MagicMethod Phone Sourcing Classroom Chat Log Tuesday, December 16, 2008

[Maureen Sharib]

Best Remark of the Day
"Sure, the candidates you can't find are candidates who do not mention in their resume or profile what you assume they will say and search for." ~ Glen Cathey

11:58am Maureen Sharib Irina, when did you start that LI Boolean group?
11:59am Glen Cathey I will also post the cheat sheet to BooleanBlackBelt in the near future
11:59am Tom Cook I have just a slightly off target question just before class starts - until a few days ago my 3800+ first level linkedIn connections gave me access to 15,000,000+ total connections. Now my 3800+ 1st level connections only have access to 8,900,000 total connections. Does anyone know why this happened?
12:00pm Lisa Macabu I'm new to boolean strings. can you explain what the format is and why?
12:00pmMaureen Sharib Welcome to the MagicMethod Phone Sourcing Chat - today we have a special guest - the Boolean Black Belt - the very talented Glen Cathey!
12:00pmGlen Cathey Tom - I noticed the opposite with my connections. I seeming gained 5M 3rd degree overnight
12:01pmGlen Cathey Quick intro?
12:01pmMaureen Sharib Please
12:01pmGlen Cathey I started in the industry in Jan 1997 using only a CPAS lotus notes resume database
12:01pmDorothy Beach I just checked LI and yes, the same thing happened to me - loss of about 5mil
12:01pmGlen Cathey With no training, I had to figure Booleans out to save my job, literally
I have been a top producer in 2 eras in an agency environment
97-98, and 05-06, pre and post Internet
I am known for being able to find people in databases others can't
And I have discovered 2 hidden talent pools in every database
#1 Candidates you cannot find
#2 Candidates you don't find
12:03pmMaureen Sharib Can you elaborate on that some?
12:03pmToni Buccarelli Glen, I think you have our attention!
12:03pmGlen Cathey Sure - the candidates you can't find are candidates who do not mention in their resume or profile what you assume they will say and search for.
12:03pmMaureen Sharib So what do you do?
12:03pmGlen Cathey The candidates you don't find are candidates that you do not review because your search returned "too many" results for you to review them entirely.
12:04pmGlen Cathey For the candidates you can't find you need to follow the "cardinal rule" of Boolean searching: For every skill, title, technology, etc., that is mentioned in the job description and required and desired skills that you are thinking about including in your Boolean search - take a moment to think of #1 whether or not every person would make explicit mention of it in their resume, and #2 if they would, how many possible alternate ways can it be expressed? If you don't think of it and explicitly search for it, you can't find it. For example - if there are 5 ways of expressing a particular technology - if you only think of 2, you can't find candidates who mention the other 3 ways
12:05pmSam Medalie what's a good example?
12:05pmMaureen Sharib So simple really...
12:06pmGlen Cathey (business analyst or systems analyst or IT analyst or requirements analyst or functional analyst)
(SQL Server or SQL 2000 or SQL 2005)
(CPA or C.P.A. or "certified public accountant)
12:06pmEric Gilson I like to go to Simplyhired and start with very broad terms to gather alternative key words
12:07pmGlen Cathey I do the exact opposite - I start very specific and targeted, which helps find the best candidates first, and those in the HTP of candidates most don't find
12:07pmGlen Cathey I'll explain more...
12:07pmMarcus Ronaldi vb.net & visual basic
12:07pmGlen Cathey Exactly
12:07pmDorothy Beach Yes, and those acronyms in Simply Hired or Indeed
12:07pmFrank Scarpelli What do you think about tools like InfoGist
12:07pmGlen Cathey Or VB6 OR visualbasic.net
12:08pmGlen Cathey I'll get to infoGIST in one sec - hang on please
12:08pmLeo Mc Kiernan I had the same drastic jump in my LI connections. From 10M to 15M overnight
12:08pmLinda Diaz Glenn, I use the basic boolean search string for Technology Integration Consultants for State and Local Government experience and cannot seem to find them on the internet. LinkedIn has been pretty good but most of the very technical are on the job boards and I am responsible for passive candidate sourcing. What boolean can I use that will find more candidates.:-/:-/
12:08pmGlen Cathey The candidates you don't find:
12:08pmGlen Cathey For example, if you run a Boolean search and it returns 398 results and you only review the first 100, you did not find and only look through a portion. Any result returned by a search, but not reviewed by you is a candidate you did not find. This begs the question – how can you be certain that the best possible candidates are not within the 298 candidates you did not review? You can’t. Simple, broad, and imprecise Boolean searches yield large quantities of imprecise results.
12:08pmGlen Cathey Also - no single search can find all qualified candidates, and it is impractical to sort through several hundred results.
12:09pmGlen Cathey The Internet doesn't actually have as many resumes as many would like you to believe
12:09pmGlen Cathey infoGIST is a great tool, but if searching a wide variety of site, you will find you have to "dummy down" the searches
12:09pmGlen Cathey Which defeats the purpose of precise searching
12:09pmGlen Cathey But for building a Talent Warehouse - it's great
12:10pmGlen Cathey To dig into the candidates you don't typically find due to broad searches that get "too many" results
12:10pmDenae Ramey First timer to MagicMethod here!
12:10pmGlen Cathey Step 1: Your first search should always be a "sniper" search – very tight and narrow to quickly find and “cherry pick” a small number of highly qualified candidates.
12:10pmGlen Cathey For example, you can:

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