Imagine that you were just assigned a position to recruit for and that you needed to present 2 fully screened, highly qualified and well matched candidates within 5 business days.

Your manager/client is requesting candidates with:

• 3-5 years of related work experience (your choice – something not too vanilla/easy/common, but not ”purple squirrel” either)
• Experience in a specific industry, and experience working in a similar environment (size/scale/team/software, etc.)  to the manager’s/client’s
• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline

Furthermore, let’s say that you don’t have any qualified candidates in your pipeline, so you are essentially starting from scratch.

Under those conditions and assumptions, if you were limited to only 1 method/specific source for identifying candidates to contact, engage and recruit, which would you choose, and why? 

Please Respond to the (100% Anonymous!) Poll

Why Would You Choose That Method/Source?

Okay, this part isn’t so anonymous.

I’m interested to know exactly why you would choose that specific source/method of talent identification.

I believe the question ultimately boils down to which source/method do you believe has the highest probability of enabling you to produce the 2 fully screened, highly qualified and well matched candidates within 5 business days.

Would your answer be the same if you had to produce the candidates within 48 hours?

What about 24 hours?

How about same-day?

What – does that sound crazy to you? If you’ve never had a manager or client ask you to produce candidates same-day before, it actually happens quite often (to me, more times than I can count!).

I’m looking forward to your responses and supporting arguments as to which source/method you would use and why, and you can expect me to challenge them. If I get a good number of responses - I’ll share with you what MY answer would be.

Bring it!

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I’m a fan of leveraging every information resource available to me – my internal ATS/CRM, the Internet, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even job board resume databases (gasp!).

Have you ever heard job board  naysayers refer to the resumes you can find on Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, etc. as the equivalent of “low hanging fruit?”

I know I have – MANY times.  When I hear people say it or read people write it, it always seems to be used with a negative connotation, and sometimes with derision. 

Is “low hanging fruit” intrinsically a bad thing? Is it even an accurate way to describe searching for resumes on the job boards? 

From what I can tell, “low hanging fruit” is a concept most people understand because they’ve heard others use it in context. But what does such a statement actually mean?  In this article, I will show you there are at least a few different takes on the meaning and use of the phrase and you may be surprised at what actually fits the bill as low hanging fruit in recruiting. 

Low Hanging Fruit Defined

Encarta’s dictionary defines the phrase “low hanging fruit” as “a simple problem or target: a target that is easy to achieve, or a problem that is easy to solve.”

Okay – that definition makes some sense. We can safely assume that the phrase comes from the fact that fruit bearing trees have some branches that are low enough to the ground for people to reach some fruit without much effort.

If the problem or target is acquiring fruit, then certainly the easiest solution that requires the least amount of effort is picking the fruit that is easily within reach.

However, does it accurately describe searching for resumes on the job boards, or anywhere else for that matter?

I don’t think so.

If a recruiter’s target or the solution to their problem is simply to find *SOME* resumes, then ANY source of resumes can be called “low hanging fruit” because they can easily be found on the Internet, LinkedIn, and (hopefully) in your internal resume database.

But is there a tree that *ONLY* has low hanging fruit? And can we be assured that the best fruit will always be within easy reach?

No.

High Hanging Fruit

In the real world, trees don’t only bear low hanging fruit that’s easy to reach. On any given fruit tree, there is a mix of easily accessible (low hanging) and hard to get (top of the tree) fruit.

Similarly, while some candidates contained in the resume databases of the job boards may in fact be “low hanging fruit” (easy to find and aquire), there are many candidates that are what I would refer to as “high hanging fruit” – not to so easy to find and acquire. In fact, some are practically impossible for some people to find without the right tools and training.

To say that ALL of the resumes that you can find on Monster or other job board resume databases are all “low hanging fruit” is to demonstrate a fundamental lack of knowledge and comprehension of Talent Mining – leveraging information systems for Talent Identification.

Access vs. Ability

To the average sourcer or recruiter, perhaps the job boards appear to only have low hanging fruit – because that is all they are capable of seeing. However, just as there is fruit at the top of every tree that you can’t see from the ground, I am here to tell you there are resumes/candidates in every database (even your own!) that are hidden from plain sight.

I often refer to these resumes/candidates as Hidden Talent Pools – but for the sake of this article, I’ll refer to them as “high hanging fruit.” 

Just because you have ACCESS to an orchard, it does not necessarily imply you have the ABILITY to reach all of, or the best fruit available within in the orchard.

Competition

The BNET business dictionary goes one step further in explaining the concept of low hanging fruit: “Low-hanging fruit is highly visible, easily obtained, and provides good short-term opportunities for profit. Such fruit must be taken advantage of quickly, because it is accessible to anyone and there might be considerable competition.”

Okay – I can see how people apply this concept to resumes on the job boards. The job boards are certainly “highly visible,” some resumes are easy to obtain, and if many people have access to the major job boards, then there is an increased chance that other people may find and contact candidates before you do, so you need to act fast.

However, if you take a closer look at BNET’s definition, it says “because it is accessible to anyone.” The last time I checked, everyone doesn’t have access to the premium job boards. In fact, many complain about how expensive they are and offer the cost as a reason why they don’t use them. While there is undoubtedly the threat of competition over each and every resume on the job boards, the job boards don’t actually fit this particular definition of the phrase “low hanging fruit” because they are not accessible to anyone/everyone. 

LinkedIn and the Internet

If we choose to go with BNET’s definition of low hanging fruit, Internet resumes and LinkedIn profiles (many of which as just as detailed as resumes) are more accurately described as low hanging fruit than job board resumes because literally ANYONE can access them. 

