Different Internet Techniques

Internet Technique that a recruiter must know:-

 X-Raying,
 Flipping,
 Peeling Back,
 Search Engine,
 Free Sites,
 Boolean Operators,
 Job Portals,
 Blog Directories
 Networking Site

X-RAYING:
A method of looking inside a specific web site to find what's there. Using this
technique, recruiters can find documents and web pages that aren't directly
accessible via links on the main public home page. When you 'x-ray' a website, you
effectively get to examine every document that resides there so long as they are
not behind firewalls or password protected.
Example: To find any “software engineer” - could be a document/file or a
word/phrase within a document that resides within the website Oracle.com.
In Altavista search - host:oracle.com AND software engineer
In Google search - site:www.oracle.com AND software engineer

FLIPPING:
Flipping is an effective method used to find the relationships between web pages
based on how they are hyperlinked together. This search is especially useful for
finding people who have links to the company or have worked for a specific
company.

Flip searching may pull up company directories, email lists, and other company
related information. Flip Searching is a powerful tool that can uncover many hidden
resumes and candidates.

Example: To find any “software engineer” – could be a document/file or

word/phrase that links back to Oracle.com.
In Altavista search - link:oracle.com AND software engineer
In Google search - link:www.oracle.com AND software engineer

PEELING BACK:
As the name suggest Peeling back is the process of “retracing the path” of the url
especially when one gets an Error 404 (File not found). This process is engage so as
to locate the information elsewhere on the site or locate the specific “root” folder
where one can find similar or additional data specific or related to the search.

Internet Recruiters tend to give as much weight to URLs as we do to page

descriptions. When we see something interesting in the path of a URL like "people"
or "staff" or "meet the staff", etc., we "peel back" the URL to see that page. If we
are blocked from viewing the page, we x-ray the page to find the keyword in the
URL that will lead us to the page we are seeking.

Example: By peeling back or keying backspace starting from the point where the
url ends we can then access the people link from the ce.uta.edu homepage and find
the names of all the faculty members.
url: http://www-ce.uta.edu/people/faculty/hoyos/research.html OR
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/

We "peel back the URL by highlighting and deleting the right portion of the URL. In
this example, we are peeling back to look at a homepage. These are easy to
identify, as homepages almost always have a ~ or / in their URL. Peel back till you
get home page- http://people.ee.ethz.ch. You will find a link which shows all the
names of students and staff members

HARVESTING OR MINING:
Harvesting involves reviewing a document, such as a resume or home page, and
finding key words, links, references and locations that assist with subsequent
searches.

SEARCH ENGINE

Some recommended search engines on the Web are:

http://www.Google.com, http://www.Atlavista.com, HotBot.com, InfoSeek.com,
http://www.Yahoo.com, http://www.Dogpile.com, msn

FREE POSTINGS

www.Todays-Classifieds.com, www.Job-Ad-venture.com

www.GoFreeLance.com, , www.HireNet.net, www.TheJobBox.com,

www.TheJobSpider.com, www.CareerFile.com, www.JobAhoy.com,

www.JobAdsUsa.com, www.GetJob.us, www.JobKabob.com,

www.Work-At-Home-Jobs.us,

FREE RESUME BANKS/SITES

siliconindia.com, jobdhundo.com, Telecommute-Jobs.com

Passive-Candidates.com (Foreign Countries), Resumezapper.com (Foreign

Countries), ProgrammerBlaster.com, findaresume.com,

scguild.com, Jobvertise.com, DevBistro.com, TheJobSpider.com

ResumeWahoo.com, jobfront.com, SiteExperts.com, contractengineering.com

Jobs.net, ifebp.org, javajobs.com, as400network.com, areajobs.com, naukri

2000.com

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Boolean search operators can drill down and find the information we are looking for faster. These
operators are used to weed out irrelevant pages thereby narrowing our search results to find exactly
what we are looking for. Boolean keys should be in Capital letters.

But these Boolean operators are different for different search engines.

Boolean Key

AND - The AND operator delivers results with the terms you requested. For example, searching resume
and oracle will return pages with both terms - resume and oracle.

OR - The OR operator delivers results with either of the terms you requested. For example, MCSE OR
M.C.S.E.
NOT - The NOT operator will not deliver certain words in your search results. For example, Java NOT
coffee will deliver closer results for JAVA Programmers and not Java Coffee.

NEAR - The NEAR operator locates words that are located in close proximity to other words. For
example, Java NEAR Programmer. Not every search engine supports this operator. It finds words within
10 words of each other. But, not every search engine supports this operator.

