SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE - December 2003 Issue

Volume 4, Issue 2
December 15, 2003

by Bret Hollander
NETRECRUITER

SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE
Cutting Edge Tools for the Internet Recruiter

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HELLO FROM YOUR EDITMASTER


About a month ago, I am sitting in a class about prospecting when the
instructor pulls out a statistic that says that over 90% of all home
listings or sales are via referrals. In other words, if you don't
have an established referral network or are not working toward one,
you won't succeed very well as a real estate agent.

Now you may be asking yourself why am I talking about real estate,
when this newsletter and everything you have known me for, pertains
to recruiting.

Well it all began to come together, or you may think fall apart,
around May of 2002. At that point in my life, I got the debilitating
news that my wife wanted a divorce. It was further exacerbated by
decision to leave the U.S. without the kids. You can imagine the
upturned life that slowly began to take form.

Well, now it's nearly 18 months since that event and my ex and I
are very amicable and our kids live equal time between their parents.
And my kids are straight-A students and have lots of friends, and
everything seems to be okay, as okay can be had when one is parenting
a 10yo boy and 12yo (going on 21) girl.

During the middle of last year I opted to leverage my network and
explore the realm of real estate. I soon secured my license in
Maryland, followed by Virginia, and am now hoping for my DC one in
February. I further got certification to lease residential property,
represent senior citizens, work with transitioning military, and
pursue commercial real estate.

So far, my days are still made up with contingent and retained search
recruiting, while my nights and weekends are devoted to real estate.
Basically, I get out of my home office enough now to longer feel like
a cabin rat.

As my instructor continued on, he suggested an excellent way to
promote this network was in the form of a newsletter. But the
newsletter shouldn't be focused or real estate, but on helpful,
everyday, tips and tricks for people. As I thought about what she was
saying, I realized that my dormant newsletter has been dormant too
long and should return to its monthly distribution.

Hence, consider this a rebirth of sorts, and a wish that I can
continue giving each of you interesting information that may assist
you in your careers or just bring a few more chuckles into your lives.

Seasons Greeting and All the Best to You and Yours. May 2004 Bring
Enjoyment and New Hopes, Dreams and Peace to Your Household.


Bret Hollander
Editmaster


REVIEWS


Resume infoFinder Platinum

Each time I call Ron Crompton, one of the principals at infoGist, he
has another piece of WOW that he has added to his incredible meta-
search engines. Whether you are searching for business information,
trying to find a job, or hoping to find an easy way to capture all
your resumes and seamlessly put them into your applicant tracking
system. All I can say is there is nothing I have seen since 1998 that
parallels the robustness of his product line in terms of both
leveraging your time and money. There are so many bells and whistles
to my favorite, Resume infoFinder Platinum, that I invite you to try
it out for a free trial. If you find that the trial time was not
sufficient to exploit all of its features, simply call Ron at 800-547-
9117 and tell him that Bret has asked to give you another week
extension.
http://www.infoGIST.com/cgi-bin/buildform.pl?id=6mkdR773


ePrompter

If a search engine can look at multiple sites and compile results in
one easy to view screen, they how about one for email addresses from
different accounts outside of your company server. For example: AOL,
Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink, Email.com, iName, Juno, Lycos, Mail.com,
Mindspring, MSN, Netscape, POP3, OneBox, Rediffmail, SBC Yahoo,
Switchboard, USA.net and hundreds of other email domains. The
"meta" in this free application comes from the fact that it
can automatically and simultaneously check and retrieve your email
messages from up to 16 password protected email accounts. And once
those new messages have been retrieved, ePrompter notifies you which
accounts have new messages and how many new messages you have in each
account.
http://www.eprompter.com/


SITES


Come All Ye Jobseekers

If your company is lacking a robust solution to displaying its jobs
and having applicants apply to those jobs, look no further than this
extremely low cost solution from MyWebJobs.com. As a recruiter, you
can instantly update your opportunities online, direct traffic back
to your own recruiting website vs. paying lots of $$$ to other job
sites, and best of all, put as much pizazz as you want in your job
descriptions using a built-in HTML editor.
http://mywebjobs.com


Tickle

Just when you thought no one appreciates you anymore, here is a nifty
site to test your intelligence, and then let the world know how smart
you are. I took the test and got a score of 131 – hopefully that
was a good sign. It basically concluded that I'm a Word Warrior.
It goes on to say that I can easily make sense of complex issues and
take an unusually creative approach to solving problems. My strengths
also make me a visionary. Even without trying I am able to come up
with lots of new and creative ideas. Right on the button –
wouldn't you agree? LOL
http://www.emode.com/tests/uiq/


