Boolean Black Belt Website Visitor Analytics
I’ve been blogging since 10/2/2008.
Since then, my blog has had visitors from 9,704 cities in 171 countries around the world, and has been read in 90 languages.
I don’t blog to monetize my website – I write because I’m passionate about recruiting and technology. Okay, I may be a little obsessed too. Maybe more than a little. 
Because I am not a professional blogger, I’ve never really drilled into my website analytics beyond the basics. I recently had a friend ask me about the visitors to my blog, and I really couldn’t tell him much other than the obvious, which made me feel a little stupid. Okay, maybe more than a little.
So, I decided to dig into my website analytics and share with you what I found. I hope you find it as interesting as I do!
Top 25 Countries
- United States
- India
- United Kingdom (very close to tying India, BTW)
- Canada
- Australia
- Netherlands
- Germany
- Singapore
- Philippines
- Ireland
- France
- Lebanon
- Russia
- Switzerland
- New Zealand
- China
- Malaysia
- Italy
- Japan
- Hong Kong
- Thailand
- United Arab Emirates
- Belgium
- Pakistan
- Spain
Yes, I know Hong Kong (#20) isn’t a country – I am not sure why Google Analytics listed it as such. Perhaps because Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China?
If you add the numbers from Hong Kong into China, China would jump all the way to #8, and the #25 country would be South Africa.
Top 25 cities
After viewing the top 25 countries, do you see anything interesting in the top 25 cities? I certainly do!
- London
- New York
- Bangalore
- Minneapolis
- Sydney
- Atlanta
- Chicago
- Tampa
- San Francisco
- Chennai
- Seattle
- Singapore
- Hyderabad
- Mumbai
- Dublin
- Washington
- Philadelphia
- Dallas
- Austin
- Houston
- Arlington
- San Jose
- Beirut
- New Delhi
- San Jose
Top 25 Languages
Although I don’t publish my website in any language other than English (it has recently been recommended to me though, and I’m considering it), my blog has been viewed in 90 languages.
Here are the top 25. Once again, a very interesting story!
- English
- Dutch
- German
- Russian
- French
- Chinese
- Italian
- Spanish
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Turkish
- Korean
- Hungarian
- Swedish
- Japanese
- Czech
- Danish
- Hebrew
- Finnish
- Ukranian
- Slovak
- Greek
- Arabic
- Romanian
- Norwegian
As Always
Thank you for reading my blog! I would also like to extend special thanks to those of you who have recommended my site to others. I write to share ideas, so I appreciate you “paying it forward” and sharing with others.
I must admit I’m hooked on being able to share my thoughts and opinions with recruiters, sourcers and HR professionals all over world, and I sincerely appreciate my international readership! I had no idea how strong it was!
As a last note – don’t hesitate to let me know if there is anything specific you’d like me to write about, or if you’d be interested in guest posting on this site.
Thanks!
Private and Out of Network Search Results on LinkedIn
No matter how large your LinkedIn network is, without the benefit of searching LinkedIn with a LinkedIn Recruiter account, you will inevitably come across search results with “Private” displayed where the name of the person should be.
While many people are aware that this kind of search result is actually just representative of an “out of network” profile, have you ever wondered if truly “private” profiles exist?
I have, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to actually configure a LinkedIn profile/account to be private. However, there are things a person can do to be very difficult to find and identify.
Additionally, there are some people on LinkedIn that you cannot specifically search for and identify, regardless of the level of your LinkedIn account (yes, even the mighty LI Recruiter).
Let me show you.
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Anti-Social Recruiting
Although I’ve often joked about the concept of anti-social recruiting (as if there was anything other than “social” recruiting), anti-social recruiting does exist, and it is unknowingly practiced by many people and top companies as well.
Confused?
Allow me to explain.
“Social,” as defined by Merriam Webster, is “…the interaction of the individual and the group,” and “tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships.”
What most people refer to as “social recruiting” is the use of social media and social networking sites to find, engage, communicate and build relationships with potential candidates with the intent to network and recruit.
However, simply using social media is not enough. Social media has the potential for social interaction, but is not automatically or intrinsically “social,” defined as interactive. For something to be interactive, by the very definition of the word, it must be “mutually or reciprocally active” and involve two-way communication (e.g., a phone conversation).
Not all people and not all companies using social media in their recruiting efforts are actually engaging in two-way communication with potential candidates. However, the two-way engagement, communication and relationship building is (and always has been) the ”social” part of recruiting.
Anti-Social Recruiting
To be antisocial is to not be interactive, and to not form relationships.
If, as I suggested earlier, recruiting has always been social, how can anti-social recruiting even exist? Unfortunately, quite easily. Anti-social recruiting exists whenever their is a lack of interaction.
Here are a few examples of anti-social recruiting:
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Denver Colorado Recruiting Conference August 25th
The Colorado Technical Recruiters Network is kicking off their first annual Recruiter Conference with their “Power Boost 2010: Exceptional Ideas for Exceptional Results: What the Best-In-Class Recruiters Are Doing Differently” event held on August 25th at the PPA Events Center in Denver, Colorado.
Tony Bengston, Founder and President of the CTRN, was able to to assemble a number of notable recruiting industry luminaries, including Gerry Crispin, Eric Jaquith, Jenny DeVaughn, and Laura Stoker. These experienced industry experts will be presenting on sourcing, social recruiting, and the candidate experience. I will also be there delivering a presentation on semantic search, automated/artificially intelligent sourcing and matching applications, and what human sourcers and recruiters can do that machines can’t.