( ) Parentheses - The ( ) operator allows you to group terms and build longer search strings. For
example, NOT (submit AND employer) will avoid pages with both names.

Wild Card - The * operator is a wild card. Adding a wild card will find words contain the wild card. For
example program* will help so you do not have to run separate searches for words similar like:
programmer, programming, program

URL Search - searches for pages that have specific word in the URL or web address. Example -
url:resume

Page Title - searches for pages that have specific words in page title. Example - title:resume

“ “- Exact phase.

Example of Complex Search String

resume AND (java or JavaScript) AND program* AND (New York or NY or 212) AND NOT (coffee or
submit)

* In some case we recommend to go to the advanced search option within the search engine.

Search Engine Quick Guide

. AltaVista HotBot InfoSeek Northern Light Snap
AND resume AND resume AND oracle +resume resume AND resume AND oracle
oracle +oracle oracle

+resume +oracle +resume

+oracle
OR resume OR resume OR oracle Default is resume OR resume OR oracle
oracle OR oracle
automaticall
y
NOT resume NOT resume AND NOT +resume resume NOT resume AND NOT
submit submit -submit submit submit

+resume – Select “Must not +resume Select “Must not

submit contain” -submit contain”
NEAR oracle NEAR Not Supported Not Not Supported Not Supported
programming Supported

(finds words
within 10 words
of each other)

"" “sales manager” Select “Exact Phrase” “Document “sales Select “Exact Phrase”
must contain manager”
exact
phrase”
() resume AND resume AND (sales Not resume AND resume AND (sales OR
(sales OR “sales OR “sales manager”) Supported (sales OR “sales manager”)
manager”) “sales
manager”)
* (Wild develop* (finds Not Supported Not * replaces Not Supported
Card) develop or Supported multiple
developer or any characters, %
other word replaces one
starting with character
develop)
Field . . . . .
Searche
s
X-Ray host:website.co domain:website.com “url must “words in url” domain:website.com
m contain” website.com
website.com
Flip link:website.com “links to this url” “hyperlink link:anysite.co “links to this url”
Search http://www.website.co must contain m http://www.website.com
m the words”
website.com
Page title:resume “words in the page “title must “words in the “words in the page title”
Title title” resume contain” title” resume resume
Search resume
URL url:resume Not Supported “url must “words in url” Not Supported
Search contain the resume
words”
resume

JOB PORTALS

Today many of the leading job sites offer their database at a cost. Some of the leading sites
are – monster.com, dice.com, naukri.com, jobstreet.com. If your company subscribed to these
sites, you must search their database.

BLOG DIRECTORIES
We all know talent is scarce and it definitely makes sense to think out of the box, especially when we are
talking about sourcing strategies. That is where blogs come into the picture.
Now what are blogs? They are nothing but personal or semi-personal online diaries where comments
are made about various issues.
It is popular mainly because blogs give an insight into the person and his personality. It gives
recruiters interesting facts about the blogger and his mental make-up besides some information about.
certain personal characteristics, level of intelligence, communication skills, sharpness in terms of
reactions, level of information inputs and sometimes even the degree of humanness in the blogger.

However remember, blogs alone by themselves cannot be used for recruitments. It should be used to
supplement other techniques and to arrive at more accurate assessment-TO RECRUIT OR NOT TO
RECRUIT.

Here are the lists of the top recruitment blogs in alphabetical order (from top 100 HR bloggers by
Laura Milligan).

1. Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog: This recruiting professional reveals some of her best tools
for attracting talent.
2. AmyBeth Hale: Research Goddess!: This fun to read blog is a great resource for connecting you
with other HR sites and blogs across the Web.
3. A Recruiter Diary: Author Joe Neitham shares “the ups and downs, lessons learnt, success
stories,” and more in his recruiting blog.
4. Ask the Recruiter: Post your questions or just browse through other readers’ inquiries
to learn more about the recruiting industry.
5. Cheezhead: Cheezhead is an attractive, popular blog about recruitment trends, with special
attention paid to issues unique to working on the Internet.
6. Cyber Sleuthing: Use this blog to learn the sneakiest tips for using the Web as your
main recruitment tool.
7. Director of Recruiting: Catch up on all the latest “news and views” you need to
know as a recruiter.
8. Expert Recruiter Resource: Don’t miss this blog. Use it to discover a wealth of advice and tips
that will help boost your career.
9. Hire Strategies: Learn about the power of e-recruitment, especially within the retail
industry.
10. IT Recruiting Diary: On this blog, you can read inspirational stories and valuable tips about
recruiting.
 11. The Asia Pacific Headhunter: This blog discusses trends in recruiting, and is a great resource for
professionals and job searchers alike.

