viewing a profile, it brings up the about page of the profile. By adding this piece in your string, you are sure to pull in profiles
  • This is the basis of your string, anything else that comes after it, you can use different kinds of keywords to specify the types of profiles you’d like to see. In this case, software developers or software engineers. The quotations lock in the words. 
  • Lastly, you will notice social media included in an OR statement: . (Note: the pipe | can be used as OR in google rather than having to type the operator OR). This will pull in profiles that have links to any or all these social media sites within the profile. Helpful, because now you not only have a way of viewing this person within another channel, but a way of messaging or gaining personal contact information. 

You can then take the string and put it into the Google search engine.

In this first example, you can see that all the results are of profiles. Let’s take a look at the first profile. 

On mewtru’s twitch profile, you will notice that the Boolean string pulled in exactly what we were looking for: 

• • About page (further confirms why using about in the URL was necessary in bringing up profiles)
  • An engineer  
  • Social media profile link

If you have Hikido (email finding tool for Github profiles), you can check if mewtru’s Github profile has a personal email using the tool. However, don’t forget that some Github profiles will include a personal website.  

In viewing mewtru’s Github profile, you can see that there is a link to the personal website. The personal website did not have a personal email but does provide a link to the LinkedIn profile.

In the LinkedIn Profile, go to contact info, and look at the LinkedIn user id. If you put the userid@gmail.com you can test email in Gmail to verify if it is in fact the correct email. When plugging in the email, it does in fact belong to the individual.  

You now have personal contact information for a software engineer, working for a great company, found on Twitch, originally sourced through the LinkedIn comment section, from a notification alert of a 1^st  connection’s post. 

In this 2^nd example, we use the same string, but let’s see if in addition to finding personal contact information, if we can pull out anymore information to lead us to other searches. 

When clicking on the Twitch link for AdamMc331, you are brought to his profile, but he does not have as many social media links as the previous example. However, he does have a link to his Github. The Boolean we used let’s us know that there is going to be at least one social media link if not all. 

So, from the Github link on the Twitch profile, you can get both a twitter account and personal website link.

When you click on the link to take you to the personal website, you have now gathered the following additional information: 

• • LinkedIn profile link 
  • Stack Overflow profile link
  • Dev Community profile link
  • Personal email address
  • Resume

FYI: when you click on his dev community profile link, it provides similar information. This could be another source to try and find talent. Always look at the profile to see what you can pull.

In many cases, if you come across one profile, there may be more just like it that can become another source. On the profile, there is a location, an email, the person can provide where they work, it also provides a time the person joined the site. A Boolean string could be created from this. So, let’s test it out by looking at the URL and seeing if we can X-ray to get more profiles. 

IT WORKS! 

Note: you can always try other email domains, location specific (or no location at all, your choice), etc.

To wrap up, notifications from your 1^st connections is a great alert/reminder to check out LinkedIn posts as it can provide you with valuable information that may lead you to find even more sources.

Always look at everything around you in profiles, on posts, in LinkedIn comment sections, and be curious.

One lead can lead you to even more leads. Happy Sourcing! 

The post Use the LinkedIn Comment Section of Posts to Find New Leads appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Any good Sourcer worth their salt knows exactly how to search with intent. Nobody’s gonna give you a gold medal to the clout contest for getting the most C++ developers in one search. It’s about narrowing that search down until you get a couple hundred people that exactly meet your criteria.

Let’s get to the point of all this: searching more effectively on Google. We want all these advanced search features, so whats next?

• Step 1: Learn Boolean and Regular Expressions.
• Step 3: Profit.

Well first off, what the heck is a Boolean Expression? Well, kind of like a Goosebumps: You Choose The Scare novels, if you don’t know Boolean you’re not gonna make it too far. Boolean is pretty much a required mastery if you plan on doing Sourcing for a living.

Unfortunately for the casual audience, theres more to Boolean Expressions than a pamphlet read. Boolean statements have quotation marks, parentheses, and other database-looking jargon that shares a lot in common with database languages like SQL.

If you put all these brackets, minus signs, and other quirky characters together, you can turn your dud search into a solar powered, pavement ant scorching beam of a magnifying glass. These expressions, while tedious to learn, unlock the full power of Google’s search features.

Okay, but we have ONE teensy problem. Nobody wants to learn a laundry list of wingdings and nonsense just to talk to Siri’s older brother better! Well, if you plan to be sourcing with the big dogs, you kind of have to.

BUT, LEARNING BOOLEAN IS HARD!

Open up a spot in your bookmarks (or chrome extension dock), because we have an essential searching freebie that’s gonna make your transition into becoming a Boolean master a whole lot easier.

Until you spread your wings and fly, the HireEZ Boolean Builder should be your success crutch. This tool, available as both a webpage and also a neat chrome extension, sets the standard for both ease-of-use as well as functionality.

With HireEZ’s Boolean Builder, you don’t need to know all of those special characters or picky phrasing nuances that Regular Expressions and Boolean demands from you. To get your query as specific as you need it to, simply fill out the applicable search parameters. Let’s quickly run through how to ride this dragon and you’ll be sky sailing far above the search engine clouds in no time.

The Good, Great, and Not So Ugly of HireEZ Boolean Builder

The search parameters are fairly straightforward, we have:

• Job Title(s)
• Skills (AND, OR, NOT)
• Location(s)

One beautiful feature that the HireEZ tech wizards implemented is predictive topics.  The tool generates a comprehensive list of other job titles and skills you might want to search for, letting you blast through filling out this form. Thoughtful and effective ways to save time makes me want to happy cry, so well done, HireEZ.