There are over 500,000 recruiters on LinkedIn – but you don’t even need to have a LinkedIn profile to search for and find candidates on LinkedIn. So when it comes to easy, unadulterated access to resumes over which there is much competition (whether you are aware of it or not) - the Internet and LinkedIn fit the bill.  

Your Own ATS/CRM

Encyclopedia.com has a slightly different take on the definition of low hanging fruit: “a thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little effort: we know mining our own customer base is low-hanging fruit.”

Now that’s a whole new angle, and quite interesting! From this perspective, mining your own private/internal resume database for candidates would in fact be the very definition of low hanging fruit.

Referrals and Networking

Going with a mix of Encarta’s and Encyclopedia.com’s definitions, it becomes easy to see that leveraging your personal and professional network when attempting to identify candidates is low hanging fruit.

Can anything be easier than networking with people you’ve already established relationships with? While there is definitely room to apply skill in your networking efforts, it’s actually other people doing the work (finding/identifying people) for you. And if someone in your network refers you a candidate, in my experience, it often doesn’t take as much “persuasion” or actual recruiting.   

The Lowest Hanging Fruit

To find the lowest hanging fruit of all, I believe one need look no further than job postings. When it comes to identifying candidates, people responding to your postings are the fruit that’s fallen off of the tree and are lying on the ground.

Looking back at all 3 takes on the meaning of the phrase “low hanging fruit,” if your goal is to get resumes, then it doesn’t get any better than the resumes coming to you, rather than you having to go out and actually look (search) or ask (networking/referrals) for them.

And it’s probably a good idea to act fast on candidates responding to your job postings, because if they are responding to yours, they are probably responding to others – which can result in competition. Lastly, posting your job on your corporate site, the boards, LinkedIn, your Facebook fan page, and Twitter is a no brainer – it’s easy, logical, and no one should have to persuade you to do this. 

Conclusion

The next time you use or hear someone use the phrase “low hanging fruit” when it comes to sourcing and recruiting, I hope you will pause and consider the real meaning of the concept. 

The joke’s on those who use it to derisively describe searching for candidates on the job boards, because using the Internet, LinkedIn, networking, referral recruiting, and posting jobs to find candidates can ALL be accurately described as “low hanging fruit.”

While searching resume databases (internal or online) can seem easy and can yield some ”low hanging fruit,” it is critical to realize that no tree bears only fruit within easy reach. While some are content to fill their basket with the low hanging fruit which requires little effort and skill to collect, those who are especially talented at searching information systems can make the conscious decision to avoid the low hanging fruit, break out a ladder, and head straight to the top of the tree to find and acquire that which others can’t – either due to inability or to the fact that they don’t even “see” them up there at the top.

Access neither implies nor confers ability. Just some food (fruit) for thought.

Is LinkedIn a social networking site, a job board, or a little of both?

Most people consider LinkedIn to be a social networking site, or more specifically a professional network service. LinkedIn describes itself as an “interconnected network of experienced professionals.” However, when I take a step back and take an objective view of LinkedIn, I see a great deal of ”job board” functionality with some social networking features.

Before you cry “blasphemy!,” let’s do some research and look at the facts. 

What Exactly is a “Job Board?”

I tried doing some research to find a definition of exactly what a “job board” is, and found that Wikipedia considers Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, Dice, etc. to be employment websites. According to Wikipedia, an “employment website” is “…a web site dealing specifically with employment or careers. Many employment websites are designed to allow employers to post job requirements for a position to be filled and are commonly known as job boards.”

Common Features of Job Boards

According to INTERNET Inc, ”job boards are usually free for job seekers though there are some exceptions mostly in the realm of upper management and executive jobs. Job ads can usually be found by browsing or through search on keywords, job type and location. Employers usually pay a fee to post job ads… Most job boards also offer employers resume database access for searching out candidates that match specific criteria. Additional services offered by job boards to employers often include: job agents that alert recruiters by e-mail to newly published job seeker resumes that meet specific criteria, …and brand building advertising with e-mail campaigns, banners, buttons and company profiles.”

What LinkedIn Says About LinkedIn

I did some digging and found LinkedIn’s press site. Under the heading of ”What is LinkedIn?,” you can read that “When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments.”

That sounds a lot like writing a resume.  

Reading further, LinkedIn says, “Through your network, you can:”

Reviewing those bullets, I see a mix of finding and being introduced to a variety of people, facilitating business, and posting jobs.

Towards the bottom of their “About Us” page, LinkedIn further explains, “We also offer a premium version of your accounts that give you more tools for finding and reaching the right people, whether or not they are in your network.”

Hmmm…paying to search through profiles detailing professional expertise and accomplishments…why does that sound so familiar? Oh – I know! It sounds remarkably similar to paying Monster or another job board for the ability to search for resumes. 

Job Search

If you’ve never used LinkedIn to search for jobs, you may be surprised to see how robust their job search functionality is.  Here is a screenshot of a search for the keyword “accountant.” You can see the first 4 jobs that are listed as “LinkedIn Jobs.”  Notice, however, there is another tab labeled “The Web.”

If you click on “The Web,” you get taken to job search results for your keywords from SimplyHired, which is a “vertical search engine” company that is working to build ”the largest online database of jobs on the planet.”

I think that’s a pretty cool feature – to be able to search for jobs using the LinkedIn interface and have the option to expand the results to jobs from outside of LinkedIn from the Internet. An especially nice feature for job seekers is the “Jobs insider” – which allows you to explore people you may already be connected to inside of the companies who posted the jobs you’re reviewing.

Pretty powerful and extensive job search functionality for a “social network,” wouldn’t you say? 

