Not coming up with resumes - Any Help?

[Mirandah]

I have been sourcing for two different positons. For both I have been able to find some great candidates just by going straight to our comepetitors websites and finding people I need. I am now trying to see if I can find resumes on the deep web and I am not really coming up with anything.

 

Any ideas on a search string that may produces more results? For some reason I get alot of false positives or people who are in the wrong area/location.

 

Postions 1 - A financial advisor who coaches and trains others in the field. Or a former financial advisor that is focused on coaching. Vancouver area.

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) Coaching AND Vancouver "Financial Advisors"  -sample -jobs -template

Position 2:

CFP - Financial Planner with experitise in retirement planning for high networth clientele.

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) CFP AND Mississauga "Financial Planning " Insurance -sample -jobs -template

[Dave Galley]

Mirandah,

A few things stand out:

First, general string structure. You have some extraneous operators. The extra "AND" you have included in each string probably won't matter much, but I recall Irina mentioning a change in Google results based on this ~ a month ago. I would drop it, just to be safe. I don't think there's anything specifically wrong with the string, but (as I'll address later) there're probably some other ways to do this.

Second, please recall that what you are looking for is this: people who have posted their resume on the open web, AS a resume, with the intent to be found by potential employers / customers. Alternatively, sometimes speakers/presenters at conferences (or that sort of thing) will have a CV-style bio posted. This is the tiniest of tiny fractions of job seekers. There are only a few industries where it is common for people to do this at all, and even then the percentage of people who actually do it is low. I mention this because, of course, you will often find very limited results to this type of search. Outside of extremely populous metro areas, closely geo-targeted searches of this sort often turn up few or no results!

Third, geo-targeted search through unstructured data on the open web is actually pretty hard to do. You would essentially have to have a target pool in which it is extremely likely for most people who match your desired result to say the a thing in the same way you have said it in your search string. Do people put their city on their public CV? ZIP code? Area code? If they don't, is there any other way for you to narrow down the location? If they do, do they ONLY list their personal current location, or do they include addresses of former employers (not uncommon)? So many items can complicate open web geo-search. Pipl.com, and similar sites, primarily offer an added layer of structure over the typical web search results (not just geographically, but that is the draw for me).

All that said, with billions of people on the planet, and a limited number of ways to spend one's lunch hour, there're enough people who post out their info in public in just the ways you'd hope they would to make this type of search worth exploring as an option. :)

For the CFP in Ontario - this may sound silly, but have you tried the yellow pages?  There are actually plenty of CPAs and CFPs and all that (I know the titles, certs, and rules differ from country to country, or even territory to territory, but there are some commonalities) who hang up their shingle as a sideline but work full time for someone else, as well, or who are not generating enough business on their own and would consider going to work for someone else now.

I can see why you chose city name, and not post code - WOW. Would definitely overload the key term limit to include all those. Fortunately, NANPA reigns in .ca, too, so including "(905 OR 289)" as a term could be useful.

So, for the CFP, give this one a try:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) (Mississauga OR 905 OR 289) ("Financial Planning" OR "financial Planner") (CFP OR certified) -sample -jobs -template

Still turning up some people who are outside the target area, but is a little better than before.

For the Trainer:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) (~trained OR ~coached) AND (Vancouver OR 604 OR 778) "Financial Advisor" -sample -jobs -template

As you can see, this is far from perfect, but may give some new/alternate results to what came up before. Play around with the terms, and you may be able to weed out some of the bad ones.

Hope this helps!

-Dave Galley

[Mirandah]

Thanks so much Dave!

Mirandah
Dave Galley said:

Mirandah,

A few things stand out:

First, general string structure. You have some extraneous operators. The extra "AND" you have included in each string probably won't matter much, but I recall Irina mentioning a change in Google results based on this ~ a month ago. I would drop it, just to be safe. I don't think there's anything specifically wrong with the string, but (as I'll address later) there're probably some other ways to do this.

Second, please recall that what you are looking for is this: people who have posted their resume on the open web, AS a resume, with the intent to be found by potential employers / customers. Alternatively, sometimes speakers/presenters at conferences (or that sort of thing) will have a CV-style bio posted. This is the tiniest of tiny fractions of job seekers. There are only a few industries where it is common for people to do this at all, and even then the percentage of people who actually do it is low. I mention this because, of course, you will often find very limited results to this type of search. Outside of extremely populous metro areas, closely geo-targeted searches of this sort often turn up few or no results!

Third, geo-targeted search through unstructured data on the open web is actually pretty hard to do. You would essentially have to have a target pool in which it is extremely likely for most people who match your desired result to say the a thing in the same way you have said it in your search string. Do people put their city on their public CV? ZIP code? Area code? If they don't, is there any other way for you to narrow down the location? If they do, do they ONLY list their personal current location, or do they include addresses of former employers (not uncommon)? So many items can complicate open web geo-search. Pipl.com, and similar sites, primarily offer an added layer of structure over the typical web search results (not just geographically, but that is the draw for me).

All that said, with billions of people on the planet, and a limited number of ways to spend one's lunch hour, there're enough people who post out their info in public in just the ways you'd hope they would to make this type of search worth exploring as an option. :)

For the CFP in Ontario - this may sound silly, but have you tried the yellow pages?  There are actually plenty of CPAs and CFPs and all that (I know the titles, certs, and rules differ from country to country, or even territory to territory, but there are some commonalities) who hang up their shingle as a sideline but work full time for someone else, as well, or who are not generating enough business on their own and would consider going to work for someone else now.

I can see why you chose city name, and not post code - WOW. Would definitely overload the key term limit to include all those. Fortunately, NANPA reigns in .ca, too, so including "(905 OR 289)" as a term could be useful.

So, for the CFP, give this one a try:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) (Mississauga OR 905 OR 289) ("Financial Planning" OR "financial Planner") (CFP OR certified) -sample -jobs -template

Still turning up some people who are outside the target area, but is a little better than before.

For the Trainer:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) (~trained OR ~coached) AND (Vancouver OR 604 OR 778) "Financial Advisor" -sample -jobs -template

As you can see, this is far from perfect, but may give some new/alternate results to what came up before. Play around with the terms, and you may be able to weed out some of the bad ones.

Hope this helps!

-Dave Galley