How To Flip Search
By Brian Weis
Recruiters Network
The use of Flip Searching or Flipping is a technique to mine the
Internet for potential candidates. A Flip Search is a simple search that can be performed
in some of the major search engines for example www.hotbot.com
and www.altavista.com. The search simply finds
people who link to a specific site. The uses are endless. For example, John Recruiter is
looking for ORACLE Programmers. This technique can be used to find the various sites that
are linked to oracle.com. In theory, John will find people who have on-line resumes with
Oracle skills because they may have linked to Oracle on their online resume.
So to do the search visit www.altavista.com
and enter the following: "link: oracle.com" The results once
again will be all the sites that have linked to Oracle.com. Surf through the results and
you will find individuals resumes.
The search can be done with any skill set or for any company. For
example, lets say John Recruiter's company's major competitor is XYZ company. He could do
a search on that company, for example: "link: xyz.com" The results will turn up
resumes from people who work or who have worked for the xyz company.
You can also build longer Boolean search strings to drill down
the results faster. (Click here
for Boolean String Cheat Sheet)
For example:
link:oracle.com
AND (url:resume OR title:resume) AND “Oracle Developer”
One warning about this tactic: Flip searching may
pull up company directories, email lists, and other company related information. In some
rare cases, you may flip search yourself into a companies internal intranet.
Flip Searching by some has been view as negative and others as a
brilliant strategy. My personal stance, anything published on the Internet is public
information for the world to view. Companies should be cautious on what content appears on
their site. As far as restricted areas and internal intranets, this is private information
and people accessing or hacking into these areas is blatantly unethical. Also, a word for
those who might be tempted... you leave an electronic footprint on every page
and site you visit.
Flip Searching is a powerful tool that can uncover many hidden
resumes and candidates. Performing the searches on various search engines will give
different results. Trying adding different companies and skill sets to uncover different
results.
For advanced techniques
and software to automate this process check out AIRS
Search Station.
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