The Searchologist

How to source passive candidates from video (Part 1)

By Jim Stroud, The Searchologist Monday February 8, 2010

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How to source passive candidates from video (Part 1)

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When I say video search engine, what immediately comes to mind? YouTube! Am I right? Well, since I am writing this and cannot hear you, I am going to go with, “Yes, Jim, you are right and may I add, very good-looking.”

Well, you are too kind, but let me get back to my point. YouTube hosts a lot of video and they have a mechanism for searching the videos they host, but is it really a video search engine? Hmm… Let’s consult Wikipedia for a definition.

A video search engine is a web-based search engine which crawls the web for video content. Some video search engines parse externally hosted content while others allow content to be uploaded and hosted on their own servers. Some engines also allow users to search by video format type and by length of the clip. Search results are usually accompanied by a thumbnail view of the video.

So, technically… no, YouTube is not a video search engine because it restricts its search to its own domain and not other video sites on the web. Why does that matter? Well, it doesn’t really, I just wanted a way to bring up video search engines as a great source of passive candidates. Case in point, one really, really good video search engine is Blinkx. I have a lot of love for Blinkx because it has an index of over 35 million hours of searchable video from more than “650 media partnerships, including national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries.”

Now consider this, what types of people are seen on video? But of course, anyone and everyone; software engineers for example. Let’s do a search on Blinkx. This is my search string:

software engineer -jobs

If you no doubt notice, I have restricted the term “jobs” from the search results. I did that because when I did my search initially, there were several recruitment videos in my results.

Check out the very first result, “A message from (YouTube) software engineer Peter Bradshaw.”

Here are a few more search results I thought were interesting:

Intrigued? Sure, not every video will you give you the perfect lead (name and place of employment), but on several occasions they do. Give it a shot with different job titles and see what you get. And in the event you are not finding what you want on Blinkx, here are a few more video search engines to try your search on. For giggles, I am looking for Software Engineers on every resource cited below.

Let me know your thoughts on this technique? I would really like to hear them.

Happy Hunting!

Jim

How to Find Resumes with Universal Syntax

By Jim Stroud, The Searchologist Wednesday February 3, 2010

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Each website has its own language and nuances, but my experiences have shown me that there are some search engine commands that tend to work across the board. I have been using some of them already in earlier posts.

Here is a list of what I call “Universal Syntax,” search commands that work on Google, Yahoo and Bing (and others).

UNIVERSAL SYNTAX

inurl:
Searches for a keyword in the URL (web address) of a web document. For example, with inurl:resume this command I am looking for the term “resume” in the URL.

intitle:
Searches for a keyword in the title of a web document. For example, with intitle:resume this command I am looking for the term “resume” in the title of a web document.

( – ) Minus
Keeps the search engine to find an exact phrase. For example, with -apply restricts the word “apply” from the search results.

( “” ) Quotations
Asks the search engine to find an exact phrase. For example, with “software engineer” I want to find that exact phrase software engineer in the search results.

site:
Restricts your search engine to a particular domain. For example, site:ibm.com “is a software engineer” does not look for resumes on the IBM site as there will not be any there. However, there will be a case (several cases actually) where IBM discusses the people who work for their company.

Do you know of any searchengines where these commands do not work?

A Look Inside Google Social Search

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In episode #14 of The Searchologist, Jim goes ga-ga over Google’s new social search features and ponders how it will benefit Recruiters and Business Development professionals. Plus, Jim shares his very unique poetry stylings and welcomes a special guest to the show. Tune in to see all the fun! (Click here to buy The Searchologist [...]

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QUICK TIP!
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How to get your “perfect” candidate hired

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