Indelibly Impress Your Candidates Via Targeted Courtesy

Good morning!

Have you ever experienced the nail-biting excitement
of wondering how your candidates are doing during
their interviews across the country?  Have you
ever had to put them up in a hotel for a day
or 24?

When you send your candidates out for interviews,
ideally, you know them pretty well.  You know their
skills, you're relatively confident they'll do
well on the interview...all precautions have
been taken, all that is left for the candidate
to do is wow your client.

Tell me, do you want to provide a little
bit of extra customer service?  Do you think
it would make an impression if you could email
to your candidate a list restaurants that provide
the cuisine they prefer?  Some candidates are
vegetarians, some have strict dietary habits...
wouldn't it be memorable if you could simply
and easily put together a list of phone numbers
within a 5 mile radius of their hotel?

Luckily, it's easy to do!  Besides all the
great dining guides out there, one can also
turn to InfoSpace at http://www.infospace.com .

Last year when traveling myself, I was seized
by a hankering for Chinese food.  The Marriott kinda
sorta isn't known for such things, so I could have
looked in a phone book.  Thing is, which listings
were closest to me?  I wouldn't want to incur a long-distance
charge calling a restaurant that was outside the calling
distance (paying 80 cents for a technically-free call
was enough!).   So I logged on and zoomed to
Infospace.

Infospace is a great resource for many, many phone
numbers - in this case, for finding businesses and
judging the distance they are from your location.
As well as trying to impress traveling candidates,
ever have some who are scheduled to pull an all-nighter,
and you'd like to have food delivered to them?  And then
you realize they work in Arizona and you live in Montana
and have no idea where to call for Chinese, Italian,
etc. food?  What if one of your co-workers was sick,
and you were seized by an insane desire to cure her
by sending her hot-and-sour soup, but she lives in
Dallas and you live in NJ?

Go to Infospace at http://www.infospace.com .

Click on "Search Near Address" - you should now be at
http://www.infospace.com/info/neighbor.html?qappend .

Perhaps your candidate is pulling an all-nighter
in Middletown, NJ.  Enter "Middletown" in City,
set your State dropdown to "New Jersey", keep
the radius at 5 miles, and select "Find."  You should
now be here.

If Middletown is a teeny tiny town, that would
be sufficient.  But it's not - you should add
the street name as well.

Because you placed the candidate, you know where the candidate
is working (for our example, on Laurel Avenue, which is the
Middletown facility of AT&T).  Click on
"Search Near Address".  You will then be at
http://www.infospace.com/info/neighbor.html?QC=middletown&QS=nj& .

Next to "Street Address", enter "Laurel Avenue".  Leave
the default to "5 miles" (as restaurants that deliver have
to be close by) and click on "Find."  The next screen should
read "Businesses within 5 miles of 424 Laurel Ave, Middletown, NJ"


Search for

restaurants

You'll be returned

restaurants.

There's a category called "RESTAURANTS | By Brand/Specialty ".  
Click on that, and then choose your favorite kind of
food.  Well, actually, it should be your candidate's
favorite kind of food, but I digress.  As an example,
heres's all Chinese food restaurants close to our
original address.

Expand this concept!  Perhaps you need to find resume-writers
close by your business.  Maybe you want to deliver flowers
and forgot about 1-800-FLOWERS.  Possibly you want to list
all the businesses that serve the software industry close
by a destination so you can cold-call.  

I think you can see why this is a very powerful tool.
Not only recruiting, mind you, but also for the human-
interaction of "I heard you were feeling sick/pulling
an all-nighter - have some soup from me."  :-)

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