Shane's Recruitment Blog
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Recruitment Intelligence
My next webinar is on the 16th of February.
Again I will be running the webinar twice to accommodate the size of the audience.
For those viewers in Africa the times are 11:00am and 1:00pm Central African Time. For those in the UK and Ireland the time is 9:00am and 11:00am. Greenwich Mean Time
To register for a webinar please click the link below.
Africa 11:00am CAT or UK and Ireland 9:00am GMT - https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/938213894
Africa 1:00pm CAT or UK and Ireland 11:00am GMT - https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/454507734
Boolean Search made simple - Sourcing Candidates and Vacancies
This is a recording of the first of my new series of recruitment webinars. This week I’m talking about using the internet to find candidates and vacancies. In my normal job at Intelligence Software I spend my time developing recruitment software, clever recruitment ideas and techniques to help recruiters make more placements. Recruitment has never been a simple process and if anything it is becoming more complicates. In this series of Webinars I'll be talking about the many things that recruiters can do to recruit more effectively.
This week I'm looking at Boolean search, what it is a what to do with it. Boolean is simply using the words AND OR and NOT in your searches.
(“Quantity Surveyor” OR QS OR RICS) AND London
This is a Boolean search that can be entered straight into Google. Notice how quotation marks surround the phrase Quantity Surveyor, this tells Google that these two words should be found together in that order. I am using OR in capitol letters, with normal Google searches this shouldn't matter but for other searches it does mater so I always capitalise these words if for no other reason to remind me that it is an Operator in my search and that I'm not looking for the word ‘or' on the web page. Finaly notice that I have used brackets ( ) around all the OR terms and before the AND London, this is important because computers are not that smart and may not know that London is a place and not some specific type of Quantity Surveyor. As a general rule, when using AND and OR together you will need brackets.
When using Google or LinkedIn to search you actually don't need to use AND both those searches will assume that an AND should be between words unless those words are surrounded by quotation marks. The perform a NOT search, simply use a – character immediately before the word or phrase. For example if you do not want to find estate agents, who may also be members of the RICS then add –“estate agent” to the search string.
All this said, my Google search will still give me millions of results and so in effect I am no closer to finding someone I can place. To improve my chances I might think that it would be great if Google only returned LinkedIn profiles. I can tell Google to only search Linked using the site: operator.
site:linkedin.com
This is called an x-ray search and simply means using google to search just one web site, in this case LinkedIn. X-ray searches are fantastic for recruiters as they can be used on any web site. In coming weeks I'll be talking about sourcing of other sites like Google plus and Twitter and this will be one of the tools to recruit from these places.
Unfortunately LinkedIn has many different types of pages as well as profiles. I can remove these by telling Google I don't want directory pages or Group pages etc by using the –inurl: operator
-inurl:dir –inurl:groups
This will give you good results and should show just LinkedIn profile pages.
The same Boolean search can be used directly with LinkedIn. Simply type into the people search box and the AND, OR and – operators will work just as they do in Google. LinkedIn also gives a range of filters on the left hand side of the results to better refine the search. Linkedin search work in a different way to Google. Firstly its search is based on my LinkedIn network, this means it limits who I see and how much information it gives me about each profile. LinkedIn search does however give me lots of wonderful filters so I can get to the people I want to recruit.
My final search tool is a tool that I developed myself. Developing Recruitment Software is very often less about clever recruiting tools and more about keeping the recruitment process as simple as possible. The Linkedin search is very good but more limiting than Google, unfortunately to search through Google you have to write quite long and complicated Boolean strings. To solve this problem I created a Google Custom Search specifically for recruitment and it is available for free on my web site at www.intel-sw.com/search.php This recruitment tool allows you to enter a Boolean search and it will only find Google profiles.
When I developed this I was very interested, as well as finding candidates, to also be able to find vacancies. On running a search there are further filters that allow you to find profiles of people who have just started a new job. This is extremely for recruitment consultants looking for new vacancies to work on. If a person has just changed jobs then it is likely that their previous employer has a vacancy. Not only that. To have knowledge about the person who has just left gives the recruiter an insight to the skills that the employer will be interested in.
Once the recruiter has identified a prospective client in need of staff. Simply using the company search on the same page www.intel-sw.com/search.php will enable then to quickly identify all the people they are connected to who work there.
If you find this webinar useful, please tell your friends and colleagues about it, tweet about it and share it where ever possible. If you like what I do please connect with me on LinkedIn and write a recommendation. My future webinars will be posted on my blog page so please check that for information.
Engaging Canddidates
In the third part of my social recruiting series, I'm again joined by Bill Boorman talking about the ways to approach and engage with candidates.
Social Recruiting - Communities, Talent Pools and a new way of recruiting.
This week I'm talking about communities and how to use these for recruiting or marketing your business.