So you clicked “Generate Boolean” and got this big chonk of spaghetti text, now what? Paste it into Google, right?  You’re welcome to stop learning here and repeatedly revenge query Google to get back at it for all those times it hurt you, but there’s some more fun to be had if you’re willing to go one step further down the rabbit hole.

googleception

A search layer on top of a search layer…This is the unnecessarily complicated world we live in. Before long our couches will have sassy AI’s that begrudgingly help you achieve maximum comfort, and our dogs will have translator collars so we can ghost write dog romance novels for them about the one stick who got away. This next level technique that Dean does might either cure your migraines permanently or make your head explode so you’ve been warned.

You can use Google to plug those parameters into a specific site. You may or may not know this, but you can narrow searches to a specific URL. Say you have this arbitrary search I made with HireEZ’s tool:

(“software engineer”) c# c++ (c) (“Portland, OR”) -java

Now say I want to only search these parameters on LinkedIn, how would I do that?

site:LinkedIn.com (“software engineer”) c# c++ (c) (“Portland, OR”) -java

It’s that easy! You can search whatever site is indexed by Google, which is pretty much all of them. Using this for LinkedIn is great since their built in search bar is notorious for being near-useless.

CONCLUSIONS

If you plan on casually using Boolean expressions, I’d stick with the HireEZ Boolean Builder Bookmark. If this is gonna be a long term relationship then perhaps you could try out their google chrome extension. Just for clarity’s sake the extension requires setting up a free HireEZ account.

If you’re interested in learning advanced searching techniques, building search engines, and turning your searching techniques into spells, check out this 4 hour long Master Class lead by the Godfather of Sourcing Shally Steckerl. For all things Dean Da Costa, check out here!

The post Maximize your Google Search Potential with HireEZ Boolean Builder appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Together, we will:

• Use Boolean operators, modifiers, search characters, and search commands to create candidate searches.
• Explore alternative search engines to find comprehensive and different results.
• Identify sources to build keywords to enhance search results.
• Find documents across the Web.
• Dive deep into multiple social networks to find and understand who your candidates are!

The post Boolean Beginners’ Bash with Brian Fink appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In this session, Brian Fink lays the foundation for sourcing and recruiting professionals who want to transform their talent acquisition capabilities and hiring efforts.

Whether you’re a boolean beginner or not, learn to effectively and efficiently use core Boolean search techniques to attract and locate top talent on the web!

And that’s just the start – Fink will show you how to leverage the fundamentals in new and interesting ways.

Get ready to party and participate in this interactive session!

Together, we will:

• Use Boolean operators, modifiers, search characters, and search commands to create candidate searches.
• Explore alternative search engines to find comprehensive and different results.
• Identify sources to build keywords to enhance search results.
• Find documents across the Web.
• Dive deep into multiple social networks to find and understand who your candidates are!

So if you are ready to party, we hope you’ll join Brian’s Boolean Beginner’s Bash on March 29th!

The post Boolean Beginners’ Bash with Brian Fink appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Search for a definition of talent acquisition sourcing and you will find explanations like Wikipedia that note Sourcing to be the identification, assessment, and engagement of skilled workers.

I don’t disagree with that meaning. However, what needs defining are the behaviors and actions that make up a Sourcers daily workload.

I am a relationship Sourcer. While the hunt for leads is enjoyable, it is the long-term lure that excites me.

I would have made a great fisherman. Patiently waiting and tempting the fish till it bites.

Anglers know that there is bait fishing, fly fishing, bait casting, spinning, and trolling. There is no one-size-fits-all.

Like fishing, there are many ways to go about a passive candidate search.

Old School Conversations

Yep, we still need to pick up the phone. Honestly, I am right there with you. I can barely leave a voicemail anymore that doesn’t mirror the rambling of a preteen.

But practice makes perfect. Although the first few connections can be text or email or socials, the candidate will eventually want to speak to you “live” for the best experience. Try doing a “Talking Tuesday” where once a week you commit to the telephone.

Hit the Pavement

I hope you have your Covid vaccine. If you do, it’s time to get out there! We call these Community Sourcers. But you don’t have to be labeled a Community Sourcer to get out in the world with your actual legs.

In healthcare, we have dietary and environment services roles that are best filled being out in the community, shaking hands, and kissing babies.

Boolean

This is for those Sourcers that are fighting to learn or use Boolean and think “I’m doing fine without it”. You simply can’t uncover 100% of the labor pool without it.  If you have had a few bad teachers, shake it off and find another.

You need to understand the language of the internet to use the internet for sourcing.

Job Fairs

Don’t try to fight me on this. Let Recruiters take the handfuls of resumes back to the office for candidates who are an immediate fit. But the Sourcers must lay claim to all the candidates that refused to stop by the booth, declined, or just simply were unimpressed.

The Sourcer does the follow-up and works the magic with repetitive cadence and reach outs to win the person over. That takes the skill, attention, and commitment that a Sourcer can provide.

Content Marketing

Put ten Sourcers in a room and maybe one has a marketing background. It’s not our forte. However, I urge Sourcers to make the effort to get famous on at least one social media platform and grow followers organically.

Candidates are consumers. They will research you. And a “famous” Sourcer with a reputable social media presence gives candidates confidence. Not to mention it keeps you relevant to a candidate till they are ready to take on a job search.

Research

Shout out to Nancy Nelson, Sourcer at UT Southwestern who told me she was in pre-search on a role, waiting for a report to come back on trends for ideal candidates on a certain role. A Sourcer who looks for trends in schools, degrees, and competitors is to be celebrated.

If you don’t spend time knowing your competitors, you will never know what to leverage.

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list. Whatever tactics you use—that are legal, moral, and ethical—to find potential passive leads can be called Sourcing.

Don’t try to fit the mold. Carve out your own space. It’s not stupid if it works.

Happy Hunting!

The post What Do You Call Sourcing? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

According to a McKinsey study, in 2020 women held just 38% of manager-level positions, while men held 62%. A possible explanation may be an intrinsic bias of Hiring Managers who favor men over women for managerial roles.

