by Glenn Gutmacher

There's quite a bit of buzz about LinkedIn's Answers section which allows people to pose questions and read answers in various business topic areas. Some people leverage it for help from the communal intelligence of LI's membership, while others see it as a branding platform for their expertise, among other uses.

I just learned of a better way to keep up on the Q&A in your favorite categories than what LI itself offers.  LI gives you a feed link to receive the questions in your RSS reader, but it's ONLY for the questions (e.g., from the Hiring/Human Resources main Answers page, it's this link). But if you want to see the questions AND answers, then use this free RSS mashup by the folks over at Edgehunt.

You'll see they have links to all the major RSS readers for each LinkedIn Q&A category (such as this for Hiring/Human Resources), or an aggregated feed for all categories if you're really obsessed.

Some enhancements that Steven says are coming down the pike include: search function, alerting and 'you responded to' rss feed (automatically recognizes and feeds you with all Q&A to which you responded).  If you have suggestions to improve the mashup, please contact Steven at chriss {at] edgehunt [dot} com

 

P.S. If you're using the RSS reader built into the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 web browser (or would like to -- try it), it will display links to the Q&A for each subcategory (e.g., HRH_CMP for compensation/benefits, HRH_PPO for personnel policies, and HRH_SFF for staffing/recruiting), too. To add the feed, just click the little orange RSS icon (near top right of your browser between the home and printer icon)s when you're at a feed URL like the one in the previous paragraph and it will be added to your Favorites Center, which you see when clicking the star icon at top left of your browser. Or go there using the traditional browser text menu along the very top: View --> Explorer Bar --> Feeds

by Glenn Gutmacher

Thanks to my fellow sourcer Ron Bloch over at Dynamic Research for forwarding this item:

Based on the name of the Trojan involved, Monster was clearly the target in this major breach.

And once they had the resumes, out went the phishing emails nicely mimicking Monster branding with a malware link!  One of the commenters on the above post said it was probably connected to these.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Chris Power, Monster's CFO of global operations, resigned on Friday.

It's almost enough to make me feel sad for the company that's made untold millions off the recruiting industry.  Or maybe I should respect founder Jeff Taylor more for great timing in leaving the company.

Let me quickly add thoughts about the last three, since they have been covered in depth on various industry lists, and all of them were discussed in another post on this very blog two years ago, but then move to more detail about Jigsaw.  Spoke does not have the informational depth or quality of LinkedIn, because it's web-spidered data, whereas LinkedIn's are profiles created by actual people.  ZoomInfo uses spidering, but its depth is stronger than Spoke thanks to their data-processing algorithms.  Each of these sites have their value, but it depends in part on the types of passive prospects you seek.  The more publicly-visible someone is (think executives and marketing roles), the more likely you will find a critical mass of info on the spidering-based services.  Otherwise, LinkedIn or Jigsaw will probably work better.

What may not be clear from the two posts about Jigsaw.com below is that you can also use its functionality for free.  It's called the
"PLAY" (rather than "PAY") option when you first register.  The catches are:

- you need to input your credit card as insurance against possible future charges, should you convert to PAY status (though I can verify I've never been charged on it for 2+ years)

- you must add the professional contact info of 25 contacts each month to the system (who are not already in there) or you can add more (e.g., 75 would cover you for 3 months).

- again, it must be professional contact info -- if you try to add the contact's AOL or Comcast home email, the entry will be rejected.

You can then retrieve the contact info of as many contacts as you put in.  And you don't actually give up the corresponding points from your account until you have run your search, clicked on the blinded version of the business card (it shows company, job title and location, but not name, phone or email) and then agreed to redeem points.

As Jigsaw puts it, "Most members add contacts that are correct but have little business value to them. They then get contacts of extreme value for their business purposes. The contacts that they add to Jigsaw can then give great value to another user and their purpose."

