We have the two big (if you consider it BIG enough) news coming from Google+ and Twitter this morning. These updates / changes suggest that both of them taking on Facebook aggressively. Let’s look at them from sourcing / recruitment angles too.

Introducing Google+ Pages

This is Google’s answer to Facebook Fan pages. In recent times, fan pages have become a great tool for recruitment / corporate companies to enhance their employment brand as well as to reach out to wider social media audience.  Google+ is now riding the wave by announcing Google+ pages. The page structure is very similar to Facebook Fan page where you can post your openings, comment, engage etc. Instead of “Liking”, you can add this page to your “Circles”. Other utilities include “About” section, Photos and Videos.

One of the interesting functions is Google+ Direct Connect. You can connect your websites to Google+ page. If you are able to convince Google+ algorithm about authenticity and quality of content, they would award you a +operator. This makes your page searchable on Google with + operator. There are few live examples like +Pepsi.

Although at this point of time though the structure looks pretty simple and much like Facebook, I am sure that Google has bigger plans in overall social media strategy. This platform gives Google+ a huge advantage for attracting company / individual brands to connect and engage audience. For recruiters, it is just another online place to showcase brand and jobs for now. However, keep watching this space.

Twitter adds News Feed (Activity Tab)

One of the reasons Facebook has been successful to attract and engage large audience is due to their “News Feed”. This feature lets user know more about what their friends are doing with 2^nd level friends. Thus resulting into knowing new people, what they do and enhanced engagement overall. Even though this feature has come under some criticism due to security concerns, it is like a “Newspaper” putting up hot stories from their friends which you can not resist to read.

Twitter has been very conservative till today by adopting a very simple and straight forward philosophy of showing only twits from your connections. Starting today, Twitter has powered “@username” tab displaying various activities for your own account. This includes people who re-tweeted your twits, newly followed people along with your mentions.

The more important change for me however is their introduction of “Activity” tab. This tab tells you about what your twitter connections are up to J. You can now view new accounts they are following, any favorite twits they have added, new addition to lists etc.

Utility for Recruiters?

• You can now keep a tab on new accounts your candidates are following. A great way to know their friends / colleagues / connections in a same industry / company.
• Uncovering new lists they are been added to.
• Any other advantage you can think of .

Social Media is slowly but surely is establishing as a big buck business. LinkedIn and Facebook has already proved their market worth. The good part – this competition will provide a gate-way to some great innovations and experimentation in social media space. Businesses are learning from one another and providing better value proposition for customers. Enjoy them until they are free….

Social Media is slowly but surely coming to an age where it is more of a strategic component than just “Riding a Trend”. It is a medium that exposes your brand / company to open crowd which can give any company an advantage to reach out larger audience. However it does bring in a risk component with itself as it can attract negative comments / sentiments of their employees as well as customers. This may be fear of company management which restricts the open use of social media.

As they say – everything has its pros and cons. Here’s what best you can do to maintain and enhance your brand on social media while curbing an “evil” effect.

Involve Your Employees – Best Brand Ambassadors.

While you look outside to market yourselves and brand your company name, you may tend to forget that your employees are the best brand ambassadors of your company. It is a great idea to involve them actively on your social networks to tell their experiences / views about your company / brand. People would rather listen to human stories than standard marketing brochures. Yes, you may attract some negative sentiments from “never-to-be-satisfied souls”; however, there are more chances that you attract positive vibes if you involve larger audience.

Community Moderation

In current social media channels, you get do get admin rights where-in you can actively moderate your groups, comments, postings etc; however use this right diligently. It is not advisable to delete OR react strongly to every negative / non-sense comments. Remember, it is an open platform – a democracy J. Let people have their own say and you can counter them with the positivity which can showcase your brand value. If your community members start thinking that you are deleting negative comments, they will definitely shy away from your group. You can always re-direct those negative comments subtly. Your brand also carries your company’s characters and values.

Be open for Improvements and Suggestions

Social media is a two way conversation and needs to have “ears”. You would always want your followers / group members to listen great things you have to say. Never close the communications gates though. You would also carefully need to listen what your followers have to say. Sometimes, they may have a complaint, a suggestion, a crappy experience about your service / product etc. Please make sure you route their views to appropriate department and consider them valuable. Do not forget to thank them for their valuable suggestion. Give them an honorary feeling which they will associate with your brand.

