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11 Research, Data Capture and Search Engine Tools from our readers for #Recruiters

admin — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:23:55 +0000

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Throughout the last year we’ve posted on many search tools, technigques and apps that can be utilized by recruiters. Not all of these tools are created for recruiters but all of them can be used by recruiters and sourcers to gather pertinent information during your search.

The list below is a list that we’ve built off of the comments, suggestions and tweets shared with the RecruitingTools community.

Various Search Tools

trueknowledge: A quick and easy way to get answers to your questions. It’s a search engine built on knowledge…Sounds rudimentary but you’ll get the drift once you check it out.

Footnote: 70 million plus documents posted on the site. It’s not free and not always the best source but a source none the less that hold some valuable info. This is not a site to search resumes.

PennTags: User created data based on Tags and academics. It’s a UPenn affiliated site, thus the name

Search Engines: (Not exhaustive but a few neat engines that can add some direction to your search)

GigaBlast.com: A green site powered 90%by wind energy. But the real reason I’ve included the site is that it gets results. You can search for resume using Boolean but not all the same syntax as Google. So you’ll have to play with it. The results or clean and presented quickly

GO.com: Kid of silly to include since it’s the new infoseek and powered by Yahoo. The main page is built nicely and it’s fast but they play an auto video and that is annoying as hell.

SavvySearch AKA Search.com: Nice site, very quick and accepts Boolean search. The results are displayed in a clear and wasy manner.

Rollyo: Customizable search engine giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines and target specific areas.

HotBot: Not a boat load of features here but it will save you search criteria across a few search engines to prevent you from having to retype or copy and paste your queries.

Data Capture Tools

Knolwedge Probe Inc.: Captures,filtering, mining, and conveniently processing text from WebPages and other sources,

Contact Capture: A free capture tool that allows the user to use a free fully functional capture tool and export tot excel among other programs.

The Email Extractor: It’s free on a trial but can be used a few times over. This is inexpensive and well worth the purchase. You can pull 1000+ emails / minute if you are looking to pull data that quickly.

iMetaSearch: A Powerful new Windows search tool #recruiting #sourcing

admin — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:00:19 +0000

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Group, cluster, sort extract, export, filter: and search keywords, phrases, search results and candidates. This is what iMetaSearch lets you do for free.

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is what stands between Google and iMetaSearch. Now I won’t profess to be a expert in this area, but I will say that I have had a productive time gathering relevant information on my areas of research. The pure definition of LSA or LSI (Indexing) is that the system is analyzing documents to interpret the underlying meaning or concepts of those documents rather than matching word for word. Here is a great visual that breaks it down rather nicely.

If however you just want to assume it works and try this bad boy out you can download the free version HERE from PuffinWare.

See the videos below to help walk you through. We did nto create these videos as they have already been posted and created on the Puffinware website. Here they are. Pay them a visit and try out the tool.

Here is a set of tutorials on the tool. Be sure to visit there site: iMetaSearch

Text from Puffinware site:

This video covers the basics of how to do a search. It also briefly covers the 4 main areas of the user interface.

Groups of Results - each search result is put into a group made of similar results.
Search Results – a list of all the search results.
Selected Result – the details of the currently selected search result.
Extracted Words – a list of all the words and phrases from all the results.

Text from Puffinware site:

This video covers how to explore search results by taking advantage of:

Sorting results by column
Looking at groups of similar results
Updating relevance scores by marking interesting results
Going to the webpage of a result
Exporting results to a CSV (Excel) file

Text from Puffinware site:

This video covers using the extracted words and phrases in the following ways:

Doing quick searches on any extracted words or phrase
Finding all phrases that start with a certain word
Filtering extracted words to find people and websites
Exporting words and phrases to a CSV (Excel) file

Text from Puffinware site:

This video covers how to use groups of related results in the following ways:

Sorting groups by description, color, or relevance
Controlling the number of groups, from large general groups to small specific groups
Marking groups to find related groups, and also related search results and words

11 Global Research and Information Tools for Recruiters

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:41:07 +0000

Download our free toolbar with more than 100+ Boolean Searches HERE

Information Gathering is a vital line to success as a sourcer. Undertanding why you are searching what you are searching can prove to be the difference between success and failure. having a large tool box is great if you want to be the cool kid on the block, but around here I like to knwo that I am spending my time as efficeitnyl as I can. Billing lcients fro hours wasted is not a typical line item they like to see.

