So, last time I wrote, I mentioned that I have seen Forum postings on various recruiting websites that start with “I’ve posted to Monster, CareerBuilder and…what do I do now?” In that post, I mentioned going onto Boolean searching is a great idea. But what if you have a hiring manager in your office demanding results right now and you want to show him something solid?
Professional networks are your answer. Now, how you decide to use them is up to you.
Certainly, networking is fabulous. But you need names now, and you don’t have the fancy shmancy LinkedIn Recruiter program, so what do you do?
You XRay the site. You literally look at all the pages publicly indexed that have the professionals you need. How flexible you make your search will enable you to find as many or few results as you desire. So that hiring manager is still leaning over your shoulder, and you need to find electrical engineers stat. Preferably senior engineers, but definitely you need results now.
Let’s try this:
–site:linkedin.com/in/ “electrical engineer” –intitle:directory
That’s fine, but you need better, so try this:
–site:linkedin.com/in/ (lead OR senior) “electrical engineer” -intitle:directory
This is great. But your hiring manager really doesn’t want to relocate people, so let’s keep our results to the DC Metro area.
–site:linkedin.com/in/ (lead OR senior) “electrical engineer” “washington, d.c. metro” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates
Now you’ve got yourself 40 odd leads in the DC metro area. And their leads – follow up with them and gain more names and work it! You’ve got things to do. And the best thing about your two original strings? Just replace the LinkedIn domain with any professional networking domain and you can work on getting even more results. From here, it’s all up to you!
Kelly is the Recruitment Manager for Westat, a leading social science research organization headquartered in Rockville, Maryland.