Getting back to Internet recruiting basics, Part I

Good morning,

Even though being a recruiter in today's economy
is slightly better than last year's "Return To
The Titanic Revisited", making a success of your
business efforts is still a tough row to hoe.
Today's ezine will focus on some basics to
help drive your business forward.

Most likely, you've heard of boolean searching.
This is the not-too-common usage of search
queries that involve ANDs and ORs and MAYBEs
and ... (okay, nix off the MAYBE  :-)  ).
Precise usage of it allows you to target
specific resumes and resources online that
your colleagues might not be aware of.
Adding web elements like the title tag,
the url tag and more can help you sleuth
out even more information.  Boolean tutorials
can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/jcrecruits/boolean_tutorial.html
http://www.jobmachine.net/bookmarklets/downloads.htm

web elements are described at
http://help.altavista.com/adv_search/syntax

For ye ole tried-and-true query, one way to target
resumes via a boolean search is to search on:

(title:resume* OR url:resume*) AND (keyword OR keyword)
AND ((area codes of location) NEAR (state abbreviations)

in other words, to find Unix resumes in NJ, search on

(title:resume* OR url:resume*) AND ((201 or 908 or 973 or 732
or 212 or 914 or 516) NEAR (NJ or NY or "New Jersey" or "New York"))
AND unix


(copy/paste the above onto one line if it's been split up).

Different search engines, of course, might have
different querying requirements.  I've pulled together
some pointers to that at
http://www.barbaraling.com/knowledge-center/search-engine-help.shtml .
In addition, http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/ is a directory
filled to the brim with specific targeted niche search engines
(topic and country as well).

One thing to remember about search engines...any site on
the Internet that has a 'search' capability can be viewed
as a mini search engine.  That means that the search
function of university websites might pick up documents
not yet indexed in the main search engines...the search
capability of Yahoo! eGroups might allow you to target
specific resources for your recruiting needs...the
AOL Community Search might yield you yet another weapon
entirely.  It's all the way you choose to view the
online resources.

The next RISE ezine will discuss benefitting from
web communities in far more detail.

[ Return to top ]