LinkedIn Hiring Solutions

While you certainly don’t have to pay to be able to search Linkedin for candidates, LinkedIn does offer premium “Hiring Solutions:”

Hmm…let’s see - ”find the best job candidate fast,” “post a job today,” “find more candidates,” and “empower your corporate staffing team.” Is it just me, or doesn’t that sound like job board speak?

Would you like to see more? Here we see exactly how many candidates you can see per search at each price point, as well as how many saved alerts you can get to “deliver a weekly list of new qualified candidates.”

What’s Your Verdict?

Now that you’ve seen all of the evidence, what’s your verdict?

Conclusion

LinkedIn is definitely not an “employment website,” because it is not a website that deals “specifically with employment or careers.” There is no doubt that LinkedIn is used HEAVILY for employment/career related activity - I’ve seen estimates of 500,000 + recruiters on LinkedIn (click here for the results of a simple search for a few common recruiting and HR titles yielding 545,000+ results). However, LinkedIn is certainly not restricted to, nor solely defined by employment/career related activity, as employment websites are.

LinkedIn undeniably has some very cool and useful features that job boards don’t offer, including InMail, recommendations, network connections (being able to see the people other people are connected to), groups, Answers, etc.

However, when we compare many of LinkedIn’s people search (free and premium), pay-for-job-posting features, and LinkedIn’s own self-description to Internet Inc’s definition of job boards, there is a striking similarity:

• Free for job seekers
• Job seekers can browse through or search for jobs based on on keywords, job type and location.
• Employers pay a fee to post job ads
• Employers and recruiters can pay for access to search for candidates that match specific criteria
• Search agents can be configured that alert recruiters by e-mail to newly published profiles that meet specific criteria
• Companies can use LinkedIn for brand building with company profiles

My verdict is that I think that LinkedIn is essentially a job board in a social network’s clothing - which is not a bad thing! “Job board” is not a four letter word – job seekers need to find jobs, research employers, etc., and companies need to find quality talent – this will never change. I think LinkedIn basically beat the traditional job boards to the punch by having all of the standard job board functionality PLUS a buch of cool social networking features.

LinkedIn was smart – they built the social network first, people came, THEN they added in the job board functionality.  Brilliant!

Are You a Sourcing Snob?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Is a candidate identified on LinkedIn intrinsically “better” than a candidate sourced from Monster?
• Is candidate sourced by cold calling inherently “better” than a candidate sourced from a job posting on Careerbuilder?
• Does it really matter where a great candidate comes from?

I continue to see well respected thought leaders in the staffing industry make claims that the quality of candidates on the job boards is low, and there seems to be no shortage of those in the recruiting and staffing industry who are happy to jump on that bandwagon. However, whenever I read or hear broad, sweeping statements claiming that an entire population of 50,000,000+ candidates is low quality just because they happen to be in an online resume database of a major job board - my response is a mix of shock and disappointment. 

Stereotyping is Poor Judgement

Broad statements such as ”the job boards have low quality candidates” reeks of stereotyping.  A stereotype is an oversimplified conception or opinion based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the “other group” (in this case, job board candidates) have in common. Stereotypes are often formed by an Illusory correlation , a false perception of an association between two variables where in fact none exists.

You just can’t go around claiming all job board candidates are bad. That’s like saying everyone in New York is rude, or that everyone in California is a hippie. To stereotype all job board candidates as low quality is downright insulting to the many fantastic people who make the decision to post their resume to well known online resume databases. If they only knew that posting their resume to a job board was equivalent to moving to “the wrong side of the tracks.”

Sourcing Snobbery

Many sourcers and recruiters use the Internet to source and identify candidates all the time, yet there is never a mention of the intrinsic “quality” of candidates who happen to post their resume on their own websites. As if creating a website and posting your resume to it somehow makes you a better person than someone who either doesn’t know how do do that or simply doesn’t care to, instead opting to post their resume to a well known job board site.

And what about Social Media? The last time I checked – there is no “candidate quality filter” built in to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or any social network. ANYONE can decide to create a web page or a Social Media profile, from “A” players to “F” players.

So what’s with the stigma of being a “job board candidate?” I think it’s sourcing snobbery.

If you find a candidate by searching Facebook – that’s cool. Found your candidate by cold calling into a competitor? You’re awesome! If you found a candidate by searching Monster – you suck.

Employee referral?  Great candidate! Job board candidate? Ewww – gross!

As if  WHERE a candidate comes from actually matters! A great candidate is a great candidate. Employee referrals are wonderful, but I’ve got news for you – the best candidates do NOT always come from employee referrals. If they do in your organization, maybe your sourcers and recruiters aren’t very good at actually finding quality candidates on their own – referrals are “gimmes.” Think about it.

Statistical Facts

Job board resume databases - just like LinkedIn, Twitter, companies you directly source from, and every other source of candidates - are a large random sample  of the entire candidate population. Large random samples adhere to the statistical inevitability of a normal distribution (bell curve). You’ll have a small percentage of horrible candidates, a large percentage of average candidates, and a small percentage of top-notch talent. For those interested in learning more about the statistics of large random samples, check out the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) and the Law of Large Numbers.

That’s right – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet are no different than the job board resume databases in that they all adhere to the laws of statistics. Statistically, it can easily be argued that any given person that can be found on the Internet or in a social network is no more likely to be an “A” player than any given person that can be found on a job board resume database.

Why Do People Post Their Resume on Job Boards?

If you think that the only reason people post their resumes to online job board resume databases is because they are “desperate” and unemployed, you’re wrong. Many people see the job boards as an online marketplace, not unlike eBay.

