Article
Two: Finding Candidates and Contacts on the Web by Darren
Revell
Last month, we looked at ways of identifying contacts from company
web sites. This month we will continue this theme by looking at more
creative ways of identifying both passive candidates and business contacts by finding their information outside the boundaries of their
own corporate web site.
Once again, the first thing you have to do is to choose the best
Search Engine for the job For the following searches we will be using Altavista
(http://www.altavista.com/web/adv)
Peer searching
When we peer search, we are looking for people that work together in a
particular company. There are several ways of doing this but the two
easiest are by using either a company's email format or the company's
name.
As an example, let's look for individuals from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
that are involved in Clinical Trials. We start with their email format: @sandwich.pfizer.com using the following search string
"@sandwich.pfizer.com" AND "clinical trials"
This type of search works particularly well because this is a location
specific email address; i.e. Pfizers manufacturing facility in Sandwich, Kent. If an organization has an email format that is .com,
then we need to add some country specific information.
@peoplesoft.com AND (uk OR "united kingdom" OR "+44") AND NOT
"www.peoplesoft.com"
Although this is not an exact science, it does start to give us UK
based employees of Peoplesoft. By excluding the phrase "www.peoplesoft.com", we ensure that almost all of the spurious
results are removed.
It is also possible to use a company's business name instead of their
email format, although this can have a tendency to broaden your search too much.
"BP Amoco" AND "logistics manager"
You will have to sift through some irrelevant results but you will
often find exactly what you are looking for. With this particular example you will find the name of BP Amoco's UK Logistics Manager.
Finding information about Candidates or Contacts
The Web can provide a valuable resource for finding background information on people you currently deal with or that you want to deal
with. One of the intriguing aspects of the Web, that most users fail
to realise, is that when you submit something to a public web site, that information stays there until the host decides otherwise.
Therefore you can frequently find information about an individual with
them having no idea that the information still exists.
An important point to remember, especially when using relatively
common names, is to target your search by adding some terms specific
to the individual your are searching for. As an example, we could look
for a contact named "Bob Booth" who we think works for British Telecom.
"Bob Booth" AND bt
This is a very simple search but gets us exactly the information that
we are looking for, including office location, email address and direct telephone number (although in the example above I've used a
substitute for the real name)
If you are looking to find information on a candidate you have lost
contact with and you are not sure where they are currently working then try adding a skill or a hobby. Try searching for yourself, you
may be amazed at what you discover.
Article provided by Darren Revell of Attract Spider. http://www.attract-spider.com
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