Be careful on what you say

We have seen enough examples of big goof-ups on some Fortune 500 company’s social media communities where one word OR sentence can destroy your brand image. Do not get intimidated or carried away by comments of other people. Respond such comments with proper business etiquettes and sentiments. Please do not take them personally. Remember, it is not you (as a person) commenting on them but you are representing an entire company.

“Feel Good” Factor

The community should always carry a “Feel Good” factor about company, people, clients and their services on social media. There should be a consistent effort for company to engage your audience into new developments, updates, news etc on your company. Also, try to run various contests and quizzes (even if without any rewards) on your page and give credits to the winners. It always creates an attachment of the person to the brand and helps to neutralize any negative feelings.

Social media as a channel needs openness and transparency from employer’s point of view to bring long term effective results. You just cannot expect goodness if you are not prepared for the risks. It does expose an opportunity to attract some rough comments but it also provides to clear an air publically to help brand-building. Moreover, this cannot be a reason to not to open to use this excellent channel for people engagement and brand-building.

http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/

I recently came across this search engine which searches people on Google Plus (Thanks to Katherine). While searching people on G+ got my attention, statistics it has shown got me really interested. These statistics are directly related fields people have populated on G+. I am sure not 100% people have filled in their G+ profile; but this does show us a good trend of people on Google +.

• Around one half of people on G+ are not married.
• 1/3^rd of people over here are Male. It also claims that 9k falls under “other” gender.
• Most of them are from IT backgrounds (Job Titles). Again 1/3^rd.
• 7 out of 8 are not there on twitter. Very surprising???
• 8 out of 9 do not have Facebook profile. Shocked??
• India is second biggest country on G+ after USA.
• CA and NYC are biggest counties and cities. Predictable J

Some are funny, some are informative and some are misleading!!!

Don’t think that Google Plus has revealed new profiles that are not active on FB and Twitter; it’s just that Google+ profiles are not 100% populate. You will see a changing trend on the same page in coming days with thousands of new profiles added to G+ and populating their profiles better.

Just an observation you see

Goto your target company website.
Observe URL and domain. E.g. www.tavant.com/contact_us.html
In this case company email ID will end with tavant.com.

Put this command on Google… “*@tavant.com”. This will show you all the email addresses on web for this company.

Observe email format. E.g. firstname.lastname@company.com. Figure out what your target company’s format is…

Form your candidate’s email address using same format.

Goto email verifiers like… verify-email.org. Check whether your email is valid. This is normally 70 – 80% effective.

You’ve got yourself a good contact details to begin a conversation for headhunting

Enjoy sourcing!!!!

I have been exploring various methods to find best way for sourcing in India. I will start a new series of articles specially for Indian Geo to explore my own country from eagle eye of sourcing. This is my first article introducing various channels / social networking specially for India. I hope you would enjoy…

Social Networking / X-Ray for Indian Candidates

In my opinion, following are few major social networking websites specially for Indian candidates. Some of these are global but we can work around to find Indian candidates as per our requirement.

I have also provided x-ray search strings to find these guys without having to register in them. However, I strongly recommend for registration in case you would like to explore them in detail.

Relationships Matter | LinkedIn 

• Do you know that India has number 3 populations on LinkedIn?
• Free account let you see only first 10 pages. X-Ray search give you full access. How?

How to search?

Site:in.linkedin.com java AND spring AND bangalore -dir -events

TooStep | Discover and share your professional expertise 

One of the most popular Indian Professional network – just like LinkedIn. Are you a member?

How to search?

site:toostep.com java AND spring AND bangalore inurl:profile

SiliconIndia: India’s Largest Professional Network 

Professional networking site for India.

How to search?

site:siliconindia.com/profiles java AND spring AND Bangalore

Brijj.com – Professional Networking – Search People – Exchange … 

One more professional network – by Naukri.com

How to search?

site:brijj.com java AND spring AND bangalore -inurl:group

Matrimonial Sites J

You think I’m joking? Check this out.

How to search?

site:shaadi.com java -careers

Jigsaw Business Contact Directory of Business Contacts and Company … 

We did cover Jigsaw in earlier editions. It’s a contact database which works on barter system.

