Sourcing 101 – Where Do I Go After Monster and CareerBuilder?

Several times within the last few days, I have seen Forum postings on various recruiting websites that start with “I’ve posted to Monster, CareerBuilder and ….what do I do now?” Wow. I checked myself – as I started falling into sourcing snobbery, because quite honestly, there are always companies just taking to the ‘net as a source for finding candidates. And many of them haven’t been entrenched in the massive debate of passive vs active candidates that so many recruiting professionals have listened to over the last couple of years.

According to the US Census Bureau, there are more than 22 million employers in the US. And I bet if you were to gather some of them up in a random way, you’d have those that set the bar for the next best thing in online sourcing, like Sodexo. You’d also have those that rely exclusively on TPR’s and have no internal recruiting department. And then, you’d have those that were 1 person recruiting departments and multi-tasking dynamos, and you’ll have some companies that split the difference, not extremely small and not extremely large.

I really enjoy introducing recruiting professionals to the world of online search. Showing the basics of Boolean and the moment a recruiter realizes the untapped potential of “free” candidates is wickedly rewarding. So, when I see the question, “I’ve posted to Monster, Careerbuilder and… what do I do now?” My take is – start with Boolean search. In fact, start right here with this formula:

(inurl:resume OR intitle:resume OR inurl:cv OR intitle:cv OR inurl:vitae OR intitle:vitae)

Run that in Google or Yahoo or Exalead and you’ll get a ton of results. Next, add on your keywords. So, if you’re looking for an RN with pediatric oncology experience, add that information on like this:

(inurl:resume OR intitle:resume OR inurl:cv OR intitle:cv OR inurl:vitae OR intitle:vitae) (RN OR “registered nurse”) pediatric oncology

Would I type all of that out every single time? No, I’d use bookmarks to store my strings and re-run them. Or another method is to create alerts (you can definitely do this in Google) and have the updated results sent to you on a basis of your choosing. Or you can save all your search strings in a Google doc. Now some people prefer Word. I prefer Google, because I can access it anywhere, anytime. I work from multiple pc’s including a laptop, and portability is key.

But also key is editing and updating your search and going beyond the basics. Think about your candidates and all the keywords they would use to describe themselves and their professions. Include every acronym for every association they might be a part of. Edit and modify those searches and run them on different engines. Even though I’m partial to Google, I run searches everywhere because my top results change.

I use to work for a physician, and when he encountered any problem, he’d say, “This is only the tip of the iceberg” and for sourcing, what I showed you above is really just the tip of the iceberg. You can go so much further. Join me for my next post and see where it’s going next.