Using flip searching to mine for potential candidates

[Cynthia vonHendricks]

How to Flip Search By: Brian Weis Recruiters Network   The use of Flip Searching or Flipping is a technique to mine the Internet for potential candidates. A Flip Search is a simple search that can be performed in some of the major search engines for example www.hotbot.com and www.altavista.com. The search simply finds people who link to a specific site. The uses are endless. For example, John Recruiter is looking for ORACLE Programmers. This technique can be used to find the various sites that are linked to oracle.com. In theory, John will find people who have on-line resumes with Oracle skills because they may have linked to Oracle on their online resume. So to do the search visit www.altavista.com and enter the following: "link: oracle.com" The results once again will be all the sites that have linked to Oracle.com. Surf through the results and you will find individuals resumes. The search can be done with any skill set or for any company. For example, lets say John Recruiter's company's major competitor is XYZ company. He could do a search on that company, for example: "link: xyz.com" The results will turn up resumes from people who work or who have worked for the xyz company. You can also build longer Boolean search strings to drill down the results faster. (Click here for Boolean String Cheat Sheet)  For example: link:oracle.com AND (url:resume OR title:resume) AND “Oracle Developer” One warning about this tactic: Flip searching may pull up company directories, email lists, and other company related information. In some rare cases, you may flip search yourself into a companies internal intranet. Flip Searching by some has been view as negative and others as a brilliant strategy. My personal stance, anything published on the Internet is public information for the world to view. Companies should be cautious on what content appears on their site. As far as restricted areas and internal intranets, this is private information and people accessing or hacking into these areas is blatantly unethical. Also, a word for those who might be tempted... you leave an electronic footprint on every page and site you visit. Flip Searching is a powerful tool that can uncover many hidden resumes and candidates. Performing the searches on various search engines will give different results. Trying adding different companies and skill sets to uncover different results. For advanced techniques and software to automate this process check out AIRS Search Station.

Brian Weis