While your enthusiastic recruiting and sourcing peers investigate Pinterest for sourcing, or believe that Facebook is the place to be, because it is large, you can do wonders by using very unique, often unannounced Google-Plus features, for sourcing. Don’t wait for the membership numbers to catch up; it is definitely the place number Two (after LinkedIn) to be for a sourcer.
What makes Google-Plus very special is that its functionality is closely connected with… (surprise!) Google search.
Plus, due to frequent changes, if you stay updated on the functions and algorithms for both Google-Plus and for the Google search, you will already be ahead of most.
To limit this post to just some of the beautiful functionality on Google-Plus, let’s take a look at finding people for circles. (I wrote about some cool circle’ features in an earlier blog post).
Tip #1: Suggestions
Use “related suggestions” to look for people with backgrounds similar to those you have identified. The picture says it all:
Tip #2: Search for target companies
Not in the search box but in the search for people to add to circles:
Tip #3 Search for target schools
In the same drop-down menu:
Tip #4: Search for publicly shared circles
Related to your target audience, and locate people as members of those circles.
Irina Shamaeva is a Partner and the Chief Sourcer at
Brain Gain Recruiting, an executive search firm that specializes in placing senior software development and management consulting candidates nationwide. In addition to full cycle recruiting, Irina does Sourcing projects across numerous industries and geographies. She is an expert and an authority in People Sourcing, i.e. finding professional information about people on the Internet. She shares techniques that she invents, while hands-on sourcing, in blogs and in presentations.
Irina runs the world’s largest online community of Sourcers: the
Boolean Strings LinkedIn group and the
Boolean Strings Ning network, with over 25K total members. Irina maintains an active blog,
Boolean Strings, where she publishes sourcing advice, tips, and best practices, that has enjoyed 175K+ visits to-date.
Thousands of students have attended Irina’s webinars on Search Engines, LinkedIn, “Social Recruiting”, and productivity tools since 2009. In March of 2012 Irina opened the
People Sourcing Certification Program that covers everything anybody who searches for professionals would need and provides certifications at two levels. The program is praised by students who learn “how to think, not memorize” and apply the new skills during the month of supported practice. The first two rounds have included students from 14 countries around the world; corporations like Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Pepsi, OfficeMax, Genentech, Oracle, and Verizon Wireless; recruiting agencies; and research organizations.
Prior to Brain Gain Recruiting, Irina held engineering and management leadership positions at biotech and high technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Applied Biosystems, MDL, and e-Motion. Irina holds a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics from Moscow University. To learn more about Irina, check out her
LinkedIn Profile , follow her on
Twitter, and circle her on
Google-Plus.
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