How to search?

site:jigsaw.com “java developer” hcl

Plaxo – your address book for life. 

Plaxo.com is your online address book to store your contacts which are visible to your network if you are connected.

How to search?

site:plaxo.com/profile “software engineer” india

Twitter 

Searching people on twitter – we covered a full blown article in last edition. Here’s the search string to find Indian people. This only works on BING.

How to search?

site:twitter.com intitle:”on twitter” location NEAR:2 india wipro

ApnaCircle 

ApnaCircle.com is one more professional networking site.

How to search?

site:apnacircle.com/en/profile java

I am sure that recruiters / sourcers within India would add more to this list. I strongly believe that you should do a good research of your target Geo before you start looking out for candidates. India is an emerging country when it comes to social networking. You may not find people online as easily as in US / Europe. It’s all about PULL factor and not PUSH… I guess that’s a different topic for blog eh?

Do you know that every twitter account has a bio section associated it. You can search bio through various tools and uncover good candidates / references.

TweepSearch :: Twitter Profile and Bio Search

Twitter bio and profile search, even allow you to limit by your personalized friends and followers.

tweepsearch.com

Follower Wonk: Cool stuff with Twitter bios, stats, and such

You can not only search twitter bios but also compare two twitter usernames. Cool isn’t it?

http://followerwonk.com/

Twitter Search, Twitter Directory, Twitter Yellow Pages :: Twellow

A search directory of people by area of expertise, profession or other attribute listed in personal profiles on Twitter.

http://www.twellow.com

TwitJobSearch.com – A Job Search Engine for Twitter.

Twitter Job posting tool

http://www.twitjobsearch.com/static/add-jobs

Do you still need more Twitter Apps?

http://www.squidoo.com/twitterapps

Earlier today I was delivering a Boolean Training session for our new members in the sourcing team. My aim was to simplify the Boolean concept for sourcing. Often it is mistaken that “Boolean” is very scientific and relatively tough which is why people tend to ignore. Finally – I found the connection!!! Very simple and life-like (!)…

I took an example of life and how the sourcing of candidates is very similar to our life. In life, our choices are the keywords and we either choose to go ahead with them OR drop them. Right choices bring expected results and if we do not put them in right order – it all messes up.

Sounding familiar to how we build search strings in sourcing?

Let’s look at each Boolean operator

AND

We keep adding many variables into our life to try to make it perfect.

Money AND happiness AND satisfaction AND “work-life balance” AND fun AND adventure AND hobbies.

Very little we realize – more AND’s we put in this search; lesser the results will be.

It’s more important to use combination of these at right times. That is a best way to extract most out of life. Do not restrict your search results!!!

OR

One of the most important operators from the list!!

It is imperative that we look out for alternate options if your desired variable is not available at the particular time. We waste lot of time waiting at something which may not be available. It is better we look for alternative ways to progress.

Work Satisfaction = Money OR passion OR dedication OR enthusiasm OR excellence

We tend to forget that if we excel in what we believe – money will follow!!

Perfect substitute??

NOT

Sometimes we need to draw a boundary and should not go beyond our own limits. When you know what you can not compromise on – it’s really easy to filter it out to get your desired results.

Money AND fame AND satisfaction AND love NOT unethical

Even though you say “No Strings Attached”, these strings bind you together as one unit. These variables build your character (read resume) and help you to grow as a mature person (read grow in your career).

All our life we shuffle across various search strings with time and condition using different combinations of choices (keywords). Our aim is to get perfect life.

What we forget however is just like “There is no such thing as perfect search string”; you can not have a “Perfect Life”. Learn to use AND, OR and NOT at right time, at right place with right keywords.

Have fun with your search strings!!!!

The current “war” in the web space is presenting new challenges to existing players like Google. Especially with sudden surge of social media, few people doubt how Google will cope-up against Facebook / Twitter. Little we understand that both these channels play with “information” and do very little to innovate with it.

QWiki has been recently released in TechCrunch. It is an excellent and smart example of information is more powerful and impactful when it adds with an “experience”. While all other leading web players are busy in focusing on sharing, QWiki ads up a spice in presenting that information. On the outset QWiki is a natural extension of Wiki (Wikipedia) family. This tool is design to present information of any topic with voice, pictures and graphics. In short – adding human touch to information.