Blog Directories

Below is a list of blog directories to find blogs of interest.

blogsearchengine.com, blogwise.com, blogarama.com, bloogz.com , search4blogs.com

NETWORKING SITE

- LinkedIn

- Jibberjobber

- konnects

- Orkut

- Face Book, Bigadda

- Plaxo

- Xing- most commonly used in China

STEPS:-

Step 1: Understand the requirement and identify the search keywords.

One of the key attributes a good recruiter must acquire and developed is the knack for
understanding what the client wants (give an apple if the client wants and apple and not guava
or pear). And if you can understand what the client requires then you can also easily identify the
search keywords from the requirement.

Step 2: Search Internal database

Most of the established companies have a sizeable database (infact we are also started building it)
and chances are that you might find someone with the skills that you are looking for in your own
database. Here 2 things are very important:-

1) How well you organized your internal database

2) How good you are in mining your database either manually or using external search applications.

One very efficient search application is call X1. If your organization decides to use X1, you then do not
have to spend too much time in organizing your email folders or your internal database. It acts like a
local Google.com for your hard-drive. You can also use Copernic Desktop Search OR Google
Desktop (GDS). But they have there own advantages and disadvantages like- GDS is fast but you’ll
miss the file preview feature as well as when you move your Outlook emails in another folder it
would never update its index. But u will not face these problems with X1 n Copernic.

X1 has a unique feature – that is if the desktop search software finds a PDF file containing your
search keyword, you need not open the PDF in bulky Adobe Reader, X1 will automatically show
the contents of the file highlighting words/phrases that match your search – a big time saver. The
software supports real time indexing – if a new email arrives in your inbox, if you download a new
resume or transfer it, it will show up almost immediately in X1 search results.

X1 comes as a 30-day trial software but it will work just perfect even after the trial, though the
network indexing features will be disabled. The only drawback X1 has is its inability to search for symbols
such as #/+ etc. Imagine how frustrating it can be if you were to search for VC++ or C# resumes.

But my personal favorite desktop search program is Copernic Desktop Search –In this search results
are arranged in categories (like Files, Music, email, etc), it suggests alternatives to misspelled words
(“did you mean?”). And if you are a lazy typist, Copernic will auto-complete your search queries –
just type the first few characters. You can save your frequently used or long search queries to “My
Searches” in Copernic Desktop Search.

Step 3: Broadcast the job

The first step must be to post the job on your company website and to the subscribed paid sites (Eg;
Monster, Jobsdb, Naukri, etc) and how you design and word your post will matter on the responses.

The second step will be to post it to the free sites like: - todays-classifieds.com, Job-Ad-
venture.com, jobvertise, etc.
The third step will be mass mailing using bcc on your email application to those candidates whose
contacts are already in your databank.
The forth step involves posting the job in all the online groups that you have a membership and if not
get registered and start posting (Eg; yahoogroups – teamsite, ezlink, etc).

It helps build your networking channel, image of your company, building your databank, etc.

Step 4: Search Resume boards

Today many of the leading job sites offer their database at a cost. Some of the leading sites are –
monster.com, shine.com, naukri.com, jobstreet, dice.com. If your company subscribed to these sites,
you must search their database.

Step 5: Identify and locate competitors

The most likely place where we can find our target candidates will be with the competitors.
Therefore, one must identify who are the competitors and locate them. Eg: our client is Turbomach and
they require process or mechanical engineers who have experience of BOP and detail engineering in
combined cycle and cogeneration power plants. So, the most likely place where we can find such
candidates will be– Siemens Power Engineering, Alstom, Thermax, FICHTNER Consulting etc

Step 6: Search for candidates from Competitors

Now that we know who are the competitors and where they are located we can start the search for
candidates in these companies. The best approach is get hold to a junior person and then map from
them. Once you identify the candidate start calling, however if you fail to identify anyone with the
required skills/experience, it might be prudent to anyway call and ask for reference or leads. If you
cannot reach or they refuse to talk to you or give you any references, drop them a nice sounding mail
and thank them for their time and share with them on what you are looking for. Who knows they might
have a heart change and decide to forward the mail to their friends/contacts. The key here is not to give
up but be persistent and keep trying and keep ‘scratching your brain’ for innovative approach or
methods to source the right candidate.

Step 7: Search for resumes on the web

The web is one vast hunting ground for any recruiter. However you need to know certain techniques
to be master in internet search.

To increase the effectiveness of recruitment activities, we recommend everyone to use all

recruitment techniques.