Here are two of many methods used by recruiters on Jigsaw.  Your ethics will determine which ones you feel comfortable employing:

1. Whenever you receive a resume from a candidate that you don't have an immediate need for, ask if you can share their information with others who may have opportunities.  If they say yes, many recruiters say you have the mandate to post them on Jigsaw.

2. If you're generally ok with #1, but don't feel comfortable inputting their primary work contact info, realize that many people now have web domains for their freelance, etc., pursuits (e.g., a personal website at www.joesmith.com) and you could list joseph@joesmith.com and whatever phone # is on the website as an acceptable Jigsaw record.

Yes, occasionally you will come across some obsolete contact info when you redeem points for someone, but then you can report it to Jigsaw, and once your challenge is validated, you get your points back.  All in all, it's a pretty good system! 

 

P.S.  Jigsaw had an incentive program where you could actually sell your extra points to others for cash, but that was terminated last month.  The site reports a new incentive program will be introduced soon.

by Glenn Gutmacher

Thanks in part to the 3-stage sourcing challenge, there's been a lot of buzz about this first all-sourcing industry conference (now just under a month away, but I've been pleasantly surprised to see how cheap the round-trip airline rates to Atlanta still are that week).  However, other than the impressive list of speakers and topics, I wasn't sure if people on the outside were convinced enough of its value to actually take the leap to register (first-time events often suffer a stigma until proven)

But I finally received a few emails this week that I think will convince you:

1) Shally sent an email to his network with the best set of substantive reasons I've seen thus far for industry people to attend.  I took the liberty of posting the email on my website here, since I can't find it on Shally's or on SourceCon's.  (Let's see if I get in trouble for that. ;-)

2) They sponsored Jim Stroud's "History of Sourcing", creatively presented in a timeline format: http://jimstroud.com/thehistoryofsourcing.html which goes way back and includes a great friend who I consider the true pioneer of recruiting research (see 1974).

3) The mass email from SourceCon this week is a Q&A formatted mini-interview with me about why I'm presenting there and what I think people will get out of it.  Once again, I took the liberty of posting the email on my website here, since I can't find it elsewhere.

The only press/promotion kind of stuff you see on their site (if you click "Latest News") is about their Sourcing Challenge.  I understand they're trying to create a secretive feel to the whole thing, but if you're going to mass-email thousands in the industry, what do you get out of not posting it to your website?

P.S. I have no financial incentives related to SourceCon (other than them paying my travel expenses and registration), but I personally would love to see a recruiting industry conference purely about sourcing succeed. Wouldn't you?

by Glenn Gutmacher

 

A wide-ranging, fairly thorough, thought-provoking and very readable treatment of the "future of work" theme is what the latest issue of BusinessWeek magazine (dated Aug. 20, 2007 but already available online for free to non-subscribers) is devoted to: 

 

The concept of collective intelligence and collaboration, among other work evolutions are explored: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047438.htm and particularly in this article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047426.htm

 

"How to keep your job onshore" nicely explains some things you can do, with real-life examples:

 

A few articles on creating your personal brand: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047419.htm

 

How to make workplaces healthier: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047427.htm

 

Why airports are becoming more than just shipping and travel hubs: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047434.htm

 

And quite a bit more worth reading, plus a few thematically-related online slide shows that BW has become known for, for all you visual learners.

by Glenn Gutmacher

 

No, this isn't another one of those sourcing challenge contests, but my happy announcement that I've exceeded 1 million contacts at 2nd degree in my LinkedIn network.  Why am I not touting the 6 million in my total network, instead?  Because 2nd degree means that when you connect with me directly, they instantly become part of your viewable/searchable 3rd degree network.   And in this business, I find both sides do better with more sharing.

 

So if you haven't already (or if you are, feel free to tell a friend), use

www.linkedin.com/inviteMany (so you can invite some other highly-networked folks into your network at the same time -- see below) and type my email in the format firstname.lastname@microsoft.com (yes, that's Glenn.Gutmacher, but I'm trying to avoid the spambots).  Now you should have more people showing up under the "Your Network" tab in your search results, and hopefully fewer "blinded" profiles under the "LinkedIn network" tab. 