Let’s use an analogy to drive this point home. If you’ve cleaned out your garage, basement, or attic and you’re looking to sell some stuff – you could have a yard sale, but yard sales limit your potential buyers to your neighbordhood and nearby areas. Why not dramatically increase the pool of potential buyers by putting the items on eBay?

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with candidates using job boards as one approach to helping them make the next step in their career. The idea that candidates should not leverage job boards in their efforts to find their next career opportunity is like thinking that you shouldn’t shop online, sell things on eBay, or use Match.com. This is the 21st century – by all means everyone should leverage all available Internet options in all endeavors!

Looking vs. Being Found

If a candidate relies solely on searching job postings online, they are being proactive in seeking employment, but they are 100% dependent upon the reactive response of the firms they reply to. And let’s be honest here – most companies aren’t very good at responding to candidates who apply to their job postings. Too many candidates experience the “black hole” effect when they respond to job postings (auto-responders don’t count here – they’re no better than auto-DM’s on Twitter).

This lack of response leads many candidates to seek to take more control over the process by opting to post their resume into a resume database so they can be actively found and pursued by potential employers – kind of like posting something on eBay so that people looking for that thing can find it and attempt to acquire it. Many candidates pursue both paths, thinking they’ll cover both angles.

You have to be aware that some people have not had to switch jobs in the past 5-10 years, and that most candidates are not professional job seekers. When the time comes for these folks to move on in their career - many seek the job boards simply in response to the effective and ubiquitous advertisements of the major job boards. Instead of going to the employment section of the local newspaper – going online is perceived as the “new” way of finding a job as compared to the last time they may have had a career transition.

Why not let 100’s of recruiters try and find you the best opportunity for free? Aside from the experience they may have with poor recruiters, this is not a bad value proposition. Also – this is essentially the same value proposition of posting a resume on the Internet or updating a LinkedIn profile with a complete work history.

But What About Networking?

Networking to find a job can definitely work and I would never discourage or disparage it. However, there is no guarantee that any given person’s network can provide the ideal job opportunity at the right time.  What’s the proabability? 

Limiting your job search efforts to only your “network” would be similar to looking to get married to someone, but only on the condition that it must be to someone that your friends know. As if your soulmate can’t be someone outside of your “network.” 

All Sourcers/Recruiters are NOT Created Equal

Perhaps some of the stigma attached to job board candidates is based in the belief that candidates in job board resume databases are “easy” to find. As if the challenge and drugery associated with sifting through large volumes of garbage results while performing Internet searches somehow will produce a higher quality candidate.  Also, there’s nothing inherently “easy” about quickly finding the best possible candidate among 20,000,000 others. All sourcers/recruiters are NOT created equal.

I love to challenge those who assume that just because 100 recruiters may have access to the same source (say Monster, for example) that they can all find the same candidates, as well as all of the best candidates available in the system.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. That’s no different than thinking that if 100 people go fishing in the Pacific Ocean that they will all catch the same fish and all of the available fish to be caught. Ridiculous!

Unlike many who disparage the job boards, I have actually used them to source candidates, and I’ve recruited and placed many “A+” candidates from the job boards that my clients and competitors also had access to. By “A+” I mean candidates that were better than those produced through client/employee referrals. Blasphemy? No – just the facts.

How is it that no one else found the same people I did? Did I get lucky? Only if you can get “lucky” consistenly. Just because many people have access to a given database, it is not safe to assume that everyone can find the same candidates, or find ALL of the qualified candidates, or find the BEST candidates in that database. Perhaps the people who are always claiming the job board resume databases have low quality candidates lack the proficiency to actually FIND the high quality candidates.

For a look into how 1 person can find great candidates that 100’s of other recruiters did not using the exact same job board database, read this post about a Google Network Performance Tester position that literally hundreds of agency and contract recruiters had been working for 4 months.

Conclusion

If part of the stigma of job board resumes is that everyone has access to them and thus they are “easy” to find – I am thoroughly confused. The last time I checked – literally EVERYONE has access to the Internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. There is no competitive advantage in using any of these sources to find candidates because everyone has access. The same goes for cold calling – everyone has access to a phone, right?

However, as I have hopefully shown you, having access to a resource and being able to find the right people are two completely different things.

If posting a resume on Monster is an act of a deserate job seeker, then so is posting a resume on the Internet, updating a LinkedIn profile, and using Twitter to advertise that you’re looking for a new position.

More of the candidates of today and certainly most of the candidates of tomorrow are likely to have a blog, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, use Twitter, AND post their resume to an online resume database (Monster, niche, or other such as VisualCV). 

The bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter where you find a great candidate.

Don’t be a sourcing snob.

I define E-sourcing as leveraging information systems for active talent identification – searching the Internet, social media, job board resume databases, and applicant tracking systems to find candidates. The proper use of technology in the sourcing and recruiting process should increase your efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness.  I’ve created the SlideShare presentation below to cover a number of different ways for you to maximize your ability to find more of the right people more quickly, to accelerate and enable your recruiting efforts.

Click on the presentation below to review:

• Boolean operators and common query modifiers
• Searching LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook
• X-Ray searching Social Media
• Search automation and aggregation
• Semantic search: manual and artificial intelligence matching solutions
• Search ROI – a comparison of the searchability and data depth of the Internet, Social Media, Resume Databases, and ATSs
• Talent Warehouse concepts

With the rise in companies effectively leveraging SEM (Search Engine Marketing)/SEO (Search Engine Optimization), vertical job search engines such as Indeed and SimplyHired, and social media campaigns, it seems as if many feel that the ROI of posting jobs on the major job boards has steadily declined.  Perhaps this is where the strong anti-job board sentiment comes from within the recruiting and staffing industry.