My Name in Big Letters

How long do web sites last? Apparently, a long time. I just
discovered my business profile on Monster.com, which was created
around 2001. As you can see, some of the information has changed. I
have never subscribed to this premier job and resume database site,
but I seem to still be getting good exposure as an HR expert. Thank
you Monster!!!
http://hr.monster.com/experts/hollander/


Parlez Vous Francais

Imagine a company web site that talks about itself in several
different languages. Imagine being able to convert you English web
site to other languages effortlessly and free. Just type in your
domain name and then choose Translate. TopSites can generate web
sites into eight languages that include: Español, Français,
Deutsch, Italiano, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese.
http://top-site.net/update.htm


SOFTWARE


MagicKillah

Who doesn't hate pop-ups? Whether they are the ones that appear
on your screen out of nowhere, or those you must tolerate if you want
to use some software that is supported with ad pop-ups. Well, here is
a great freeware utility that can be customized and updated to weed
out most of your unwanted pop-ups. I use it a lot when I'm
relaxing and playing my favorite board game of bridge on
www.pogo.com. This site is notorious for ad pop-up screens, but I
don't see them anymore with this great app.
http://www.magickillah.nl/


Instant Meta Tag Generator

Meta tags are very important when it comes to search engines
spidering your page. Most important, however, is usually the TITLE
tag. Instant Meta Tag Generator creates basically all of the tags
that you will need to place between your HEAD tags of your page,
including title, description, keywords, revisit-after and copyright.
Simply fill in the blanks and the program will generate the code for
you, which can easily be copied to the clipboard for pasting. No
bells and whistles are available for tinkering, it does one very
focused job which slightly lightens the burden of beginner HTML
enthusiasts.


Effortless Lead Processing

Here is a very simple tool to capture job leads, candidate addresses
and resumes from email, attachments, web forms, and job boards into
your contact manager. And if you want to jump to business
information, you can also capture sales leads and contact data from
email, online yellow pages, websites, address lists, web form
responses, and many more into your contact manager or address book.
And the best part is that it comes with a free 15-day trial.
http://www.egrabber.com/


Are You a Broadcaster or a Whisperer

If you are a Broadcaster like me, ensuring that your email
distribution list is still accurate is essential. Who wants to see
half of a list of 5000 email addresses come back as undeliverable.
Maintenance is essential since people go in and out of new and old
email addresses daily. This is a nifty tool for verifying these
addresses without sending any address an actual message.
http://www.mailutilities.com/amv/?famv_425


Asterisk Key

Memorization has never been my strong suit. If it had, I would have
most probably gotten a BFA degree from Maryland and been in some form
of entertainment today. So you can imagine my frustration have to
remember over 100-200 unique passwords for all the places I need to
use one. So, coming to my rescue was this freeware product called
Asterisk Key which shows passwords hidden under asterisks, as well as
hidden passwords on password dialog boxes and web pages. Now from
that description, you can imagine all the things you shouldn't do
with this utility, but the things that can make your day a little
easier.
http://www.lostpassword.com/asterisk.htm


ARTICLES


Protect Yourself From Internet Fraud and Identity Theft
http://www.netrecruiter.net/sa/2003/december/fraud.htm

Block Messenger Pop-Ups

Every day I receive over 100 spam messages on my business computer
that simply pop up on my computer screen. After a little research, I
discovered that this spamming technique uses Windows' built-in
Messenger service, which sends messages in a broadcast across a
network. The way to block these annoying messages is to disable the
Messenger service. In Windows XP, you can do this through the Start |
Settings | Control Panel. Navigate to Administrative Tools |
Services. Double-click on Messenger and click on Stop. Then set the
Startup Type to Disable. Click on OK and the pop-up spam will be
blocked. Network administrators have used the Messenger service (not
to be confused with the MSN Messenger instant-messaging clients) to
broadcast notices to all network users, but these days they're much
more likely to use e-mail. On most networks, the Messenger service is
simply not needed, and it's certainly useless when your system is not
connected to a network. Windows 95, 98, and Me do not have this
problem, as they receive such Net messages only when the WinPopup
applet is running.


FREEBIES


The National Scenic Byways Program is happy to provide its America's
Byways™ map free to the public.
http://www.byways.org/map_request.html

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Back Issues -> http://netrecruiter.net/resource.html
Home Page -> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SourcerersApprentice
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reserved.
SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE is a trademark of NETRECRUITER
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