According to the McKinsey study, for every 100 men promoted to managers, only 85 women were promoted.

But there may be another explanation.  Outside of internal promotions, many companies hire external candidates for both managerial and non-managerial roles. The explanation of why women’s hiring falls short of men’s may have to do with recruiting methods, not necessarily bias.

It may relate to talent sourcing practices. If you have fewer women in your hiring pipeline, you may end up with fewer women in the workforce and eventually fewer women in senior roles.

To explore this further, we performed a recent study of over 20 million profiles to investigate why women do not get a fair representation in the hiring pipeline. One of the findings is that women tend to write 21% fewer skills than men on their public profiles (e.g. LinkedIn). 

That gap grew to 38% when women were compared to White men.

When recruiters search for candidates to fill roles, they tend to use Boolean search, a search method that relies on keywords. The problem with this kind of search is that both recruiters and potential candidates need to use the same keywords for a match between them to happen.

If a skill is written in a way that does not exactly match the search terms, a candidate will not come up or will appear lower on search results. That is the nature of binary search – it is zero or one.

Another tricky element is how profiles are formatted. Professional networking sites, like LinkedIn, encourage users to input skills in a skills section. However, recruiters tend to prefer candidates who write the skill within the profile text and even more if the required skill is mentioned in the text of the candidate’s most recent job.

Candidates are not aware of such preferences and may be missed or overlooked by recruiters, even if they entered a skill to the skills section.

This method can lead to bias against women, simply because they tend to write less on their profiles. According to a study by LinkedIn, profiles listing 5 or more skills are viewed 17X more than profiles with fewer skills.

If women aren’t writing as many skills as men, they have a lower chance of being found by recruiters seeking to fill a job. The solution would be to help close the gap between what recruiters need and what candidates present.

Leveling the playing field

Carefully designed, AI-powered talent sourcing tools can ultimately level the skills playing field for women. AI can provide an alternative to the Boolean search by eliminating keywords and by using strategies such as prediction of missing skills, rather than relying on imperfect and labor-intensive human search methods.

The post How AI Can Level the Playing Field for Women appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In the workplace, DEIB is about everyone coming together from all walks of life and backgrounds to celebrate commonalities and differences.

As business leaders are rightly concerned with building inclusion and belonging into company culture and diversifying their workforces to have contributions from varying perspectives, we (as talent acquisition professionals) also know how important it is to tailor our recruitment process and sourcing strategy accordingly.

Sourcing diverse, qualified talent is a skill that takes practice and time. Building and optimizing a diversity sourcing strategy is a craft.

There is no perfect method or single tool, resource, or technology platform that will give us exactly what we’re looking for right away.

Knowledge is power and the more we understand about diversity targets and can control and master the craft of diversity sourcing, the more effective, efficient, and productive we, as talent professionals, position ourselves.

In this post, I’m going to share several diversity sourcing tips that any talent acquisition professional can use. My aim is to inspire, provoke thought, and encourage everyone to get creative!

Why Boolean?

Boolean search strings, a classic sourcing method, have been around for quite some time and they aren’t going anywhere. They’re only limited by our needs and creative ideas! 

Think about your underlying critical thought process and analytical approach that comes with crafting strings.

Whether you decide to automate string creation via tools, such as Recruit’Em, BOOL, or Sourcehub, that add synonyms to your search, or you’re an expert at compiling complex strings yourself, they allow you to tap directly into the deep end of the target candidate pool.

Everyone has a digital footprint that can be found.

What’s your information need?

Before we start, I’d like to note that, ideally, effective Boolean searches start with a creative approach to information retrieval.

Think critically about what terms or phrases might show up in your target candidate profiles (such as associations or group names).

Then, work backward to create highly effective Boolean searches.

Gender Diversity Sourcing | Women

A common approach I see when searching for female profiles is immediately targeting interest groups, sports, or associations. This approach is helpful and great for growing your network and brand.

When it comes to searching using direct terminologies such as “women” OR “women’s” OR “female” or pronouns (“she” OR “her” OR “women” OR “woman” OR “lady” OR “ladies” OR “Miss” OR “Mrs” OR “mother” OR “mothers” OR “sister” OR “sisters”), you need to remember that if your strings are too vague or narrow, this will likely yield less viable results.

Here are some suggestions to take your search outside the box and be more specific.

Searching for women’s profiles with an academic degree, for example, we could target Greek-letter organizations (GLOs) and enter in the names of major sororities. Estimates suggest there are around nine million students and alumni from sororities in the US.

Using the term “sorority” may yield a relatively small number of candidates, therefore, building a comprehensive string that encompasses the names of major Greek sororities may be effective and will almost certainly save time.

You can find a free public list of sororities in the US here.

Referencing the WizardSourcer’s Diversity Boolean Strings List, below is an example of what a search string based on sororities can look like.

(“Alpha Delta Pi” OR “Alpha Gamma” OR “Delta Alpha Omicron Pi” OR “Alpha Phi” OR “Chi Omega” OR “Delta Delta Delta” OR “Delta Gamma” OR “Gamma Phi Beta” OR “Kappa Alpha Theta” OR “Kappa Delta Chi” OR “Kappa Kappa Gamma” OR “Pi Beta Phi” OR “Sigma Kappa”)

Searching women’s universities or colleges directly is another great way to find viable female candidates. You can find a free public list of both current and historical women’s universities and colleges in the US here.