For an example – if you search for Steve Jobs of Apple on Google, you will get Wikipedia page showing all text information of Steve. Now imagine, your search results throw you a story of Steve Jobs evolving from a student to Millionaire owner of Apple. It also adds lot of pictures, graphics and date-range of related subjects to Steve along with background voice of a sweet-voice lady describing this as an interesting story. This is exactly what “Information Experience” can bring to you.

Though this is not designed for sourcing, recruitment etc – my brain has already started to analyze from that angle. So – this is what I see as current state and future of “Information Experience”. This might be in boundary of QWiki OR outside.

QWiki – Features

1. You need an invitation from QWiki to pen an account. Volunteer yourself for beta testing.
2. An information stored about a specific place, person OR any other popular topic along with their statistics, audio-visual presentation (like PPT).
3. Presently it contains very limited topics (no comparison to Wikipedia). The database of topics will increase in coming days.
4. A natural step ahead after Wikipedia and Wolfram-Alpha
5. Ability to share with Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn makes it a very interesting tool.
6. Extremely engaging and interesting way to convert information into story with images.
7. Millions of interesting and popular topics listed.
8. Also referencing to the source of its information on Wikipedia, Google, Flickr, YouTube etc.
9. In the end – it also shows you “related” topics to view.
10. QWiki is in Alpha testing phase currently and only open for limited usage. So it will have few very basic errors. It’s giving away T-Shirts as prize though J
11. All in all – a truly out-of-box “Information Experience”.

This is just a start! We are living in information managed world today; everything is about information. Most of our information is plain HTML / WORD text. However, what if few kinds of information can be presented with this “experience”. You will surely get that WOW! effect. Even from recruitment sourcing point of view – this has a lot of potential.

QWiki – Things we would like to see

1. What if QWiki transforms itself from a Wiki database to actual search engine? Imagine your search engine pages in QWiki way. WOW!!!
2. If we key-in any candidate name – it should be able to search related information from other sources and put it together in their current format. Awesome!!! Would not your hiring manager prefer such presentation?
3. How about presenting your job requirement to prospective candidate in this format? Candidates would be able to visualize their company, responsibilities, growth path etc. WOW!!!
4. Great tool for intelligence on your competitors to know their company information, statistics, history and any other information. (May be they can add management teams in future!)
5. I believe being in Alpha Testing – they have not used all the sources of information in full strength. It’s like Google + Wikipedia + YouTube + Image Search. It’s all about integrating technologies!
6. What if they tie up with LinkedIn / Facebook to fetch user information and create their own directory of people?

Possibilities are endless. QWiki has provided a much needed sparkle to force information (Search / Social Media) providers to think in different way and getting back to their basics. I am frankly sick and tired of hearing Google VS Facebook. Technologies needs to complement and shaking hands with one other. Innovating will keep them relatively secure from being absolute.

I am sure you will enjoy this information “Experience”…

I’ve recently posted about how to search twitter bio. Though it is not a complete way to search twitter – but some attempt to dig deeper. In the same way – I have been searching for a good solution for Facebook and BranchOut attracted my attention.

What is BranchOut?

BranchOut is a Facebook application (not created by Facebook) to expand your career network to include anyone you connect on Facebook. In simple words – you can share your jobs, jobs of your connections to your network. You can create your profile, list jobs and invite your connections to become part of your network. This way you and your connections can view all the jobs in your entire (2^nd) degree network. You can also search people by companies and by keywords as well on their bio / title.

Features – BranchOut

• In BranchOut – your network is limited till 2^nd level; unlike till 3^rd level on LinkedIn. You can easily view all the jobs posted in your network by location and keywords.
• Once you open any jobs – it also allows you to view any other people in your network within same company. Objective is to gain references. Most of the jobs today are filled by the references.
• You can also invite all your network people to join your network. This will help you to expand your network and gain access to their network.
• It also allows you to search people by company.
• BranchOut has a facility to import your resume from LinkedIn. This helps profile to become richer and easily searchable.
• Your jobs are also become visible to 2^nd level contacts as well. Better visibility.

OK – so this is like a LinkedIn of Facebook?

