1. Brainstorm a list of keywords related to your search.

    2. Of those keywords pick the top three "must haves."

    3. Are your three keywords unique to the industry or can they be used in other contexts as well?

    4. If they are not unique to the industry what other keywords can you think of which have the same meaning, yet are used only by candidates you want to find? For example: "SONET" is a better word, because it is more unique than "Optical Engineer" and "ASIC" is a much better search term than "Hardware Design Engineer".

    5. Using your favorite search engines and those unique keywords enter the search string for each type of search on the CheatSheet.

    6. Some searches work exclusively with Google (marked GG: on the Cheat- Sheet), and others exclusively with AltaVista (marked AV:).


Resumes

The first step is a basic cursory scan of websites indexed by search engines. We will start with four keywords then add "(my OR home)" to narrow our results. For example, type the following string in Google:

SONET DWDM Sales Resume (my OR home)

If you have unique keywords this search should bring back dozens of actual resume pages on people's 'home' websites. If it doesn't, you need to find more unique keywords. Adding the search terms "(my OR home)" helps us eliminate corporate pages as well as job postings because those two words are frequently found on personal pages and rarely found on professional ones.

Employee Homepages and Links to a Website

The second search, Employee Homepages, works only in AltaVista and returns pages which contain links to target employers, as well as your chosen keywords. To use this search you must identify a company that employs the same people you seek. For example, if Lucent employs the type of CCIEs you seek, then enter the following search string in AltaVista:

link:www.lucent.com AND CCIE AND (my OR home)

Personal Homepages

Millions of people create their resumes on free space. The third search, Personal Homepages, must be done from within communities such as Geocities or AOL. To find Geocities members, go to http://geocities.yahoo.com/ and enter your two most important keywords plus the term "resume" in the "Search or Browse our Directory" box. For AOL Hometown members go to http://hometown.aol.com/ and enter the same terms in the "Search & Explore" box. These communities are good places to get results because few commercial enterprises create their pages there for fear of looking unprofessional.

Membership Directories

Membership Directory search works by adding the terms "(directory OR contact)" to your two most important keywords. It also limits your results to those where either the website's address or page title contain the term "member," effectively bringing you sites mentioning member contacts or member directories. This search could also help you identify associations your candidates belong to and which were unknown to you.

Alumni Directories

Like with Membership Directories, Alumni Directory searching works by replacing "member" with "alumni" when searching in the website address or title. As with the previous example you are also looking for "(directory OR contact)". The only other difference is that along with your most important keyword(s) you also use the name of a company that hires the same kind of people you need. For example, type or copy the following search string in Google:

Lucent Optical (directory OR contact) (inurl:alumni OR intitle:alumni)

Mailing List Archives

Mailing lists, online forums and discussion groups may keep a public archive of posted conversations for the benefit of members who want to revisit an old topic. These conversations are a great source of potential candidates and related information. Using your top keyword(s) plus the terms "archive" (which may appear anywhere in the page) and "list" (which may also come up in the website address or title), we can find those conversations. Type or copy the following search string example in Google:

DWDM archive (inurl:list OR intitle:list)

Website Hosts

Sales candidates are typically difficult to locate since they are infamous for not maintaining updated resumes. One quick way to find them is to look through a company's complete website for any mention of sales contacts. To do this we use your keyword plus either the command "site:" in Google or "host:" in AltaVista. After the command you must include the website you want to examine. For example: searching for "site:www.jobmachine.net contact" in Google will return all 18 pages of our website mentioning some way of contacting us. This search works quite well for technical support contacts and executives as well.

Newsgroups

Usenet is still alive and well. Google has adopted all the archives that were once found at Deja.com and has continued to maintain a Web interface for this complex online community. From http://groups.google.com you can enter your most important keyword plus the terms "insubject:RE" to find only people responding to questions. Use the terms "group:*keyword*" to look only in groups about the keyword you specify. Scanning through these results you will find experts answering questions about your key subject matter. One more way to use this source is to replace "insubject:RE" with "insubject:resume" and limit your results to postings containing actual resumes. You will be surprised at what you find here. Type or copy the following search string example in Google:

DWDM insubject:re group:*sonet*

Try this example in Google also: DWDM insubject:resume