Did I just Source on a Cloud?

One of my favorite topics of passion lately is Cloud Recruiting.  If you were fortunate enough to be able to attend the ERE conference last week in Florida you would have been hard pressed not to find someone that wasn't buzzing about Microsoft's Michael Marlatt and his presentation covering the concept of Cloud Recruiting.

The idea behind Cloud Recruiting is that as we continue to become more mobile and more technologically savvy we (hopefully) seek easier and more efficient ways to access our tools and resources - to untie ourselves from the cables that bind so to speak.

This article isn't to explain what Cloud Recruiting is but instead to give a detailed example of just one way technology changes the way we're able to recruit and source - truth be told this is my first real "How To" article and is only a result of several emails and a new thread that's buzzing over on RecruitingBlogs.com.  If you're looking for a more detailed explanation of Cloud Recruiting head to Michael Marlatt's site, CloudRecruiting.net.  You can also check out this quick video of him I took at ERE.

Throughout ERE I was asking several people about different web based tools and how they were using them to recruit more effectively.  One of the most surprising responses I received when asking about social bookmarking and news aggregators was that many saw no value in these items as they related directly to recruiting - but viewed them rather as very simple (or confusing) information dumping grounds.  Oh the pain.

You can imagine how excited I was when Michael touched on exactly what I was hoping to find other recruiters thinking about.  Man, validation feels good!  So here we go.

Suppose for the moment that you or a member of your team is working through their keyword (Boolean) searches for that perfect job seeker.  You've got your favorite Boolean strings saved in a .txt or .doc file on your desktop and you steadily plug them into Google or Yahoo every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and then sift through the results before moving on. 

Perhaps you're considered pretty advanced in that you've taken the approach of bookmarking the search results page and removed the copy+paste step from your process all together.  Maybe you've even been so bold as to create a Google Alert to notify you each morning if there are new results to your favorite strings. 

This is a good start... But let's think bigger.

Take your favorite search string and head over to FeedMySearch.com.  FeedMySearch is a nifty tool that will turn any search results into compact RSS feeds.  (don't worry... we'll get to why in a second.)

 For this example I've created the following quick and easy string:

          (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) AND (java*) AND program* AND (Texas or TX or Dallas) AND -sample*

The idea is that you're looking for resumes of Java programmers in Dallas.  While this is a rather basic search string it will serve the purpose of this example - so we'll pretend it's returning to you some pretty strong results.

Here's where you play along with me...  Copy the search string above and paste it into the search field, leaving "web search" as the default selection and click the "Feed my search!" button.

What will be returned to you should look like a simple bulleted list where above it a large "Subscribe" button is displayed.  What you're looking at is the result of your search query in the form of a RSS feed.  And this is good - because here is where it gets fun.

 Click the large ‘Subscribe" button and select your reader of choice.

Continuing forward I'm going to use Google Reader for the sole reason that it's my favorite news reader.  You can use any reader you'd like and can probably expect some slightly different variables on your reader settings, but those shouldn't be too hard to sort through in order to get similar results. 

Once your reader opens you should have the option to save this new feed to an existing folder or to create a new one.  For this particular import, we'll name a new folder "Java Programmer - Dallas"

After some time you'll begin to accumulate folders and hopefully come up with a system that works for you to efficiently sort your reading material and search results.  Here is a snapshot of the end result of our imported rss with some fancy statistics thrown in for good measure (Yup, they're Google's.)  One of the better features here is the ability to click on any returned result and be presented with a quick 4-5 line preview of the resume along with the direct URL.

I love Google Reader's flexibility in that I can flag any feeds (or resumes) share them with peers, add comments, email them directly from the reader and even customize tags to provide another layer of filters.

Imagine for a moment how you or your team might use this combination of tools for collaborative sourcing efforts.  Picture how this combination of tools better serves you when you're traveling - since the information is saved on the web and not on a local hard drive it is accessible anywhere you've a connection.  Connecting on your mobile?  (Also a no-brainer with most readers and newer phones.)

It's almost a bookmark driven ATS.

I'm of the opinion that new recruiting solutions won't be about finding a magical application or ATS.  New recruiting solutions won't be about discovering the silver bullet of processes or best practices.  I'm confident that the best recruiters of tomorrow will find the innovation within themselves to maximize efficiencies and resources we already have today but haven't realized yet.  Cloud Recruiting is only the start.

Update 11/24/08
After publishing this article FeedMySearch.com became less than reliable for search results and various boolean operators.  As an alternative I would recommend IceRocket.com