Today’s Job Hunting – Recruiters Find Candidates Online

How recruiters find candidates online

Over half of employers today use the Internet for recruiting. Everyday, millions of job seekers submit their resumes and view job postings on hundreds of popular job boards. The Internet, has given people the ability to view and apply for job openings all across the globe.

Job boards have replaced classified job postings and automated the process of resume management. Companies have implemented applicant-tracking systems that pre-screen and rank candidates on job-specific qualifications as they apply. This automation process has given recruiters the ability to quickly sort through hundreds of resumes and only look at the top candidates versus reading each and every resume.

As technology advances, companies are discovering new and improved ways to meet their employment needs. Companies are no longer simply posting job openings and waiting for resumes to flow in via fax. They are actively searching for the candidates that posse the desired skill set.

Companies have discovered a new recruiting technique called advanced Internet recruiting search. Recruiters learn how to use search engine algorithms to find and uncover prized candidates. Boolean operators and field commands have become the new jargon in the recruitment industry.

What does this new technique have to do with the future of job hunting? Today, more and more people are Internet and computer savvy. Most are experienced in email, instant message, applications, and utilizing search engines to find information.

All of these experiences will be needed for the future in job hunting. In fact, the future is already beginning to evolve. Job seekers are beginning to create documents referred to as webResumes or professional portfolios. These documents allow a person to constantly market himself to anyone interested in his skills.

The Boolean logic that recruiters are using is what helps them find these candidates with specialized skills. With this search, a recruiter can not only find a candidate with the skill set, but also pinpoint them to a specific geographical region.

Let’s say for example, a recruiter was looking for a candidate that had skills in enterprise java beans (ejb). This candidate must reside in the local Atlanta market. The recruiter would take the following steps:

1. Go to Google
2. Type: title:resume AND (ejb OR “enterprise java beans”) AND ((ga OR georgia) NEAR (770 OR 404 OR 678))
3. Click Find

If you did the search above you would find approximately six candidates who all reside in the Atlanta metro area with the word ejb or enterprise java beans on their resume.

Recruiters like this technique because it allows them to create a narrow search that provides them back exactly what they are looking for. On top of that, this search was FREE! Job boards are not free for recruiters to use. In fact, there are several companies that pay Monster.com millions of dollars a year just to post and view resumes on their database.

The bad news in this situation is that there were only approximately six candidates found. It would be my guess that there are at least a thousand candidates in the Atlanta area that would meet this description. Yet, only six showed up.

What do these six candidates know that the rest of the world doesn’t? They understand the value of marketing themselves through their own webResume. They have the gift to have foreseen the future of job hunting and have applied it to the job search strategy of today.