I always see comments on recruiting blogs and ERE about the use of Twitter as a sourcing tool. Twitter broadcasts about your status in short, text-based posts. It’s a great way to stay in touch with friends and other people with similar interests. You can even follow the postings (or Tweets) of famous people like John Mayer, Heidi Montag, Gavin Newsom, Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, or John McCain (if you’re into that sort of thing). I, myself follow some of my favorite musicians, directors, and staffing professionals like: Trent Reznor of NIN, Imogen Heap, Lisa Nova, Michael Ian Black, Kelly Dingee, and Jim Stroud.
But can this cool, connected medium be used for sourcing? The answer is yes! And to help illustrate, I have enlisted the services of my friend, Plugged-in Pete. He is going to demonstrate the benefits of using search.twitter.com with the right search strings.
Click on the image below to see:
Great demonstration from Pete! By entering some simple words or phrases that a software engineer might “tweet” about, you can get yourself a geographically targeted list of passive candidates. Here’s the example of the search we used:
coding OR “source code” OR compile OR compiler OR OOP OR OOD OR “object oriented” near:”mountain view” within:50mi
Even though Twitter profiles have limited contact information, there is enough to go on so that you can track down the individuals. They contain name, location, and sometimes personal websites or company references. From this point, you take all that information and start your sourcing to find the individual’s contact information. For more help on that, see my other posts about finding people online:
People who need Pipl 1, People who need Pipl 2, and People who need Pipl 3.
Happy hunting!
- Mark
Blogroll
Mar 19
Mar 02
| In recent years we have learned that applications for the 65,000 H-1Bs allocated to foreign nationals was used up by mid April, and that applications were no longer to be accepted by then, although the actual visa grants don’t take place until October 1. |  |
More recently we received confirmation of information that has proven to be true in past years — that Indian Outsourcing Vendors top the list of H1B recipients. For 2008, Microsoft Corp. was the leading U.S.-based recipient of H-1B visas with 1,037 visas — up slightly from the number it received the year before. BUT… The four largest H-1B recipients were: Infosys Technologies Ltd., with 4,559 visas, followed by Wipro Ltd. With 2,768, Satyam Computer Services Ltd. 1,919, and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd at 1539. The number of visas issued to Infosys was identical to what it received the year before, but the other three vendors all saw their visa counts rise. In other news, we learned that IT employment declined by nearly 50,000 jobs in December, after falling by almost 34,000 in November. The global workforce has arrived. I am not saying that this wrong, and am instead suggesting that this needs to be looked at as part of overall immigration reform. We want to keep the development work in the US when possible, and when possible, we want to see American based companies as the beneficiaries of this legislation. - James |
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