Travel Back In Time And Uncover Passive Candidates Today

RISE Entrepreneurial Twist
  Travel Back In Time And Uncover Passive Candidates Today

Good morning,

As you're probably aware, the Internet is never
static.  Every single day, pages can change,
companies can go out of business, domain name
registrations can dissolve and sites that have
the candidates you desire can evolve.

Were you aware that you can now travel back
in time and look at previous versions of
company sites?  Just think about those
halcyon days, when companies would put up
their employee name and contact information
much like those found at http://people.netscape.com/ !

It's called the Wayback Machine and it's quite
astounding.  Hosted at http://web.archive.org ,
it enables you to enter in a domain name and
see the previous incantations of it since
1996.  Ever hear of a company called Monster.com ?
Take a trip down memory lane and see what it
was like over 5 years ago at
http://web.archive.org/web/19961111103115/http://www.monster.com/ !
Wow, back then, there was over 50,000 jobs posted!

How the times have changed in less than 6 years.

You can take advantage of this great site in
many ways.  Perhaps you would like to source
at a particular company.  You can go to Google
at http://www.google.com to find the URL (generally
simply searching on the company name will reveal it)
and then enter that URL into the Wayback Machine.
Sometimes right before leaving a position, an
employee would set up an autoforwarding system
that would ensure any emails sent to a former
place of employment would arrive to the correct
individual.  

There's even an advanced search that allows you
to specify a particular time range, a group of
documents, and more.  This is found at
http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html .

Let's now put this in perspective regarding Internet
recruiting.  Perhaps you've found the resume of, hmmm,
a photographer like so:

Chien-min Chung. Education. BFA, Photography, 1994 New York University. Work. Silicon Graphics, Mt..View, CA. Feb 1996 - present. Silicon Studio:...
URL: http://reality.sgi.com/chinster_studio/html/resume.html

You click to that page and find out, wah, it's gone!

Not to fear.  Go to http://web.archive.org/ , enter

http://reality.sgi.com/chinster_studio

and click on the link from June 16th, 1997 - it will provide
you a way to access the resume at
http://web.archive.org/web/19970616113337/reality.sgi.com/chinster_studio/html/resume.html .  
Voila!  Success!  And you can then put into
place your Internet sleuthing skills to find
other resumes within the http://reality.sgi.com
domain as well.

Remember, the Internet is merely a tool for your
recruiting needs.  It certainly will never take
the place of networking...but it *does* give you
the opportunities for other contacts about which
you might never become aware.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Thank you for visiting and enjoy your time!

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