In the flood of sourcing tools and (sometimes) cluttered marketing messages around them, one type of tools stands apart and is worth your attention. It's no replacement for LinkedIn or for job boards; it's a new concept,…

(starting Jan 13, 2014)

To clarify, my source is a phone call with a LI rep yesterday (which happened for a different reason - namely - my LIR account was charging to send InMails to group members back in November (which shouldn't have happened back then) - this is a long trace following up...it almost doesn't matter anymore but I would love the support to get better.

The rep said that:

1) InMails in LIR to group members are now becoming paid - starting Jan 13. He said…

Google-Plus Profiles - X-Rays G+; offers three refinements, to push forward (show in previews) locations; employers; and schools

LinkedIn – Countries - X-Rays LinkedIn profiles, offers a dozen refinements by country

Emails in Resumes - I am proud of this one! It not only looks for resumes, but also…

This year has been a year of many conferences for me, most of them being dedicated to sourcing: speaking at SourceCon in Atlanta in February 2013, at Sourcing Summit New Zealand in May, at Sourcing Summit…

Many of you have read thgrough the post Find (Almost) Anybody’s Email Address by Rob Ousbey and use his technique. Rob has developed a Google Doc email…

The LinkedIn Signal is gone. (Not too many recruiters used it for searching in the first place, but it was able to show profile updates across the whole network.) Alas, there's not much that can replace Signal!

There are also some limits affecting 3rd party vendors on providing any…

The new LinkedIn Contacts feature is buggy but it's opening up incredible people sourcing possibilities.

The terminology "contacts" and "connections" may be somewhat confusing. The all-new LinkedIn Contacts system allows LinkedIn members to merge the information about their contacts on several systems: 1) LinkedIn…

I have been asked to list the "Sourcing complexities and pain points" (especially  in IT recruiting, but not just). Here are the 10 points I came up with.

Add yours?

1. Job Descriptions Are Not Enough. Sourcing from a job description alone is difficult, because it never completely defines what to search for. In fact, job descriptions are written for candidates, not for recruiters or sourcers.

There…

My LinkedIn account is having multiple problems with the functionality. It's happening for the second time in the past few months. I can't use my RPS account (it is a variation of LinkedIn Recruiter). I hope they will fix it again.

The nice LinkedIn managers, who support my RPS account, point out…

The End of Sourcing Is Near … is a post by Dr. John Sullivan on ERE that is drawing lots of attention. I am not going to…

... and yet it is a powerful sourcing tool, and it is free to use. (For the basic account it is also free, but you need to know your ways around to view the results. I will explain below.)

I am talking about the LinkedIn Signal. Even if you have the topmost account and all the power of people searching available to you, the Signal is an excellent addition with complementary ways to source. Namely, the…

Here is a clarification on something fellow recruiters have been worried about. This is as of this morning and anything can change at any time, of course.

If you search for LinkedIn profiles on Google or on Bing (EXAMPLE), you might see an incomplete profile for those members who are either your 3rd level connections or are out-of-your-network and a suggestion to upgrade, when you click on the search results in Google. Don't worry;…

If you have a basic or a low-paid account on LinkedIn, you can't see the full names of people who are your third level connections. You can't see the names of people outside your network. In LinkedIn Recruiter, which is the solution for corporations, you can see all names.

I didn't realize up till I was at the #sourceIn event yesterday at the LinkedIn HQ in Mountain View, that agencies with the top solution wouldn't see the names either. Now, LinkedIn has decided to open up…

LinkedIn is “the” top place for many recruiters and for many people I have met “LinkedIn” is almost equals “sourcing”. Everyone we had placed in the last year was initially contacted on LinkedIn.

We all agree on the importance of not spamming candidates and carefully reviewing their profiles before we reach out.

However, LinkedIn's nature is not fully understood by many, I think. Here's what I read on a blog post on ERE today: “Examine the resultant profile summaries…. “Red…

Here are some sample test questions for the People Sourcing Certification Program:

Level One

• How many people currently working at Microsoft have the word Ninja in their current title on LinkedIn?
• There’s a “Racquetball League” site that lists a person who works (or used to work?) at ToysRUs. What is his job title?
• How many members of the site…

I had noisy roadwork outside of my office this morning and somehow this made me think of this list. :) I am interested in what fellow recruiters would think about it.

1. The Yahoo! Search engine
2. Search tools that look through all the sources of data at the same time in a productive way
3. Search strings to find the information that was not posted on the web
4. Search strings that show only relevant results on Google
5. Search strings that can be reused…

I have just come back home to the San Francisco Bay Area from the Sourcing Summit in Australia. The event was flawlessly and skillfully organized by Phillip Tusing.

My top impression from the Australian sourcing…

Q: What do many people do when they start to think about their career? A: They update their LinkedIn profile.

Up till recently tracking, which members update their profiles, was only possible for your first level connections, as an example, by subscribing to Bullhorn Reach.

It is now possible to watch for all the skills and title changes by using the LinkedIn Signal. This is available to all members and is free to…

I love LinkedIn! It has been bringing us more matching candidates and business connections than everything else combined out there. For my own recruiting business LinkedIn accounts for 100% placed candidates in the last twelve months and a large chunk of sourcing information that I submit to others when sourcing.

Yet taking the full advantage of LinkedIn is not straightforward! There are numerous obstacles and misleading marketing messages, blogs, and tutorials. Some LinkedIn members…

Participants of the People Sourcing Certification Program go through 60 questions for the Level 1 and 80 questions for the Level 2 at the end of the Program. We use the tests as an additional opportunity to practice and apply the sourcing skills.

As several participants have pointed out, and as one of them wrote, the Program actually makes you “think” instead of just plugging in some answers and…