Below is a list of 11 strong data and statistical tools we use to create market and talent maps:

World Wide:

World Bank – The world bank is a great resource for learning, tracking and gathering data. This is a great resource for tracking economic and employment trends.

Best used for:

Data: for international and national statistics
Research: for cross sector reporting on human development and statistical economic information
Prospects: Information, analysis and advice on global trends

IMF – The IMF monitors the world’s economies, lends to members in economic difficulty, and provides technical assistance.

Best used for:

Economic Outlooks
Global and regional financial statistics
U.S Labour and economic forecasting

UN – The United Nations can be used for more than just a reference point you hear about on the news.

Best used for:

National Statistical systems
Global research for economic standards
Market research and Trade statistics

CIA World Factbook – provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.

Best used for:

To study global intelligence
Country comparisons
Country profiles
Military and people studies

Google labs – Public data – The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.

Best used for:

Population studies including job sector reporting
Unemployment by geo-location
Public data on human capital studies

OECD - OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world.

Best used for:

Statistics comparison for almost any topic

UNESCO - Global and internationally comparable statistics on education, science, culture and communication.

Best used for:

Surveys and studies
World and regional statistics
Science and Technology statistics an surveys

US:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Its mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate essential economic information to support public and private decision-making.

Best used for:

US Labor studies
Workplace studies
Unemployment rates, stats and charts

Census Bureau – To provide the best mix of timeliness, relevancy, quality, and cost for the data we collect and services we provide

Best used for:

Population & Housing Census – every 10 years
Economic Census – every 5 years
Census of Governments – every 5 years
American Community Survey – annually
Our many surveys — both Demographic & Economic
Economic Indicators – each indicator is released on a specific schedule, see the Economic Indicator Calendar

LatAm & Caribean

CEPAL – CEPALSTAT is the gateway to all the statistical information of Latin America and the Caribbean countries collected, systematized and published by ECLAC.

Best used for:

Studies on economic conditions
Science and technology
Employment and unemployment market and trends

Europe:

Eurostat – European statistical information

Best used for:

Statistical information surrounding European countries
Employment Trends and outlooks

Name Gen, Lead Gen and Influence: A Recruiters daily dose of Productivity

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:00:44 +0000

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It’s been a fast paced few weeks here at RecruitingTools. Lot’s a holiday cheer and contributions from the community.

Here are a few hot topics fromthe group this week. Print them out, RSS them, take them to the potty with you, but just don’t forget to read them. There is too much info you don’t want to miss.

We wish you all Happy Holidays and Healthy New Year

2 Must try Recruiting Tools for Facebook:

Branchout (Overview and demo) http://bit.ly/aBzxVU

JobMagic: Our experience and overview: http://bit.ly/hOq3Mx

LinkedIn and more…

How to choose a LinkedIn Group: http://bit.ly/fFPIGw

WTH is Influence with @RadicalRecruit: http://bit.ly/gmgoyt

Productivity and Research Tools:

10 Free screen capture tools for productivity: http://bit.ly/fTRe4H

Source Solution: Name Gen, Lead Gen and Target Lsit Building: http://bit.ly/fJpocf

10 Free Screen Capture tools for Recruiting productivity

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:00:51 +0000

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A key part of successful recruiting is your ability to organize your desk in a way that you are efficiently communicating and proving key information to candidates as well as clients. There are hundreds of tools available for organization on the web, but which tools are the right tools to play with?

Subscribe here to keep up to date on this series of organization and productivity tools for recruiters.

Screen Capture tools are critical for on the fly presentation needs and data capture. You can use these tools for data sharing or training or simply just too quickly take notes and stow away for later reference.

Here is a strong list of 15 free and low cost screen capture tools for you to try:

Capture: This is a free capture tool that is fairly simple to install and use. Capture works on all versions of Windows, from Window 95 to Windows 7 and everything in-between (including XP, Vista, Win2k, etc).