Below is an example of a full list of women’s universities and colleges:

(“Agnes Scott College” OR “Alverno College” OR “Barnard College” OR “Bay Path College” OR “Bennett College” OR “Brenau University” OR “Brescia University College” OR “Bryn Mawr College” OR “Carlow College” OR “Cedar Crest College” OR “Chatham University” OR “College of New Rochelle, The” OR “College of Saint Benedict” OR “College of Saint Elizabeth” OR “College of Saint Mary” OR “Columbia College” OR “Converse College” OR “Cottey College” OR “Douglass Residential College of Rutgers University” OR “Hollins University” OR “Judson College” OR “Mary Baldwin College” OR “Meredith College” OR “Midway College” OR “Mills College” OR “Moore College of Art & Design” OR “Mount Holyoke College” OR “Mount Mary College” OR “Mount St. Mary’s College” OR “Notre Dame of Maryland University” OR “Pine Manor College” OR “Russell Sage College” OR “St. Catherine University” OR “Saint Joseph College” OR “Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College” OR “Saint Mary’s College” OR “Salem College” OR “Scripps College” OR “Simmons College” OR “Smith College” OR “Spelman College” OR “Stephens College” OR “Sweet Briar College” OR “Trinity Washington University” OR “Wellesley College” OR “Wesleyan College” OR “Wilson College” OR “Women’s College”)

Racial and Ethnic Diversity Sourcing

If you need to source racially and ethnically diverse candidates, the aforementioned strategies can give a baseline to tailor your searches accordingly. If you would like to take the GLO approach, the below list can be used for targeting Black fraternities and sororities:

(“Sigma Pi Phi” OR “Alpha Phi Alpha” OR “Kappa Alpha Psi” OR “Omega Psi Phi” OR “Phi Beta Sigma” OR “Sigma Rhomeo” OR “Wine Psi Phi” OR “Iota Phi Theta” OR “Phi Delta Psi” OR “Delta Psi Chi” OR “Beta Phi Pi” OR “MALIK Fraternity” OR “Sigma Phi Rho” OR “Phi Rho Eta” OR “Gamma Psi Beta” OR “Alpha Kappa Alpha” OR “Delta Sigma Theta” OR “Zeta Phi Beta” OR “Sigma Gamma Rho” OR “Phi Delta Kappa” OR “Iota Phi Lambda” OR “Eta Phi Beta” OR “Gamma Phi Delta”)

Likewise, if your goal is to directly target an academic background and perhaps you are seeking Black candidates, why not use this list of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the US. Below is an example string.

Keep in mind to get as creative as possible to tailor your search based on geography, candidate persona viability, and so on.

(“Bowie State University” OR “Clark Atlanta University” OR “Fisk University” OR “Grambling State University” OR “Howard University” OR “Jackson State University” OR “Morehouse College” OR “South Carolina State University” OR “Southern University Baton Rouge” OR “Spelman College” OR “Stillman College” OR “Tuskegee University” OR “Xavier University”)

Expanding on diversity Boolean strategies geared toward racial and ethnic diversity, you could construct a search syntax that targets other cultural interest GLOs.  

Bonus Hacks

As an added bonus to this post, here are two other Boolean diversity sourcing hacks:

1. Google’s keyword search limit is 32 words.

This means using strings that extend beyond 32 words, such as the starter brackets provided above, just won’t be effective. Here’s a free back-end solution to get the results you want without word search limitations: Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs).

You can create and program your own search engine. If you’d like an example of a diversity-tailored CSE, I’ve included a personal favorite of mine, this CSE is publicly accessible and can be used by anyone.

2. Use different search engines.

When using Boolean searches, oftentimes we tend to stick with our default web search engine. My recommendation is to plug your string into different web browsers to take advantage of varying algorithms and search results. This site provides a dual-screen comparison between Google and Bing search results.  

Ultimately, I wanted to inspire you to think a little bit differently when it comes to Boolean sourcing. Keep in mind that effective sourcing, diversity or otherwise, isn’t just about Boolean.

It’s about critical, analytical thinking and seeking to step outside of the box to find ways to meet your information needs.

The post Boolean Beats Bias: Strategic Diversity Sourcing Tips appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

I enjoy automating my sourcing workflow. In this article, I will share my sourcing cookbook recipe which will lead to an increase in conversion rates and reduce the man-hours of manual tasks.

Let’s find some Solution Architects, shall we?

Step 1. LinkedIn

We can use an awesome Boolean builder. In this example, I’m using the one from Mike Cohen.

Once you have your preferred Boolean lined up and combined with the “Concatenate” function, it’s just a matter of copying it in the keyword section in Linkedin.

I’m using my own Boolean string in my keyword section of LinkedIn:

And here’s the result:

Step 2. Scraping and Enriching Data

What’s next? I’m using two different tools, Quickli* and SalesQL. Both scrapes instantly the shortlist from the LinkedIn result above.

Why scraping? Simply to be time-efficient. Additionally, reaching out via an InMail shows less conversion rates (average of 18%) compared to using an email campaign.

I make sure that the data is cleaned up and is copied to values in a neat CSV.

Once I scrape the data, I upload it into my own Google spreadsheet and enrich it as shown below. I use this spreadsheet to keep track of the sourcing funnel and make it visible to the hiring managers.

Then, I use contact finder tools such as Contact-out, Kendo, and Swordfish. You will still need to check the email validity with an email verification tool. Personally, I’m using Clearbit or Bouncer to check a whole list of candidates in one go.

Or you could use Clearbit or an online verifier: http://email-verifier.online-domain-tools.com/.

Another option that is more time effective is using SalesQL. In comparison with Quickly, SalesQL automatically populates it with e-mail addresses. To be fair, SalesQL did get me often only 60-70% of the correct e-mail addresses. So, it is important to always check your email deliverability.

For the remaining 30-40% undeliverable emails from SalesQL, I will use Contact-Out since their e-mail deliverability is around 90-95%.

Step 3. Reach-outs

Now, it’s time to drive the e-mail campaign.

I prefer to use Lemlist instead of reaching out to candidates one-by-one. By doing so I save time and I keep track of all my activities in combination with using my own master sheet.

