It’s true; people waste
time searching for candidates on the Internet. For the
Internet to be an effective candidate search tool it
must be used efficiently.
Many recruiters do not maximize the Internet as much
as they could because it can be a bottomless time pit.
Business requires faster results while resources shrink.
As recruiters we are asked to perform miracles in short
time so it is frustrating to waste hours online only to
find the same people we have seen before and who have
already received thousands of similar calls from others.
The three most important time savers when searching the
Internet for candidates are:
1. KEYWORDS
Although at first this seems obvious or intuitive,
most people waste valuable time online searching with
inadequate keywords. A keyword is more than just a
search term. As the name itself explains, it is the key
to successful searching.
Using the best possible keyword will make all the
difference in terms of expediency. There is an
exponential relationship between keywords and results.
For every increase in quality of the keyword there is a
tenfold improvement in quality of results. Picking a
single word unique to the industry will guarantee
accuracy. The more accurate the results, the less time
is spent clicking, reading and ranking them.
As a general rule of thumb a search should include
four to eight keywords. Exceeding eight may confuse the
search engine and return too few results while using
less than four may return far too many.
2. PENDULUM
If the keywords are even slightly general search
engines will bring back thousands of results. If, on the
contrary, they are too specific results will be few.
Both of these scenarios are a waste of time. The best
approach is one delivering 40 to 120 results.
Swinging the pendulum from excessive number of
results to a small number will allow us to find the best
possible combination of keywords. Once we have that we
can limit our results geographically. The pendulum will
settle somewhere in the middle, striking a balance
between too many and too few results.
3. SIMPLICITY
Keeping the search simple saves time. With
complicated search strings we run the risk of confusing
the search engine and wasting time. Limiting the search
construct to less than three AND’s aids in simplicity.
Using our keywords first, separated by AND, then adding
the OR’s allows us to easily swing the pendulum by
changing each term one at a time. Terms should be ranked
in order of importance. The first term in the search
string is the single unique term, which is pivotal. The
second term one should eliminate enough undesirable
results to save us time. The third is a modifier that
will home in on the specialty or subcategory. We can
start by modifying the second term first, then the third
and finally, if we get too many results, we can add one
more modifier. Once we have settled on the best possible
keywords we simply plug in the geographic constraints.
The fastest, largest and most user-friendly search
engine is Google.com. Here are some very simple ideas to
get you started using search engines to find resumes:
A. Quick and easy Google searching:
From www.google.com we start with three skill-related
keywords, then add the following: (home OR my) resume.
Hence this search begins with six terms.
Example 1: Wireless Design Engineers
When looking for Wireless Design engineers using the
terms “Wireless” and “Design Engineer” may bring
back results but using the keyword “CDMA” for Code
Division Multiple Access, a type of wireless
transmission encoding sequence, will guarantee accuracy.
The unique term should be entered first. The term
“Design” further narrows the search to eliminate
junior technicians.
Search string: CDMA Wireless Design (home OR my)
resume
Example 2: Hardware Chip Designers
Hardware is not a good term because too many
industries use it. “Design” in this search string is
not functional either because we really want an engineer
not an architect. Using the chip product name it self
may not work because it is too narrow. We can start with
a type of chip called Application-Specific Integrated
Circuit, “ASIC” and then choose some skill modifiers
like VHDL short for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit
Hardware Description Language, a large high-level design
language, and FPGA for Field-Programmable Gate Array,
which is a re-programmable series of circuits. These
terms together ensure we get results in a sector of the
circuit design industry dealing with the design of field
programmable circuits.
Search sting: ASIC FPGA VHDL (home OR my) resume
Ex 3: Senior Civil Engineers
Even traditional engineers have websites. We can find
them by discipline: Mechanical, Civil, Industrial, etc.
A senior engineer in this field has earned a
certification by passing an exam, like the Bar for
Lawyers and the CPA for Accountants. With engineers we
can use the term “P.E.” for Professional Engineer.
Adding the discipline “civil” and the modifier
“structure” we find engineers who have worked in
large-scale projects like bridges, roads, tunnels and
dams.