Faststone Capture: Another great free tool. You can choose to send captures to editor, file, clipboard, printer, email, Word/PowerPoint document or upload them to your website. Editing tools include annotating (texts, arrowed lines, highlights), resizing, cropping, sharpening, watermarking, applying edge effects and many more.

Greenshot: Greenshot is a free open source light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows

MWSnap: MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen

ScreenStamp: ScreenStamp! takes your screen shots by pressing the print screen button on your keyboard, names the screen shot, saves it to your predefined location and stamps the image with the current date and time.

Snippy: Free. Simply click on the little Snippy icon in the taskbar notification area, and mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — that’s it, you’re done! The cut-out image will now be in your clipboard, and you can paste it in another application.

Webshot: The freeware version comes with a demo of the command line interface, which can be purchased, and used to streamline the screenshot process on whole websites.

Zscreen: ZScreen is an open-source screen capture program for Microsoft Windows. It can upload screenshots, pictures, text & files and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke.

Screenshot Captor: Screenshot Captor is a program for taking screenshots on your computer. It’s different from other screenshot utilities in several notable ways

Fireshot: Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations.

WTH is Influence with @radicalrecruit

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:48:27 +0000

No need to write on this one…Geoff will do all of the talking…

Geoff’s take on influence and lists…

SourceSolution.com: Name Gen, Target and List Building

admin — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:00:50 +0000

Often times the tools we use as sourcers / recruiters are not recruiting tools. You’ve heard me say it time and time again that we are in the business of gathering information, not resumes. The other day Maha Akiki, a frequent contributor of information to our site shared a link with me that she found while doing some research.

SourceSolutions is not a recruiting tool. It’s a service that helps connect people with business. You won’t find resumes here but you can walk away with great information to narrow your search.

We’ve found that levering SourceSolutions in a way similar to how you’d use jigsaw can help you uncover some great leads. Since the site focuses on CRO and CMO’s you’ll strong data relevant to CMO and CRO’s, Biotech and Pharma, Professional Services and Regulatory.

Pros:

Most info for free
Targeted to the CRO and CMO industries
Few options and filters are intuitive

Cons:

Not every company has lists or information
You cannot search freehand

Cool:

You can Link up to your LinkedIn account to see who you are connected with in your targeted immediate network
You can research pipeline reports from the company and search their management teams

Step 1:

Goto http://www.sourcesolution.com

Step 2:

Choose the heading you wish to research. I tend to choose company directory or Industry Organizations but you’ll find valuable info in all categories.

Step 3:

Choose your company and research pipelines and management teams

Search pipelines for products and release dates

Search management teams for names, locations and titles

Present yourself with SlideShare

mikevandervort — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:00:20 +0000

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SlideShare as a career resource

I am sure most of you are familiar with SlideShare. If not, you should be. According to their website, Slideshare is the best way to share presentations, documents, and professional videos. They also bill themselves as the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.

What SlideShare can do for you

SlideShare is a business media site for sharing presentations, documents and pdfs. SlideShare features a vibrant professional community that regularly comments, favorites and downloads content. Content also spreads virally through blogs and social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter. Individuals & organizations upload documents to SlideShare to share ideas, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses. Anyone can view presentations & documents on topics that interest them. The site is growing rapidly with over 25 million monthly visitors.

What you can do with SlideShare

Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately.
Synch audio to your slides.
Market your own event on slideshare.
Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests.
Download the original file

SlideShare is also a great place to keep up with an incredibly wide assortment of presentations and information specifically related to Careers and Recruiting, since they have a category specifically dedicated to the Careers topic. They feature a number of presentations every day, and many are really good sources of technical and topical information. Here are some of the topics that I found today:

A pretty random selection, and just a few of the many resources you can find on SlideShare. I encourage to explore, and if you have never used SlideShare, think how you could use it in your recruiting effiorts.

SMS and Text Candidates from your Desktop: 8 Top mobile carriers for your #socialrecruiting needs

admin — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:00:33 +0000

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Connecting with candidates on the go is an important measure to the success of most recruiters. Mobile recruiting is a big topic but this is something a bit different. This is about short message Texting. I do not consider sms and texting candidates to connect mobile recruiting. Texting is a tool to use to connect much like Twitter is a tool to connect. If you call a candidate’s cell phone is that mobile recruiting?