As a non-profit organization, the Colorado Technical Recruiters Network is able to offer the ability for you to attend this event for only $195 if you register by no later than August 16th. The pricing was purposefully set so low that even if an employer was not willing to cover the cost to attend the event, most people would be able to afford to attend on their own.
As an added benefit, this conference has been pre-approved for HR Certification Institute 5.5 General Credits for re-certification credit!
The opportunity to see this great lineup for such a low cost is virtually unprecedented and not to be missed! I hope to see you there!
Recruiting is a Matter of Perspective
It is all too easy for sourcers, recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring teams to develop a skewed, distorted, and decidedly one-way view of the world. Perhaps spending 99% of the time on only one side of the recruiting process is to blame.
Regardless of the cause, it is absolutely critical to regularly take the time and think about, understand, and appreciate the recruiting life cycle from the candidate’s side – the job seeker, the passive candidate, the non-job seeker, and the elusive “A+ player.”
In this article I’m going to walk you through over 10 different scenarios in which I think recruiters and hiring teams can benefit greatly by taking the candidate’s perspective into careful consideration.
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Having Trouble Attracting the Right Candidates?
While attending the Social Recruiting Summit in Minneapolis back in May, I made specific note of a common sentiment expressed by recruiting representatives of two social recruiting powerhouses – Best Buy and Facebook: They don’t have any trouble attracting people, but they do have a tough time attracting the right people.
Recruiters in attendance scoffed at the thought that these two great companies with fantastic brands would have problems attracting talent.
However, I wasn’t surprised – not in the least. And I’ll tell you why.
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Sourcing Candidates is Like Fishing
I believe sourcing for candidates is like fishing.
When people go fishing, they are aware of the fish they can actually see in the water and of course the fish they catch. However, most people who go fishing don’t spend any time wondering about all of the fish in the pond, lake, or ocean they are fishing in that they have access to, but never catch.
Similarly, when most people source for candidates – they are only aware of the candidates they find. They don’t give much thought to all of the great candidates they actually have access to, but fail to find, review, or even recognize as a potential match.
I recently spoke at a Technology Association of Georgia’s (TAG) Recruiting Society event about this very concept. Below is a modified version of the presentation, edited to make more sense given that you don’t have the benefit of seeing/hearing me address the slides.
Enjoy!
A Better Way to Search LinkedIn for Industry Experience
Sourcers and recruiters are often tasked with finding candidates that have experience in a specific industry. I’m sure that such a thing seems easy to the hiring managers and clients making the request, but it’s actually not an easily accomplished feat to perform exhaustively.
Sure, finding some people who work in a specific industry is easy – simply target one or a few major companies/competitors and you’re off to the races, right?
Not so fast, unless you’re happy only finding some people and you’re not really concerned with finding the best.
Most industries are comprised of many companies, and some have several hundred to over 1000! How can anyone say for sure that if they targeted 10 or fewer companies in an industry that they were exposing themselves to the best talent available?
Some people (and companies) think that the best talent can only come from a short list of companies they’ve identified, which seems both absurd and short-sighted in my opinion. The most talented “game changers” don’t always come from a blue chip Fortune 500 company.
However, even if a sourcer/recruiter wanted to identify people who worked at any one of a large number of companies in a particular industry, they are stuck to only searching for a few companies at a time because most search engines/interfaces have limits to the length of the search string that can be run. This can make for an extremely tedious and laborious search process, which explains why most sourcers and recruiters only search for a handful of companies or make use of built-in industry search functionality.
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How “Social Recruiting” Has NOT Changed Recruitment
I feel a moral obligation to weigh in on “social recruiting” again.
I’m not trying to be a buzzkill – but with the continuing swell of momentum and hype that social recruiting is building up, someone has to play the devil’s advocate, refuse to become a victim of BSO (Bright Shiny Object) syndrome, and jump off of the bandwagon to be the voice of objective reason amidst the din of social recruiting cheerleading.
From the many blog posts I am seeing on the subject to the webinars I see popping up frequently, it’s clear that many people see social recruiting as a branding and/or money making opportunity for them.
On the flip side of the coin, there are many people who seem ready to view social recruiting as “the next big thing” and are eager to absorb (and pay for) the message that if you’re not performing “social recruiting” you’re behind the curve, you’ll be left behind, your competitors will laugh at your antiquated recruiting methods, and you’ll never make another hire.
Okay, maybe I’m getting a little dramatic with the last part(s).
But you get the point.
While social media/networking has undeniably added a new dimension to recruiting, it’s important to know that the emergence and evolution of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other sites have not changed many fundamental aspects of recruiting.
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How to Search LinkedIn for Diversity Sourcing
If you ever have a need to perform diversity sourcing, I’m going to show you a trick on LinkedIn that goes beyond the obvious and “everyone’s doing it” methods of searching for fraternities, sororities, specific universities, and of course groups, societies and associations.
Let’s say you were in need of identifying people with specific skills and experience that are also women (software engineers, CFO’s, etc.), and you’ve already tried the standard methods of identifying them. One tactic some people and organizations utlize is searching for common first names for women. However, with most search engines, you’re limited in the size of the search string you can run (sometimes as few as 100 characters!), so you can’t search for many names with a single search. Plus, limiting yourself to only the most common first names is, well…limiting.
While I’ve written about the fact that LinkedIn’s search fields appear bottomless (I have yet to find a limit to the number of characters/terms that can be entered and searched for), I don’t know of many people who try and take advantage of LinkedIn’s limitless search fields.
See where I might be going here?
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