Have a look at this useful tutorial of Lemlist.

I created aliases for all my hiring managers. I can create this easily at the Email Provider Settings.

Once I imported my shortlisted candidates in Lemlist, I created a “personalized” message in sequences as if I’m the hiring manager. This will increase my chances for a higher conversion rate.

To avoid the email campaign ending up in the SPAM boxes, I ask my ICT support team to give me the Tracking Custom Domain of the company I work for.

As a result, I have gone from 18% conversion rate to 42%. The best part is that I cut out some manual tasks.

Step 4. Site Searches

I’m leaving LinkedIn and I’m searching via Google.

In this example I have built this string:

site:linkedin.com/in -inurl:dir intitle:”architect” (”Microservices” OR ”event driven architecture” OR ”Microservices architecture”) (”springboot” OR ”java 8” OR spring)  (”implementation of CI” OR ”implementation of CI” OR ”continuous development” OR ”continuous integration”).

Since the multiple OR statements are sometimes counterproductive, I also try site search:

site:Linkedin.com/in -inurl:dir intitle:”Solution Architect” (Developed in java|spring|”Microservices”) -jobs -job -apply -sample

Once I have the search result, I use Dataminer to scrape everything in one go. I can use one of the recipes in the Dataminer’s Public Library and I can download the results as a .csv file.

I will upload the results into the master sheet I’m using, enrich it, and start e-mail campaign via Lemlist.

Step 5. GitHub Search and Automate Enrichment

In this example I use the following:

site:github.com ”block*report” (”Springboot” AROUND (40) repositories) (”Microservices” AROUND (40) repositories) (”Kubernetes” AROUND (40) Repositories) -inurl:followers -inurl:following

Alternatively, people could use this to get even more diverse results:

site:github.com ”block*report” java “spring boot” ”microservices architecture” -inurl:following -inurl:followers

This time I only want to scrape all the GitHub user names using Dataminer. Accordingly, I need to tweak the recipe by revising the selector (in the column section) to get the desired results.

I use the following a:first[href*=’’github.com’’]**   (Credits to Bret Feig)

After downloading the results, I make sure that the data is cleaned up and copied to values in a neat .csv file. Then I use Amazing Hire to upload my results and to automate my cross-reference and enriching part.

Look! Amazing Hire showed me the candidates I was searching for. I can easily look at their social footprints or enrich my data. I will export the file and upload it again in my master sheet with the enriched data. By using the same steps as before, I have saved a lot of time by cutting out a lot of manual tasks.

Step 6. Remove Duplicate Data

I will make sure I remove duplicate data to avoid sending the same email twice. Since I’m working with Google sheets, I can remove the duplicates under the data tab after selecting the column.

Et voila! Now you can make your own delicious time-saving recipe.

The post Sourcing Cookbook: A Recipe to Save Time and Increase Conversion Rates appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

I’m a big advocate of behavioural sourcing and a frequent user of Custom Search Engines (CSE). Instead of using mainstream solutions, I choose to look at the behaviours and patterns of certain candidate pools to find their digital footprints. 

Why Custom Search Engines?

CSE is a great tool to automate your favourite search strings. Some other benefits of using CSE are:

• You can search for multiple sites at once 
• CSE look into Google’s index and you can customize them which saves a lot of time
• The query addition automates additional parameters
• In your advanced settings, you could use Refinements to overcome the CSE’s limit. By adding additional labels, you can narrow down your search. For example, I have a long string of e-mail addresses or gender I want to come up in my search. 
• CSE can use object types such as “person” which is an example of Structured Data. That option is not possible in Google search. To understand more about structured data, you need to look at the HTML code of the webpage.

When setting up CSE, it is important to understand the URL patterns to know what to include or exclude.

Example below:

The Assignment

I’m looking for a client-facing Solution Architect with either pre-sales or post-sales experience in the financial services industry. Where can I find these people? Can I find candidates that are ‘only 20% hands-on’ on a code-sharing platform?

Where to Begin?

I always start my search by finding digital footprints of my targeted candidates. I noticed that some Solution Architects were on GitHub. Thus, I looked at what aspects they worked on in the overview of the repositories and found some keywords. See example: 

Step 1. GitHub Search on CSE

When I create my CSE, I would add “Github” in my Sites to Search and put in “person” in the Schema org Types. By creating Query Additions, I can exclude certain parameters such as: “intitle: -jobs”

In my End-user Search I would put “more:p:code-programminglanguage:java more:p:code-description:microservices” to see if there are other relevant people. I selected exact keywords (in this case: microservices) which reflect the repositories of our previous architect example on GitHub. 

Once logged in to your GitHub account, you will get direct access to the email addresses or personal websites which will enrich your overall data. Alternatively, you can use the patch function by clicking on the commits in the repositories and put ‘’.patch’’ behind the URL.

Step 2. Looking at the Competitors

I would look at our typical competitors which would also have architects. Since I’m specifically looking at Kony, I would target it in End-User Search with “more:p:person-worksfor:kony.” Just like the previous step, I can retrieve information via GitHub. 

Finding people on GitHub by their specific job title is possible but sometimes it is not ideal because people do not always enlist their job title correctly. However, I found out that the first person on my list (even though he is a Product Manager) is a great candidate since he worked as a pre-sales architect at one of our competitors.

Step 3. Searching with No Sites

Another take on this is to have a wider search, especially when I’m not familiar with a certain country’s digital footprints. In this scenario, I’m still looking for the same architect but in Germany. Instead of selecting Sites to Search on CSE, I used the No Sites to Search function by selecting first any random website to search (please include Search the Entire Web) and afterwards delete it. 

For Query Addition, I added the following parameters: 

In the End-User Search, I searched for “Solution Architect banking Germany.” 