However, there is another side to the job board coin – the resume databases. Personally, when I think of the job boards, I think of their resume databases – not job posting. Job posting is job posting – whether it’s on a corporate website, paid job board, a free board, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Indeed.  While it can definitely work, it’s a passive and reactive technique that has a low ROI in most cases with many respondents who do not meet the basic qualificiations of the position posted.

As the positive buzz surrounding social media and social networking sites continues to build and the negative buzz surrounding the major job boards seems to rise, I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the major job boards stepped out of the proverbial box and took an evolutionary step forward.

Enter Careerbuilder’s Applicant Explorer

Back in January, I received an email from Careerbuilder that talked about an interesting new feature called “Applicant Explorer,” and it said that a user with manager rights on your CareerBuilder.com account must log in initially to activate your Applicant Explorer functionality.

Curious, I logged in and activated the functionality to check it out.  What I found is that Careerbuilder has done something quite interesting by introducing Applicant Explorer to people who search for resumes on Careerbuilder’s website, which has over 28 million resumes.

As Careerbuilder explains it, when you run a search against their resume database and begin to review results, not only can you review resumes, but you can also see a snapshot of information available on the Web for that person. The information is gathered from a variety of sources:

• Social networking sites
• Professional and personal blogs
• Personal and corporate Web sites
• Press releases
• Discussion and forum postings
• Articles and news stories published online

Careerbuilder’s claim is that having quick and easy access to this cross-referenced, publicly available data for the candidates you are reviewing saves you time, as there is no need to open other browsers or tabs and perform this research manually from outside of their application. Essentially, you can get a comprehensive collection of a candidate’s Web footprint from within CareerBuilder.com’s Resume Database. 

According to Greg Brass, Director, Profile Search at CareerBuilder, “AE differs from any of the “people search engines” in the fact that we search and match based on a candidate’s entire resume and not just a name. In this way, we can more accurately match the candidate to other web references, ranging from blog postings that better display a mastery of a technical skill set, to a true cross-section of a graphic designer’s entire portfolio (as that graphic designer may only list one or two work examples on a resume).”

So Does It Deliver?

Well, let’s find out together!  I ran about 25 searches for candidates who posted their resume about 90 days to 1 year ago (no current job seekers were used in screenshots) and used Applicant Explorer on a random sample of the results. 

When you select/open a resume that you would like to review, on the left sidebar you’ll see this:

Once you click “Start Applicant Explorer,” you will get web search results that are divided into “matched results” and “expanded results.” Matched results include professional and social networking sites. Expanded results include forums, personal or company blogs, and work done for previous companies. 

Matched Results

Here is an example of what you can see under “Matched Results:”

You can see that it obviously attempts to pull matches from Facebook, LinkedIn, and ZoomInfo in this case. Notice, however, the url under the LinkedIn “hit” – it’s a directory result.  Not perfect - but not bad.  Interestingly, under the “Expanded Results” for this person, I did find the direct LinkedIn profile hit:

I’ve also seen Applicant Explorer attempt to source from MySpace:

Obviously, with less unique/more common names, users will run into the same disambiguation problems they would if they were trying to search Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace directly. Will the “real” Richard Lee please stand up?

Expanded Results

Here is an example of what you can see under “Expanded Results:”

You can see that Careerbuilder’s Applicant Explorer uses Live Search to populate “Expanded Results.”

Another one of my searches produced what I thought was very interesting. If you look at the screenshot below, you can see that the “snapshot” version of Applicant Explorer’s Expanded Results pulled hits from the Internet of people other than the candidate I was reviewing, but who had the same email domain. That should raise some eyebrows among the more hardcore researchers. I say cool.

What’s also interesting is that Applicant Explorer also frequently hits on Yahoo! profiles:

Check This Out

I found that for one of my searches, Applicant Explorer returned some results from the Internet that actually listed one of the candidates I found in Careerbuilder’s resume databse as one of the interviewers for a Linux Engineer position posted online. I conducted some cross-referencing research and found that it was a dead on match (the person in question did work at BAE). As you can see below, there are 3 other names listed as people who will be interviewing candidates for the opening. It should not take a “rocket scientist” to figure out what kinds of people would be qualified to interview Linux Engineers. Nice job Applicant Explorer!

Lack of Overlap

Anecdotally, one thing I noticed is that I tried to use Applicant Explorer to dig up Web results for many people with resumes on Careerbuilder – and it came up with nothing. Then I did my own Internet research and confirmed that in most of these cases – Applicant Explorer was “right” in that the people did not appear to have any social media/networking profiles and/or much information about them on the Internet. Certainly not scientific data, or a large enough sample to be significant, but I was personally surprised to come across so many resumes for people that I could not find on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. In fact, I often found myself having to work hard just to find people who did have a decent amount of Internet and social media hits.  

The Downside

There were many times when I found Applicant Explorer to return a large amount of ambiguous, as well as false positive results. In some cases, Web results were obviously for the wrong people, and in some cases, were hits on the same name as the candidate, but from another state. However, it must be said that the same is true of any Internet research.  Try typing a name into Facebook and see how many results you get – and try to figure out which one is the person you’re actually looking for. There are some intrinsic limitations to Internet research, and Applicant Explorer, which uses Live Search, isn’t immune. 

Conclusion

Okay – so is it a big deal that a major job board now empowers you with the ability to perform one-click Internet cross-referencing research to look for potential matches on social networks, blogs, press releases, etc., for the candidates you are reviewing?

I think so. The major job boards have made very few, if any material changes to their service offerings over the past decade. Being able to get Internet and social media search results for candidates whose resumes you are reviewing without having to open another browser and maunally perform the research yourself IS convenient, and it does save some time. Plus, Careerbuilder offers it at no additional cost.