 

I was close to the 2nd degree million figure last week but easily jumped it over the weekend thanks to Paul DeBettignies (a/k/a MN Headhunter) who made me "Person of the Day" on Friday, a feature of his "Recruiters On LinkedIn" network on RecruitingBlogs.com.  I also want to give props to a few people in particular who have generously shared their advice on LinkedIn to utilize it more effectively (some directly, some indirectly) which has also helped me to dramatically grow my network in the process, though I continue to pick up tips about LinkedIn every day from the voluminous (and growing) range of resources available:

 

- Dave Mendoza (known for the SixDegreesFromDave blog and as the LinkedIn meganetworker, whose fame in that regard even helped secure him work as a contract sourcer FOR them)

- Shally Steckerl (my former boss at Microsoft, now training and consulting more than full-time as JobMachine Inc., who helps people in more ways than he'll ever know, and with whom I was happy to collaborate on creating a popular LinkedIn cheatsheet last year)

- Vincent Wright (the guru of LinkedIn networking groups - you'd probably learn almost all you need to know just by looking over his shoulder for a day)

- Joe Bartling and Chris Mayaud (author of the first e-book and blog about LinkedIn, respectively, that I found truly useful),

- Ray van den Bel (has been very active lately, e.g., see his Open Networkers group)

- the Broadlook team (who will share a lot if you buy at least one of their products)

 

This is not to snub other gurus I've learned from in other aspects of sourcing, but in terms of LinkedIn, the above are my standouts.  However, Otis Collier's free LinkedIn how-to video is worth a look, too!

Find physician jobs on The Recruiter.com.

by Glenn Gutmacher

Send your sourcing questions to me [questions at recruiting-online dot com] for possible inclusion in future blog posts. All personally-identifying information will be removed. Answers are free to selected questioners.  

Q: I'm looking for business operations people who are experts in process improvement, preferably from consulting firms in the San Francisco Bay area. How can I find them?

A: Start by looking for synonyms around your key terms. Review your company's information on what's expected in the job, search online directories like Wikipedia, and review job descriptions by your target competitors. This will likely pull up synonyms to "process improvement" like "performance measurement", "planning process", etc. All of those can become part of a boolean OR clause in any search strings for resumes, bios, or directory/conference/association name lists you wish to run.

Speaking of associations, there may be some niche ones related to process improvement and/or business operations. Try variants of this string on your favorite major search engines (results overlap between engines is surprisingly low, so use more than one!):

"process improvement" association

The above finds associations, which will have conference presenters, member lists, local chapter boards of directors, etc., on their sites -- a great start for names!

Continuing in this vein, there may be some niche job boards for business operations/process improvement, and you can post your job there. Try this search on any major search engine to find them:

"process improvement" "job board"

The other nice thing about the above is it will also pull up individual companies' own job listing pages, so you add to your competitor target list, too! Speaking of competitors, realize that the major consulting firms have long histories, so if you're willing to hire corporate alumni of major consulting firms, realize that Accenture used to be "Arthur Andersen" and BearingPoint was KPMG, so that gives you a few more company name keywords for your searches. PriceWaterhouse also goes by the "PWC Global" moniker. Some people spell the newfangled company names as one word, while other use two. Therefore, try CapGemini as well as "Cap Gemini" and BearingPoint as well as "Bearing Point".

If you search for your keywords on a job posting aggregator like Indeed or SimplyHired, you will find the original job boards where the relevant openings were posted, and discover more niche boards that way. You'll also find individual competitor names, too.

Last but not least, since you said you prefer the Bay Area, you can add geographic elements to your search strings (e.g., "Bay Area" OR "San Francisco") to find the local associations and chapters of (inter)national ones, which also help narrow the total size of your results to a more scanable number.

There are more ways to pull up names, of course -- we haven't even touched the social networks, user groups or blog search -- but I suspect the above will give you enough of a call down list to generate the candidate pipeline flow you need.

Search for Austin jobs at itzbig.