Step 4: Site Search Xing

Another option is creating Site to Search for Xing. Similar to previous steps, I simply select Sites to Search and list in the Query Addition all the additional information that needs to be highlighted.

This time, I enabled the Structured Data so I can see how Google indexes information about certain websites. Then I can run another search and target it even more specific.

Since Xing is using Hcard, I can put more:p:hcard-title in End-User Search and will receive similar profiles.

Step 5. Site Search About.me

We can also create Site to Search for About.me which is a great platform for people who want to brand themselves; perfect for a pre-sales architect that I’m searching for. I used similar steps but this time, when setting up CSE, I add “person” to Restrict Pages using Schema.org Types. 

In End-User Search, I used one or multiple keywords: banking fintech pre sales architecture.

Step 6. Site Search SpeakerHub

My final step is to look at speakers. Since this is a client-facing role, they often need to run presentations. It would be great if they are used to public speaking or presenting. I would select the site SpeakerHub, use the structure more:p:person-jobtitle:*architect, and investigate further.

As an example, I found this candidate in SpeakerHub. By searching his name on Google, I encountered and scraped other events on websites that I could use for my own benefit. 

For scraping. I prefer Webscraper.io over Dataminer since it’s easier to grab the element attribute for specific URLs.

I would look at the candidate’s digital footprints to find out if there are even more events coming up (for example FinTech Code) and add that to my CSE. 

In my mind, it doesn’t really matter which position they throw at you. If you have this mindset and interest to try and investigate, you can work on any role! 

The post How to Use Custom Search Engines to Find Niche Candidates appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Coming from a combined sourcing and recruiting background, my first instinct is always to work efficiently. If I could, I would immediately reach out to my hiring manager with a fully prepared document of questions to fill out so that I could do my job well. However, over the past half year of working at Wayne Tech, Mike has been working to balance my and my colleagues’ tendencies to reach a healthy medium of efficiency and research. And, there’s a beauty of finding that happy medium.

Rather than jumping to asking for help, I would take time to research a current employee at the client company with the same title as the job I’m working on. I would run a quick google x-ray that would look along these lines, for a Golang Backend Developer for The New York Times:

site:linkedin.com/in ((golang OR go OR backend OR “back-end” OR “back end”) AND (develop* OR engineer*)) AND (“new york times” OR nyt)

From there, I would take a look at the candidate profiles who are currently working in the exact job I will be filling. Or, at least a similar job on a different team. 

Sometimes, folks tend to provide the bare minimum on their LinkedIns. They may only say the title, company, and duration they are at their jobs. In that case, I may take note of past companies that my client hires from. From here, it is time to branch out and be more creative.

Back to Google x-ray search! This time, I would consider the past companies of the example profiles I found on my first search. I would replace the New York Times string with the past companies as such:

site:linkedin.com/in ((golang OR go OR backend OR “back-end” OR “back end”) AND (develop* OR engineer*)) AND (microsoft OR apple OR facebook OR google)

I would look over the candidates who are currently, or over the past few years, working as a Golang Backend Developer at those companies.  Then, we need to consider what we may learn from each profile. 

If you are newer to the type of role, you want to be sure to take notes on any keywords you are not familiar with. Oftentimes, keywords may be a generalization that can be discussed several different ways on a profile. Once you know what tech/keywords you are looking for in your candidate, be sure to circle back and do further research on what you do not understand.

For example, if you are not familiar with “API” or “node,” go ahead and run a quick Google search to learn a little bit more about the tech. This will help you ensure that you are not missing great candidates who are speaking about their experience differently than your sample candidates. 

For me, when I do not understand a type of tech, or I think I could be more creative with my search, I will pull up 3-4 different websites explaining the tech to make sure I am covering all my bases. 

If you are able to speak to the research you did or keep data to reflect your work, you will be able to come to the table with the hiring manager with your expertise, and learn where you may be off base in the future. 

Rather than jumping to an easy (but not always the best) solution, you can take some time to develop your toolset as a sourcer and create a strong relationship with your client by fostering a sense of trust and capability. Taking the time to research will not only save your hiring manager the time of writing up a job description, but will also establish you as a credible expert as a sourcer. You will also be developing strong habits and research skills to further your career. Next time you work on a role without a job description, see it as an opportunity to grow, rather than an inconvenience! 

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All the sourcing techniques and examples one generally comes across are mostly geared towards finding technical staff within the technology and software space. However, the same methods can be applied to core engineering space as well with a little twist here and there. This article is about Canadian engineering sourcing.

Regulatory Association search

Every province has its professional regulation association for licensing engineers to practice.

The following is a list of provincial associations:

• Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta 
• The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia 
• Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of Manitoba 
• Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick 
• Professional Engineers and Geoscientists Newfoundland and Labrador 
• Northwest Territories and Nunavut Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists 
• Engineers Nova Scotia 
• Professional Engineers Ontario 
• Engineers PEI 
• Ordre des ingénieursdu Québec 
• Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan 
• Association of Professional Engineers of Yukon 
• Northwest Territories and Nunavut Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists

Use case:

Researching the association which licenses engineers to work in the province of Ontario, Canada. The licensed individuals usually have a short form of the certification attached to their profile. For example CA for “chartered accountant”. Likewise, P.Eng is the certification short form in this case.

You can apply natural language searches in Google as illustrated below to find any information related to the individuals who have become licensed and if there is a mention of them anywhere on the web.

(Profile OR “curriculum vitae” OR CV OR Career OR bio OR “about me” OR “about myself”) “(I OR Him OR he OR his OR her OR she) (am OR worked OR work OR is OR was OR Has OR have OR had)” (“professional engineers of Ontario” OR “P.Eng”) –site:edu -site:linkedin.com

You can reduce the results by adding “location” and “skills” qualifiers. Or by reducing some natural language keywords so as to not exceed 32 words limit search in Google.