Next week the webinar discusses the process of finding and enguaging candidates through social media. To register for this webinar Click Here
Social Recruiting
This week I'm delighted to have been join by Bill Boorman talking about Social recruiting.
Bill is an expert in this field and in the webinar he share some of his ideas and stratigies to develop effective Social Recruiting stratigies.
More on LinkedIn
As a precourser to this Thursdays LinkedIn webinar(Click here to Register to listen in.), I have recorded a short tutorial on adding an Apply with LinkedIn button to your web site.
I have a feeling that this could turn into quite a big thing for the recruitment industry. Firstly, given the number of people who are getting excited about mobile recruiting, using your smart phone to find and apply for jobs, this is the perfect tool. Mobile recruiting had been doomed to failure as very few people have their CV loaded onto their phone (Would you want to employ someone who did?) Having a Apply with LinkedIn button however would mean that they no longer need to have their CV with them, all they have to do is have a LinkedIn account. I could see this becoming a standard part of job application, it is certainly something we are building into Intelligence.
All that said there is a negative side to this Apply with LinkedIn button for agency recruiters. Firstly, the application arrives as a .pdf document, which does not make it the easiest thing for an agency to convert to their standard cv format. Secondly even if they did the LinkedIn CV matches word for word their LinkedIn profile, a single phrase of which, typed into Google would give the agencies client direct access to the Candidate. I'm not sure LinkedIn likes agencies that much. They are happy to sell them paid for products but ultimately they see Agencies as being a competitor in their market. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.
Google Plus - the next big thing for recruiters
Google Plus is Googles brand new social platform. It has been described as the recruiter friendly Facebook. Even though it is only a few weeks old it has already got tens of millions of profiles. From a recruitment point of view this is massively exciting as these tens of millions of profiles are all up to date and reasonably searchable. Google + is a mixture of ideas from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter combined with some new stuff from Google. In this webinar I'm talking about what it is and how to search it. I also mention the new Google Plus One button which I have now put in the menu bar of this site. If you like this video, or any of the content on this web page, please click the button above and tell your circles.
As an added bonus I made a very short tutorial on how to add your LinkedIn connections into Google+.
If you have not yet set up a Google Plus account, please click here to get involved.
Next weeks webinar is all about LinkedIn and I'll be speaking from the most exciting recruitment of the year, truLondon. To register for this please click here This is the last in my series of LinkedIn webinars, given that the last one had hundreds of people registering for it and vastly exceeded the audience I'm allowed please register and connect in early to be sure of getting a place.
LinkedIn - Sourcing Candidates
In the second in my series of LinkedIn Webinars, I talk about the free version of LinkedIn and some of the techniques to find candidates and be found. I talk about using LinkedIn to search and find people and how searches can also be run through Google. I also show the inner workings of some of my Google Custom Searches and how they can be used to, not only find candidates, but also find vacancies.
APSO - Securing your fee
A few months ago I was delighted to have been asked to speak at the APSO conference and it was a pleasure to be involved with a organization doing what it can to improve the industry. At that time I was talking about our experiments with webinars and the idea was hatched to run an APSO focused webinar. The webinar was planned by Lloyd Dicks along with Janet Early, Roly Boardman and Huida Shenker and they discussed the role of APSO helping raise the standards within the industry, their code of ethics and what they can do at times of dispute. There was a large audiance and I did my best to reflect the questions and comments that came in from them. The following is a recording of the webinar.
Next week I am running the second in my LinkedIn series all about sourcing candidates. See below for a recording of last weeks webinar and registration details for next week.
This is the first of a three part webinar series on LinkedIn. Today I'm joined by Bob Moody an account executive at LinkedIn who presents on the range of Linkedin tools for agency recruiters. Following his presentation we had a wide range of question from the audience and we did our best to answer them. The next episode in this series is on Thursday the 18th of August. I will be talking about sourcing candidates and a range of other clever techniques for recruit smarter. The link to register for that event is here
Recruitment Software
I wanted to run a webinar looking at the factors to consider when buying recruitment software. Although I design Intelligence recruitment software this is not a promotional video for us but I hope that if will be viewed by companies interested in improving their business and get an understanding if the issues to consider.
Tag: Shane McCusker, Recruitment, LinkedIn, Intelligence, Bob Moody, Technology, Software, ATS, CRM, Social Media, sourcing, South Africa
To see all videos from my Sourcing series, click here.
To see all videos from my Cool Recruiting Tools series, click here.
To see all videos from my recruitment people series, click here.
To see all videos from my recruitment software series, click here.
To see all videos from my Web Design for Recruiters, series, click here.
To see all videos from my Social Media blog click here.
To see all videos from last weeks truLondon, click here.
To see all videos from my Job Seeker series, click here.
To see all videos from my Nothing to do with recruitment series, click here.
Nothing to do with recruitment, but I also wrote some stuff about winning an Oscar.click here.