Are all the kinks worked out?  I’m sure they are not.  But that isn’t the point of this post. I am not conducting a formal review of Applicant Explorer – I’m simply letting my readers know about an interesting new feature of a major job board and insight into how it works and what it looks like.

I applaud Careerbuilder for being the first of the major job boards to take an evolutionary step “out of the job board box” and to offer something that leverages social media to help sourcers and recruiters build a more complete picture of the candidates they are reviewing.

Careerbuilder (or any other job board that I am aware of) isn’t trying to compete with social media and social networking applications. At least not that I know of.

HOWEVER, imagine if the big job boards DID implement social networking functionality to their applications – where active and passive job seekers could network with each other. BAM! You’d have at least three instant 20M+ social networks. Anyone from the major job boards reading this? I hope so! It’s time to evolve!

Job Boards vs. Social Media – which is more effective at helping people get jobs?

At least for now, statistics appear to support that job boards are either more widely used to find jobs, or simply more effective at landing people jobs than social networking sites.

According to a recent LinkedIn poll, 4310 people responded and 22% of the respondents used a major (Monster, Careerbuilder, ec.) or niche job board (Dice, The Ladders, etc.) to find their last job vs. 6% who indicated that they landed their last job through the use of a social networking site (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.).

Here is the link to the poll results.

The Irony

I find it ironic that a poll of LinkedIn users showed that nearly 4X as many people used job boards to find their last job vs. social networking sites such as Linkedin. For those who rant about how social media is “IT” and job boards are old and ineffective, this poll certainly doesn’t support your view, and I suggest you read this post on an objective comparison of job boards vs. social networking sites from the perspective of sourcing and recruiting.

Hype vs. Facts

Don’t get me wrong – I love, support, and utilize social media. Social networking is definitely not a fad – it isn’t going away and will continue to evolve in exciting new ways we cannot even begin to predict. However, it is important to get past the “new” and “cool” and “next big thing” factor of social media, and begin to collect enough data to be able to determine exactly how effective social media is for talent identification and acquisition. Cool? Yes. Effective? I don’t know – show me some data.

I encounter large volumes of anecdotal, unverifiable, non-quantified opinions from sourcers and recruiters who talk about how effective using social media for sourcing and recruiting has been for them. I will hold my opinion until we get past the opinions and generate some real facts and data.

What People Said

If you click the link I provided that takes you to the poll results, you will see that nearly 100 people left comments in response to the poll (95 at the time of this post). Many of the comments speak negatively about the job boards - but you need to keep in mind that 95 comments out of 4310 respondents is only 2.2%, so the comments represent the vast minority. Also, I am not necessarily surprised that some of the comments bash the job boards – it seems that most people who are passionate about social networking are anti-job board, as if they don’t both have value if properly leveraged.  Job boards and social media do not need to be an either/or, black/white scenario – they CAN be effectively leveraged in conjunction with each other.

Another interesting statistic from the poll is the large number (67%) of people who claim they did not use a site to find their last job.  Unfortunately, we’ll never really know how those people found their last job – referrals, networking, newspapers, targeted headhunting (called directly by a recruiter), sites not listed in the poll as an option (such as Craig’s List), etc.  

Conclusion

So far, this LinkedIn poll is the only public data I’ve seen that illustrates how many people have actually landed a job using various websites such as job boards and social networking sites – and the respectable sample size of 4300+ responses definitely gives credible weight to the fact that either more people use job boards to find jobs or they are more effective at helping people find jobs than social networking sites.

If you encounter any solid, verifiable data on the effectiveness of job seekers and/or recruiters in the use of job boards vs. social networking sites for landing jobs and/or hiring people - please let me know.  Thanks!

I follow a number of recruiting blogs as well as many sourcers and recruiters on Twitter and I see a growing trend of job board bashing – typically comparing them (very) unfavorably to social networking sites and applications.

I love and leverage social networking as much as the the next recruiting professional, but I refuse to just blindly follow the crowd or jump on the bandwagon when it comes to anything. With all of the buzz about social media and so many people running away from and disparaging the job boards, I am going to step out of the crowd and try to figure out where this perspective that job boards = old/bad, social networking = new/good comes from, because to me, some of the reasoning doesn’t add up.

JOB BOARDS: JOB POSTING vs RESUME DATABASES

First, let me say that when I think of the job boards, I think of their resume databases – not job posting. Job posting is job posting – whether it’s on a paid job board, a free board, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Indeed.  While it can definitely work, it’s a passive and reactive technique that has a low ROI in most cases with many respondents who do not meet the basic qualificiations of the position posted.

I ACTUALLY USE BOTH JOB BOARDS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

One thing I want to make clear is that I actually have access to and use major paid job board resume databases, and I also use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It is very important to realize that some people who speak negatively about the major job boards actually don’t use them. I am not really sure how someone can review or form an opinion of a product they don’t use. I’ll leave that for you to figure out.

EXCELLENT BLOG POST 

This well-presented post was brought to my attention via Twitter recently: Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Recruit Thru Social Networks, and I agree with most of the points made and reasons presented. However, because there is an undertone of job boards = old/bad and social networks = new/good, it offers a good platform to me to offer some counterpoints. 

POINT:

Social networks make it easy to build relationships with people who may not feel comfortble actively looking for a job online.

COUNTERPOINTS:

#1 The reality is that not all social networks make it EASY to build relationships with people. As I am fond of saying, if you can’t find or identify the people in the first place, you can’t establish a relationship with them. For example, if you’re on Facebook looking for potential employees – Facebook’s search interface is limited and you can only see information about people inside your network. Even third party Facebook search applications that do allow you to see information about people beyond your network and don’t really offer very effective or powerful people-finding ability. 