Another option is to x-ray the association site as illustrated below to see if we can find the membership lists of this organization.

site:www.peo.on.ca  (directory OR members OR delegates OR roster OR participants OR list)

Voila, you hit the jackpot as the first link is https://www.peo.on.ca/directorycould 

Just by going to advanced search, and typing in just the city name “Toronto” I get all the lists of current professional engineers licensed by the state of Ontario (8,767 of them) with the date of licensure as illustrated below:

Figure e.g.:  PEO Ontario search page

I look up one entry in the directory and it lists even the current employer and the work phone number as well as illustrated below:

Figure e.g.: PEO Individual result

Then cross-reference the name with Linkedin. Plus, use contact finding tools to obtain their private email addresses and home/cell phone numbers.

Engineering societies

Apart from regulatory associations, engineering societies also can be a good avenue to find qualified prospective candidates as they engage in networking and communication about modern advances, the marketplace trends through seminars, conferences, and journals.

Some of these societies that you can explore further are:

• Canadian Academy of Engineering
• The Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute
• Canadian Society for Bioengineering
• The Chemical Institute of Canada
• Canadian Society for Civil Engineering
• Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada 
• Canadian Dam Association
• The Canadian Society for Engineering Management
• Canadian Federation of Engineering Students 
• The Canadian Geotechnical Society
• Canadian Institute of Marine Engineering
• The Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering
• Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum
• The Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society
• Canadian Nuclear Society
• Engineering Institute of Canada 
• IEEE Canada 

For example, let us dig deeper into The Chemical Institute of Canada

With almost 6,000 members across Canada, the Chemical Institute of Canada represents chemists, chemical engineers, and chemical technologists at the forefront of their fields.

The Chemical Institute of Canada:

• • Accredits university programs and certifies chemical technologists. 
  • Organizes Canada’s two premier annual conferences for the chemical sciences and engineering – the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition and the Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference. 
  • Connects members through a network of local sections, student chapters, and subject divisions. 
  • Publishes The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering

Additionally, I noticed a member resource group catering to women https://www.cheminst.ca/communities/mrgs/ and browsing further came up with 8 links to women in chemical sciences groups spread across Canada.

One of the WIC group is https://ualbertawic.wordpress.com/ and they have a Twitter handle too. The Twitter handle has 441 followers.

I looked around the “Recognition” section of the website and noticed CIC Fellowships and while navigating further, found the entire fellowship lists here. Notice the usage of FCIC besides the name.

Lastly, I used that specific word to conduct additional searches on the web. While I used site operator to x-ray Linkedin accordingly: 

Example 1: site:ca.linkedin.com/in FCIC  and I get a hit of 296 results in Google

Example 2: site:ca.linkedin.com/in FCIC and I get a hit of 753 results in Bing

In addition, while reviewing the information about the TWO conferences, I ended up finding that there is a 12th Triennial Congress of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC 2020) conference in Vancouver, BC and its website watoc2020.ca

There is also “The International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies (Pacifichem) 2020 being held at Honolulu, HI US and their website is pacifichem.org

The chemical Institute of Canada publishes “The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering” and a look at previous issues brought up a link for Online Wiley Library which can be used as an additional frame of reference to research further.

Additional avenues where searches can be made are at

European Patent Registry search

US Patent and Trademark Office

Canadian Patent Database

Google patent search

GRABCAD

Grabcad is the largest online community of professional designers, engineers, manufacturers, and students across the world.

Further, a GrabCAD user profile usually includes the following:

• Name
• Location
• Specialization
• Software skills
• Work experience
• Education
• Statistics e.g. Score, Followers, Following, Profile Views, Member since.

Figure e.g.: Grabcad profile

Figure e.g.: Grabcad profile with software skills and statistics

In fact, a simple X-ray can be accomplished using this search string: site:grabcad.com/ Canada “member since”

However, to message the individual, a login is required by creating an account or a Linkedin or Facebook or Google login is sufficient. There is an alternate way to obtain profiles in particular: site:grabcad.com/engineers/country/Canada 

Additionally, these search results turn up only 4 links but the first search link gives 100 pages of results (12 profiles per page). Meanwhile, the native search of the site is equally good and maybe a better bet.

Conclusion

As can be seen, by just doing basic research and then following the bread crumbs, a TA professional can be equally adept at core engineering sourcing as well.

The post Canadian Engineering Sourcing For Non-Technology Roles appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

The world is awash with a lot of data. Much of this data is unstructured. Some of it has structure, but to analyze the data would require the development and implementation of an appropriate model, and to come up with meaningful insights out of the data is where the challenge lies. This is where the data scientist’s role comes in handy.

Recruiters in general will navigate Linkedin as the first port of call to find data scientists, but there are sources where they can find relevant prospects to explore further.

The following are a few platforms worth further explorations.

Kaggle

Kaggle, owned by Google, is a large online community of 1M+ data scientists, statisticians, and machine learning practitioners. Additionally, they are novices through more experienced levels. Companies run competitions on this platform, offering big prizes of up to $100,000. And, maybe hire the winners from time to time.

Kaggle has a ranking system described here and an illustration of it is as follows. Notice Gold, silver and Bronze medals and the total points is what makes an individual stand out from the rest.

Since the ranking information is quite structured, utilize DataMiner or similar scraping software to select the required information to be exported to Excel for outreach marketing.

A Kaggle profile generally will list the following:

• Name
• Brief information on the individual
• Location
• A link to a personal website or Linkedin etc (sometimes)
• Competitions Ranking (if applicable)
• Contribution to datasets
• Notebooks expertise
• Discussion expertise
• Followers
• Sometimes a bio if you are lucky

Example search strings you can employ:

• Use string site:kaggle.com “joined * * ago” bengaluru
• Or use site:kaggle.com india hadoop
• Another is site:kaggle.com “last seen” bengaluru “machine learning”
• Yet another is site:kaggle.com joined Paris -inurl:blog -inurl:competitions -inurl:discussion -inurl:followers -inurl:notebooks

AICrowd

Another worthwhile data science competition platform includes AICrowd.  Their motto is to enable data science experts and enthusiasts to solve real-world problems, through collaborative challenges.