Search string: P.E. Civil Structure (home OR my)
resume
Ex 4: Emergency Room Nurses
The healthcare industry appears to be full of good
keywords, but upon further examination many are not
unique. Nursing is a very common term found in all types
of fields including home, hospice, maternity and even in
other fields like agriculture. Only registered nurses
can work in the ER so we look for “RN.” Licenses are
extremely important in this industry – but the term
License again is all too common outside of healthcare.
Replacing it with “Licensure” we find a section many
RN’s use in their resumes, similar to Certification in
the IT world.
Search string: RN Licensure Clinical (home OR my)
resume
Ex 5: Enterprise Web Architect
In the IT field keywords become even more important
than anywhere else. With so many people in this field
with experience writing resumes it is easy to pages with
a collection of keywords designed to increase traffic.
In addition, job titles differ so widely that a software
engineer at one company is a web developer at another.
Hence words like “Architect” and “Programmer”
are time wasters. Instead, we focus on skills they could
only have learned on the job. Experience with Java is
crucial, but the word “Java” is widely used. Instead
we pick a Java developer’s tool kit called Enterprise
Java Beans “EJB.” Next we need a term that narrows
our search down to people who worked on servers
delivering content to the web. Microsoft IIS will be
present even in the most junior developer’s resume but
Microsoft Transaction Server “MTS” will not. Finally
we want a term leading to people with internal server
experience. “Enterprise” is too general because of
all its infinite uses. Developers who write code for
programs in an enterprise are using distributed object
tools like Distributed Common Object Module, “DCOM.”
EJB MTS DCOM (home OR my) resume
B. What to Expect
There may be a few job postings here and there but
because of the words “my” or “home” a vast
majority of the results will be people’s resumes on
their home pages. There are other terms that can also
achieve these results, so experimenting is very
important. Glancing the page titles and summaries Google
delivers we can easily decide which result links to
follow.
By adding keywords to the search one at a time, we
narrow results down as specific as needed. Playing with
the keywords, swinging the pendulum, results in focusing
the search. We don’t spend more than two minutes
adjusting the search, though with some of the soft
skills like sales and marketing where keywords are
difficult to find we spend five more minutes researching
the search words.
At this point and only after we are certain we found
the best possible keywords we can narrow down geographic
locations if required. We add telephone area codes,
state abbreviations and zip codes. For example: CDMA
Wireless Design (home OR my) resume (602 OR 480 OR AZ).
Here we are using the maximum eight terms. Some people
feel inclined to add “OR Arizona” and even zip codes
but Google will not allow searches with over ten words.
To use other area codes like 623 or zip codes we run a
separate search after we have collected results from the
first one. Choosing 602 and 480 first gives priority to
people living on the central or western parts of
Phoenix.
One more value in using Google is the Adobe PDF
search. By adding resume .pdf to the three keywords we
find all sorts of rare resumes no other search engine
besides Adobe’s own PDF search tool normally index.
For example: ASIC FPGA VHDL resume .pdf returns 173 very
promising documents.
C. Quick and easy Usenet search:
At http://groups.google.com we enter three keywords
and add the following: my insubject:resume. This will
find postings containing the word “my” which will
eliminate many job announcements, and will look for the
word RESUME: in the subject line. If the word resume is
in the subject line there is an excellent chance it will
not be a request for a resume, rather an actual posted
resume.
Ex: ASIC FPGA VHDL my insubject:resume
For the more adventuresome search we replace
“insubject:resume” with the name of a competitor
that hires the same type of people.
Ex: CDMA Wireless Design Qualcomm my
This search produces 113 results. We can browse
through these easily in under three minutes. Very few
are resumes but what we find most here are postings from
people writing messages using their company’s email
system. At the end of the post we may find a signature
file including employer, title and contact information.
Even if it isn’t there we can see their e-mail address
in the From: field.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are
thousands of free resources describing how to find
people, network with candidates online to compliment
your cold calling, time saving shortcuts, and automated
tools to simplify the process even more at www.jobmachine.net.