The search interfaces/engines of all major online job board resume databases enable users to create highly specific searches and thus easily return relevant results. If you can find them, you can contact them and begin to build relationships with them.

#2 Even after you’ve found someone on a social network, there is nothing inherently easier about building relationships with people you find via social networks than sending an email or picking up the phone to reach people you’ve found on a job board (or the Internet, or wherever). Think about it.

Besides, once you find someone on a job board, you could just as easily cross reference their name and search for them on social networks and reach out to them there as well. For Facebook specifically, this is especially helpful because you actually have a name to search with, and in many cases a company.

Careerbuilder is already making the move to capitalize on cross referencing people who post their resume on their site with social networks with their new Applicant Explorer. I’ve used it – it’s cool, and it works.

#3 Some people who don’t feel comfortable actively looking for jobs online do actually post their resumes confidentially on the major job boards, with no identifying information – but they can be found and contacted. In fact, some of the best candidates are completely confidential. If your information is on LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace or Facebook – it’s not confidential.

You should know that some people who post their resumes online aren’t actually actively looking. You may also find it interesting to know that my own research has shown that approximately 75% – 80% of the resumes on the major online job boards have posted dates over 30 days old. It could be argued the job board resume databases are actually more “passive channel” than “active channel.” 

If you do have access to any major job board resume database and you’re only searching for people who just posted their resume (and thus “active” candidates, at least in theory), you’re missing the vast majority of candidates, and you are falling prey to the #7 misake out of 15 that sourcers and recruiters make.

POINT: 

You can easily find relevant candidates for any position by searching for candidates with the skills your company is looking for.

COUNTERPOINTS:

#1 See counterpoint #1 above. No social network has a very advanced search interface or capability, and some are quite poor, so for the most part you actually can’t easily find relevant candidates. LinkedIn’s search interface and capability is solid and is perhaps the best of the social media bunch, but it still does not compare well to the search interfaces and capability of any of the major job board resume databases in terms of configurability, control and precision. 

#2 You actually CAN search job board resume databases and easily find relevant candidates with the skills your company is looking for. More easily than you can with any social network/application.

POINT: 

When you recruit in social networks your company will reap the added benefit of spreading brand awareness and increasing the desire of others to work at your company.

COUNTERPOINT:

When you find candidates via the job boards, I think you have just as much opportunity to brand yourself and your company when you contact the people you find and spread brand awareness through them.

However, there is no denying that having a corporate presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social networking sites, or having a corporate blog can increase your brand awareness and the desire of others to work at your company in ways that the major job boards simply cannot, as they do not offer similar methods of exposure or branding. 

POINT:

One of the most popular ways to find a potential candidate is through connections. When you begin recruiting in social networks you expand your personal network so that you can reach a much larger number of potential candidates.

COUNTERPOINT:

Job board resume databases can be used in a manner very similar to social network sites and applications. If you’re using a resume database and you’re not actively and consistently building relationships with, networking with, branding yourself/your company, and referral recruiting with the people you’re contacting then you are most certainly not leveraging job board resume databases to their fullest potential.

Since before the Internet and even the computer, any good recruiter knows success is about establishing and building relationships and expanding your personal and professional network – every person you come into contact with knows other people.  You don’t need a social networking site to leverage this simple fact – just pick up the phone. 

Some people may be surprised to learn that the concept of social networks is over 100 years old. MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are examples of social network services, but social networking does not require the Internet.

POINT:

Job boards are on the way out and more and more employers are turning to social networks for recruitment.

COUNTERPOINT:

There is no denying that more and more employers are turning to social networks for recruitment and that traffic to the major job boards has been declining, but I am not exactly sure if job boards are on their way out. While they are not likely to completely disappear, they do need to (and likely will, in order to survive) evolve their identity and functionality in order to play catch-up with the positive buzz and valuable features of social networking sites and applications.  

A FEW POINTS OF MY OWN

And now I would like to raise a few points of my own regarding the job boards in comparison to social media:

POINT: 

It is certainly a fact that everyone is not on a job board. There are people you can find and recruit via social media that you simply cannot find on a job board.

However, the converse is also true – everyone is not on a social network, and there ARE actually great people you can find on the job boards that you simply cannot find on any social network. If you don’t agree with this point and don’t use job board resume databases, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but it won’t be supported by fact. 

POINT: 

Job boards cost money. Social networks are free (for the most part – you can pay for LinkedIn). While everyone loves free – free means everyone (530,000 recruiters!) has access and therefore there is no competitive advantage of exclusivity. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

If you’re in executive search and working with clients who are very savvy with social media and who leverage Linkedin heavily and effectively, don’t be surprised to hear your clients eventually say something like this: “Don’t bother searching LinkedIn – we already have that covered, and we won’t pay a fee for candidates on LinkedIn.”  You heard it predicted here first.

CONCLUSION:

I completely agree that social networks are an amazing channel for finding potential employees and that they are increasingly becoming an even expected way of finding them. Companies should definitely be leveraging social networking via blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I agree that if they don’t, they risk “being left in the dust,” as having an effective social media strategy can likely be a significant competitive advantage.

However, I strongly feel that having an either/or mentality when it comes to social media and the job boards is illogical – it just doesn’t make sense.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I sincerely hope people think before they simply jump on the bandwagon.

While surfing through the discussions in the Boolean Strings Group on LinkedIn, I stumbled across someone asking for search advice on how to create effective Boolean search strings to find sales professionals and I offered some suggestions – which I will expand upon here, covering resume databases as well as leveraging LinkedIn via Google using the site: command.

Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, Internal Resume Database

Here is a “core” title-based search that can be used on any resume database that recognizes standard Boolean:

(sales or “account executive” or “account coordinator” or sales rep* or “outside sales” or “inside sales” or “sales consultant” or “business development” or “account development” or “sales executive” or “sales associate” or “account manager”)

In addition to the title-based search, you can add activity-related keywords to experiment and refine results:

(sell or sold or phone or call or called or calls or client* or customer* or clos* or cold or business or lead or leads or prospect*)

To further refine your results, you could add achievement-related keywords, such as:

(increased or lead or led or top or highest or most or exceeded or quota*)

You could add them all together and run this Boolean search string:

(sales or “account executive” or “account coordinator” or sales rep* or “outside sales” or “inside sales” or “sales consultant” or “business development” or “account development” or “sales executive” or “sales associate” or “account manager”) and (sell or sold or phone or call or called or calls or client* or customer* or clos* or cold or business or lead or leads or prospect*) and (increased or lead or led or top or highest or most or exceeded or quota*)

That’s 459 characters with spaces – it will fit and run on Monster and most ATS’s.

Here’s an example of a result from an online job board:

LinkedIn via Google

Moving on to LinkedIn, we could start with a search like this one using Google, targeting Houston:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates

That gives you nearly 18,000 results.

You can further narrow your results by searching for specific industries.

For example – targeting the Oil & Energy Industry:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” “Oil & Energy” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That narrows it down to 688 results.

You could also try and eliminate managers and directors, like this:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” -”manager” -”director” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That search produces 767 results. Here is a sample:

Coupling Oil & Energy and non-managers/directors into one search:

site:linkedin.com (~sales | “business development”) (~increased | ~lead | ~top | ~ highest | ~most | ~exceed | ~quota) “Houston, Texas Area” “Oil & Energy” -”manager” -”director” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates -inurl:jobs -inurl:companies

That search yields a manageable 121 results.

Anyone need any sales professionals?

I was reading a discussion in the Boolean Strings group on LinkedIn and someone was having difficulty in locating a bilingual (Spanish) WAN Engineer in the Denver, CO area. It sounded like as good of a challenge as any, so I decided to take a crack at seeing what I could find by searching the Internet via Google, LinkedIn, Monster, and an internal database.

As a first swing, I crafted this search that can be run on any resume database recognizing basic Boolean (internal database/ATS, Monster, Careerbuilder, etc):

(WAN or “Wide Area” or ATM or Frame) and cisco and router* and (senior or lead or architect or engineer) and network* and Spanish and (fluently or fluency or fluent or native or bilingual or bi/lingual or “bi lingual” or language* or conversational)

Monster yielded 26 results in a 30 mile radius from Denver.

My internal resume database turned up 166 results in Denver specifically. It pays to have a Talent Warehouse.

As for the search I chose to begin with – while not everyone will mention descriptive words such as “native,” “fluent,” or “bilingual,”  it is a good idea to start there because it nearly guarantees fluency.  

After you exhaust those fluency-related words,  NOT them out to find people who simply mention “Spanish” and sort through them. For example:

(WAN or “Wide Area” or ATM or Frame) and cisco and router* and (senior or lead or architect or engineer) and network* and Spanish and not (fluently or fluency or fluent or native or bilingual or bi/lingual or “bi lingual” or language* or conversational)

Using the site: command via Google to search LinkedIn, I went with this search:

site:linkedin.com (WAN | “Wide Area” | ATM | Frame) cisco ~router  (senior | lead | architect | engineer) ~network Spanish “greater denver area” -intitle:directory -inurl:updates -inurl:updates

That yielded 0 results. Once i took out the Spanish, I got 42 tight results.  So the limiting factor is the word “Spanish.” 

Sourcing LinkedIn can be a challenge because LinkedIn is not a resume database.  Most people do not fill out their profiles completely when it comes to their employment history, and even those that do don’t often provide much detail or information.  I am not surprised at all that there are not many people who mention that they are bilingual on their LinkedIn profile.  LinkedIn is a great source of talent, but it is typically a low yield source of highly specific talent.

I then moved on to running a search on Google to see what I could find on the Internet: 

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) (WAN | “Wide Area” | ATM | Frame) cisco ~router  (senior | lead | architect | engineer) ~network Spanish 80001..80640 -~job -~jobs

That search yielded 2 results, 1 of which is in Denver, and he’s a TS cleared CCIE. Sweet.

Switching it up from a zip code range to area codes, I ran this:

(intitle:resume | inurl:resume) (WAN | “Wide Area” | ATM | Frame) cisco ~router  (senior | lead | architect | engineer) ~network Spanish (720 | 303) -~job -~jobs

That search only yielded 1 result, which was non-local.

This exercise clearly illustrates the point I try to make over and over – for highly specific hiring profiles (and I don’t limit this to rare skills – just highly specific) – the Internet is not really the cornucopia of resumes (yes, that was a purposefully placed Thanksgiving reference) many people make it out to be, or falsely assume it to be.  LinkedIn also isn’t the panacea of talent for highly specific hiring profiles. The major job boards of course will represent relatively well because they are by design repositories of resumes, and very large ones at that. So even rare/highly specific skills and experience are represented in solid quantities. 

And last, but most certainly not least, a well stocked internal resume database, ATS, or Talent Warehouse can actually be a sourcer’s or recruiter’s most effective weapon in the War for Talent. In this exercise, the internal resume database (166 results) trumped Monster (26), LinkedIn (0), and the mighty Internet (2).