They have a leaderboard with the top 100 users ranked. Some of the user profiles have names, location, and sometimes a bio as illustrated below:

Zindi

If you have Africa based hiring requirements, then Zindi could be the hunting ground for your pursuits. Zindi hosts an entire data science ecosystem of scientists, engineers, academics, companies, NGOs, governments, and institutions focused on solving Africa’s most pressing problems.

They work with companies, non-profit organizations, and government institutions to develop, curate, and prepare data-driven challenges. Solutions are automatically ranked by the accuracy achieved. Zindi also has a leaderboard points-based ranking system of its users in terms of top challenges.

A typical Zindi profile lists the following as illustrated below:

• Photograph
• Spoken Languages (an unusual category)
• Tech language
• Location
• Bio (sometimes)
• The competitions that the individual participated in
• Discussion forum contributions

An example search string to find data scientists in Nigeria one could employ is:

• site:zindi.africa/ nigeria -challenge -inurl:discussions

Innocentive

Innocentive is a US-based platform that focuses primarily on real problems dealing with life sciences as well as other industries.

They have 390,000+ Solvers from 190+ countries.  With 60% educated to Master’s level or above in their network, and have run 2,000+ Challenges, received 162,000+ Proposed Solutions and awarded $20M worth prizes so far.

Innocentive has a Top Solvers list going back up to the year 2015. However, the public profiles display very little information apart from the occasional photo and location. You cannot view the full profile without registration.

There is a section of profiles listed under “winning solvers” going back to 2015 but very little information is accessible.

CrowdAnalytix

CrowdAnalytix is an end-to-end platform for developing and deploying AI and Data Science solutions and while building solutions. Basically, they leverage a network of 24,000 data scientists.

An X-ray search of the website site:crowdanalytix.com inurl:contests leaderboard gives a list of the contests. And, upon clicking a contest, information about the winners and leaderboard are available. From time to time you will luck out, and a bio of the individual is visible.

CrowdAnalytix additionally has a Twitter handle using which one can find the followers of this platform.

Conclusion

To sum it up, the sky is the limit to search for data science professionals. Recruiters would be well advised to look out for upcoming platforms where the relevant professionals congregate, contribute, and are making a name for themselves.

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Do you ever look at a job description and scan for the keywords to run a keyword search? While keyword sourcing can be effective for a tech search, sales sourcing requires a different approach.

A client may be looking for an Account Executive who is managing the book of enterprise clients in the healthcare industry.

While you may think that running a boolean along the lines of (account AND exec*) AND enterprise AND (healthcare OR “health care” OR “health-care”) may pull up a solid list of candidates, you would more than likely find yourself lost in a sea of candidates that are not quite right for the job.

Not to mention, you are probably pulling a whopping list of candidates that you have to sift through. You’ll need to adjust your string and think outside the box for your search.

Upon closer inspection, you may take a look at a profile and notice that your “Account Executive” has not actually researched prospective new clients. But is actually working with a book of existing clients and expanding the existing relationship with new products.

{Holistic sourcing enters stage right}

Rather than focusing on titles and must-have requirements given to you in a checklist, think about how you would describe what the candidate is doing to someone else in their industry.

A Different Approach

Let’s walk through another possible profile and how we could take a different approach with our boolean. An account executive may describe themselves as a “2018 and 2019 President’s Club hunter targeting enterprise accounts in the tri-state area.” This candidate may elaborate that they “successfully identified and executed sales for Company X’s women’s health product suite.”

Thinking outside the box, you may make a search string that looks more like:

((account OR sales OR healthcare OR outside) AND (sales OR exec* OR representative)) AND (hunt* OR “new account” OR “new accounts” OR “new business” OR prospect*) AND (hospital* OR clinic* OR health* OR healthcare OR doctor*) AND (major OR enterprise OR large OR key) AND (“president’s club” OR “top performer” OR “top sales” OR overachieve* OR exceed*)

We are still looking for a pretty standard title string. But, we are now adding keywords that are speaking to that title. As we went over earlier, the title a company assigns can sometimes be misleading. We will now see profiles for candidates that are “hunting” for new business, as a traditional Account Executive does.

From there, we are looking at the type of accounts this candidate is looking for. We are targeting healthcare sales working with enterprise accounts. While someone may say: “I am a healthcare sales professional targeting enterprise accounts.”

They may say something more along the lines of: “I target prospective and existing key accounts. I present to doctors and stakeholders at major hospitals regarding our women’s health product suite.” With this new string, you are targeting the same skills based on the way someone may naturally discuss their job.

Target Top Performers

Lastly, in order to narrow your search down. I include a string that will target top performers within companies. Sales teams typically have a President’s Club incentive program for top performers. If you have a target company list, you can research what those companies call their President’s Club programs to delve even deeper!

Using a string that targets the natural language of a candidate will allow you to more successfully glean candidates that have the appropriate background. Sales titles can sometimes mislabel a candidate’s experience. So, being mindful of common language within the industry can save you time sifting through candidates and pull up others that you may not have seen with a keyword search.

In summary, taking a more holistic approach to sourcing can help TA professionals to accurately identify candidates with soft skills as well. Taking some time to look at sample profiles to learn how a candidate speaks about their experience can save you time and frustration. Work this in as a best sourcing practice to become a stronger and more agile sourcer.

As Steve Jobs said, “creativity is just connecting things,”… in a holistic boolean string!

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