Well, that is what they intended; but unfortunately not close enough. LinkedIn is in an elite league and currently has no competition; not even from Facebook OR Twitter. Though I must admit that BranchOut surely has a potential in future to make the entry in elite league.

So – what’s not in favor of BranchOut?

Why BranchOut doesn’t really work?

• BranchOut on the outset is really a Jobs/Career network application. The main objective is to distribute jobs in two degree connected network. This really does not help much in proactively sourcing candidates.
• LinkedIn primarily started as a professional networking site which then turned to emphasize more on jobs/recruitment. Hence, it attracted a big group of professionals with clear intention of networking, idea exchange, sharing knowledge etc. BranchOut starts with career/jobs network – which does not generate much interest between common users.
• In contrast to LinkedIn – it only reaches to 2^nd degree. LinkedIn works because of mainly its 3^rd degree network. This way LinkedIn allows us to reach network outside our industry; as most of the second degree contacts tend to be in our industry itself (recruitment/staffing).
• To gain an access to second level contacts – it requires that contact to be subscribed in BranchOut. In my experience – a large group of BranchOut contacts are Recruiters. This does not help me in searching candidates.
• As my most of the 1^st and 2^nd level contacts are recruiters; I can only gain references from my closed community. This does not open a layer of industry professionals as they need to sign-in BranchOut. However, BranchOut does not serve any good purpose for them to join in.
• It does not have any good facility to search candidates directly. This is where LinkedIn scores in a big way. It depends on its members to provide references and do not have any proactive approach.
• The biggest failure for me is that even after sitting on such a huge data-bank like Facebook (larger than LI) it only has relatively small percentage of people using them. It fails to attract non-recruitment audience which defeats the entire purpose of using this.

This is nothing against BranchOut as an application; this merely serves for example. The other applications like HirePlug which are quite similar; however ground reality is they are more of jobs spreading application than entire social media recruitment.

The big question however is how Facebook and Twitter will compete against LinkedIn on social recruiting front? I can think of two approaches out here: -

Building your network for longer run

As oppose to LinkedIn where you have a ready-made database with access till 3^rd connection users – Facebook apps will require building their own network. LinkedIn too require building their own network but it’s more established, well-known, sourcing user friendly approach than Facebook apps. It’s a “Pull” approach where you need to attract people and enroll with your own efforts to gain any advantage in longer run. Don’t expect BranchOut to give similar results and different contacts than LinkedIn in near future. It’s not a replacement of LinkedIn but it will work as support tool to extract more data from Facebook which might be different from LinkedIn.

The biggest advantage for BranchOut is that it has a great (better than LI) database; however not a great mechanism to use it.

Can Facebook itself venture?

I’m sure at some point of time Facebook will go LinkedIn way. Currently there is no way you can search the existing data of Facebook profiles like current employer, job title etc. You have to use apps like BO OR Advanced Search 2.2 beta which needs to build their own database with opt-in option which does not work on mass-basis. Why Facebook can’t provide a good way to search people with their own methodology? I believe that will be a great boom in sourcing; ditto for Twitter.

Social Media Recruitment is presently more of “Push” approach which means you have a lot of recruiters pushing their jobs and praying for response. In that case this is just a natural extension of job board? Is this what SM recruitment means? I disagree…

Ideally Social Media (Twitter/FB) should be used to build your own targeted network which will allow you to network your jobs to gain referrals and increase visibility into who’s who of your industry. If someone is actively looking out for a job and respond to your ad on Facebook – is this really a value add? You can find this guy on job board as well. While BranchOut is a good effort to start this initiative – it will take a long time to gain ROI for tools such these.

And why Branch-Out against Linked-In?? Sound similar

Most of us only know about very basic operators of Google like inurl, intitle, site etc. Recently Bing has also coming up as fast back up option for Google – challenging its monopoly. I am providing a full list of advance operators from both Google and Bing which will help you to source specific candidates.

http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/ff808421.aspx (For Bing)

http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html#intext (For Google)

Yatedo.com

Yatedo is a free people search engine which helps you find and contact anybody throughout the web. Yatedo has developed and continue developing technologies that simplifies and facilitates the search and social experience to help people find and connect to each others.

http://www.yatedo.com/