Advanced Recruiting Techniques
- 1. ADVANCED RECRUITING TECHNIQUES X-RAY SEARCH - LINKEDIN
- 2. 2 What is X-Ray Search? X-ray search is targeting a site (like Linkedin) with a search engine (like google/bing/yahoo) using the ‘site:’ search operator. Ex: site:linkedin.com
- 3. 3 How is X-Ray Searching LinkedIn useful? • Unlimited profile views i.e. you can view more than 100 profiles – FREE! (Remember, LinkedIn only allows 100 profiles free for view). Around 85% of all LinkedIn profiles are publicly accessible through search engines, meaning there is no restriction on viewing profiles through Google. • Full names are visible for any degree of contacts • View out of network connections (Remember, LinkedIn does not allow viewing out of network connection)
- 4. 4 Anatomy of LinkedIn’s URL There are two types of URLs that are allocated by LinkedIn; • Default URL • Customized / Personalised URL
- 5. 5 Anatomy of LinkedIn’s URL Default URL: When you create your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn allocates a default URL something like the one shown below; Note: The above URL has the keyword ‘pub’ before the name and some numbers after the name.
- 6. 6 Anatomy of LinkedIn’s URL Customized/ Personalised URL: LinkedIn allows you to customize/ personalise your profile’s default URL as shown below; Note: The above URL has the keyword ‘in’ before the name now and not ‘pub’. Also, it has no numbers after the name and it allowed me to give a name of my choice - maleks. The personalised URL looks polished than the default one and something that people can easily remember.
- 7. 7 Anatomy of LinkedIn’s URL • Observation: Personalised URLs have the keyword ‘in’ in the middle while non-personalised URLs have the keyword ‘pub’ in the middle • Hence, the default URL will be http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ followed by default string, whereas the personalised URL will be http://www.linkedin.com/in/ followed by the user defined name • Now that we know which two URLs we are targeting let’s go over the anatomy of a Google search string
- 8. 8 Anatomy of Google Search String Here is a Google search string template; site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/ "Job Title1" "Job Title2" "Industry" "Location" "Keyword1" "Keyword2“ -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/" Let’s understand the above string; • Site: We are using the site: operator of Google to screen LinkedIn. Note we are targeting both the URLs (default and customized) of LinkedIn here using the OR operator. (i.e. site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/) For Canada, the LinkedIn URL will be site:ca.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:ca.linkedin.com/pub/
- 9. 9 Anatomy of Google Search String • Job Title: You can put as many alternate job titles you want (ex. “Food Scientist” “Food Technologist” “R&D Manager”) • Industry: It can be “Food” or “Beverage” or “Food & Beverages” or “Food Production”, or any other relevant industry from LinkedIn’s industry list • Keyword: These could be any specific keyword required by client. You can put as many alternate keywords you want to make a bull’s eye query ex. "Aseptic”, etc. • Location: To target our search location wise, I have put area as listed in LinkedIn’s location list - “Greater Chicago Area”. A little homework is needed here as LinkedIn will only recognise areas it has listed in its Location list.
- 10. 10 Anatomy of Google Search String • Google will also return some directories of profiles. These URLs will usually have “dir” in them somewhere. Ex: Therefore, to remove these directories of profiles we use the minus operator ex. -inurl:“dir/” -intitle:“profiles”. If you see jobs pages appearing in your search results then you can append -inurl:“jobs/” to the string as well.
- 11. 11 Low Hanging Fruits • For finding active candidates, you can use keywords like “Looking” or “Seeking” or “2013” or -“Present” etc. • Looking: Some mention “looking for a new opportunity” on their profile and we can target those profiles with this keyword. • 2013: Those who have recently left their job and updated their profile will have 2013 on their profile. However, this will also include those who have started a new job in 2013. • Present: Notice I’m using Present with the minus operator. The reason for doing this is those candidates who have left in 2013 and have joined another company will have Present on their profile (ex. 2013 - Present), whereas those who have not joined and are unemployed will not have Present (ex. 2012 - 2013). Hence, use of Present with minus operator will get us only unemployed candidates.
- 12. 12 Go Live! • Let’s put actual values in the template string now and see. We’ll search – Scientists in beverage industry in Chicago.. site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/ "Food Scientist" "Beverage" "Aseptic" "Greater Chicago Area“ -intitle:"profiles“ -inurl:"dir/"
- 13. 13 Go Live! • About 18 results found. All local, beverage industry, Scientists and all have “Aseptic” keyword on their profile. Not bad! Bull’s Eye Query! • Now, try the query without the keyword “Aseptic” and we get about 432 results. All local, beverage industry and Scientists! All these 432 profiles can be viewed free unlike through LinkedIn which will allow only 100 profiles to be viewed free. • Try your queries and go for that hard-to-find talent! • Happy Hunting!!
- 14. 14 Some more sites we can tap… X-Ray Searching Job Board - Indeed.com: • The format of the query will remain the same, just a few changes; site:indeed.com/r “Food Scientist” Illinois • Indeed does not categorise industries or location like LinkedIn does; hence you need to put all the relevant keywords in the string to make a bull’s eye query. • Food for thought: Can we x-ray search Monster and CareerBuilder??
- 15. 15 Some more sites we can tap… X-Ray Searching Social Media site – Twitter.com: • The format of the query will remain the same, just a few changes; site:twitter.com “Food Scientist” Illinois • Be more creative while trying to search twitter as we get a lot of profiles we don’t want.
- 16. 16 Tips! • While you try this x-ray search, stay logged out of your linkedin account, so you can get full view of 3rd degree contact profiles as well. If you are logged in, linkedin can identify if a contact is 1st degree, 2nd degree or 3rd degree, but it can not tell if you are not logged in. • Try this search on different search engines – Bing and Yahoo. You’ll be surprised to see different results. • When sending an invite on linkedin – do *NOT* send the default linkedin invite. For a better acceptance ratio, customise your invites according to job search and send.
- 17. 17 Questions? • Feel free to reach out to me.