I guess technically it is, but the big difference here is that a full scale mobile recruitment program involves significant dollars and planning.

But this article is about SMS and Texting candidates. How often do you find partial contact info for a candidate? Maybe you have the candidate’s cell phone number but not their email, maybe it’s in the reverse.

*Warning* This process can be invasive so use it at your own discretion and certainly ask the candidate if it is ok to use this method to contact them.

How I use this method:

I recruit in an RPO format so this is high mostly going to be of a high volume nature depending on the project. I use this much less on Director and Executive / Leadership roles.
I contact the candidates as normal. Once I establish contact I ask if texting is ok to share quick info regarding the jobs they are being considered for. If yes, than I add them in. I am not running grand scale campaigns here. Each candidate is a separate case.
I use my email address to send all of my text messages.

How to send the text via email:

You need to get the carrier they are on
The email address format should be: [10 digit number without dashes or spaces]@the carrier’s text exchange. [see below]
Open up your email carrier and use the format below to send an email. This is swapped and displayed as a text message and only text message rates apply.

The industries main mobile carriers and their text / email extensions:

ATT:

Maximum message length: 160 characters
1234567890@txt.att.net

Verizon Mobile

Maximum message length: 160 characters, including the sender’s email address, subject line, and callback number

9495551212@vtext.com

Virgina Mobile:

Maximum message length: 160 characters.
1234567890@vmobl.com

T-Mobile:

Maximum message length: 160 characters (including email address, subject line, and body of the message). The subject line is limited to 16 characters and the body of the message can be no longer than 140 characters.
1234567890@tmomail.net

Boost Mobile:

Maximum message length: 500 characters.
1234567890@myboostmobile.com

Spint PCS:

Maximum message length: 160 characters, including the sender’s email address, subject line, and callback number
1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Nextel:

Maximum message length: 500 characters (including letters, punctuation and system-generated characters).
1234567890@messaging.nextel.com

All Tel:

Maximum message length: 200 characters [according to commenter Edward, below].
1234567890@message.alltel.com

Do you know you Texting Short Speak?

Decrease your candidate screenings 72%: Ovia: Video recruiting done right

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:00:16 +0000

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*Disclosure* This is not a paid review and RecruitingTools.com does not have a partnership with Ovia at the time of this article.

What if I said that I have a potential solution that will reduce your candidate screening time by 72%? Would that be a nice feeling? Would that create an efficient environment for your recruiting team? Would you hiring managers be more engaged? Would your earnings rise due to increased customer satisfaction?

These are the questions that have been asked from the people at Ovia. Ovia is an interesting recruitment tool that blends interviewing, screening and video together into one complete package for your hiring teams. I will be up front and say that I have not used this tool in real time with my clients but I have used it behind the scenes.

In my honest opinion I think the tool is pretty innovative. Is it a new concept? Maybe not some much as recruiters and organizations have been talking about this for a few years, but Ovia brings it home. It’s quick, very easy to use and if used properly should have a serious impact of your screening and selection process.

Why you should consider test driving this tool:

It’s very efficient
The quality if video is high quality.
Videos are indexed properly and easily accessible for your hiring teams.
Spend time video screening candidates and collecting the videos. Schedule a weekly meeting with the hiring manager and review the videos with him/her to discuss immediate feedback. I currently work with other tools were we do this and the relationships immediately gain credibility.

Pit Falls:

I am not sure how discrimination laws govern video at this time, so be sure to research this on your own.
Advise hiring managers not to weigh too much in on the candidates composure on video. This is probably not a normal thing they do every day.
This should be used to screen in and not out. Still depend on your traditional methods and use this as an added check point.

How it works:

Invite: Similar to other apps like Tungle and social networks you let your candidate know that you are inviting them to partake in a screening or recruiting event. The screening is pretty simple. You create the questions and invite the candidates to answer those questions via webcam. Clearly you will need to get the candidates permission prior.
Record: Candidates get to record their responses to your questions in an unrehearsed manner using their webcam. The idea is that the software tries to simulate real time interviewing. The candidate will have 10 seconds to review the questions and than 2 minutes immediately after to record their response.
View the interview: Once the candidate has recorded the video responses you have the ability to review the responses with the hiring teams in an efficient and concise manner.

See it in action:

Try me out free here