Volume 1, Issue 17
August 8, 2000

by Bret Hollander
NETRECRUITER

SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE
Cutting Edge Tools for the Internet Recruiter

Circulation: a big number between 100 and 1,000,000
_______________________________________________

HELLO FROM YOUR EDITMASTER

DC is beginning to take on the persona of the monsoon season of
India. It rained 18 days in June, that many or more in July, and
almost every day so far in August. It's a boon to landscape services
and probably a death knoll to beachcombers. Temperatures normally in
the 90's for the summer, rarely have gone above the 80's. Some would
say this is heaven since the mosquitoes are absent as well.

For me, all I see is a lot of dirt, topsoil, mulch and mud; lots and
lots of mud. It's amazing to plan all the things to be done to the
outside of our new home, only to be pre-empted by Mother Nature on a
daily basis. I asked the painter if they used quick-drying enamel
paint. He said, this summer they had found a 'special blend!"

As promised, this issue sports some really neat stuff on college
recruiting found at the beginning of this newsletter. Please also
read about many free offerings: some are timed, some are first-come-
first-served, and many are just free all the time. I especially like
a newsletter coming out called "Purple Squirrel" and an interactive,
live technical screening of web-based professionals. A new addition
to the newsletter is a monthly review of a career or job portal that
normally offers either a resume or job posting database or both.

Bret Hollander
NETRECRUITER

COLLEGE-BOUND

College Networking Resource Group
The CollegeNRG is a northern Virginia based group of college
recruiters. They meet 3-4 times a year and both discuss and
contribute on a great deal of useful information pertaining to
college recruiting. The group is moderated by Seth Feit, Staffing
Manager for America Online. During this past June, members met to
anonymously share their 1999-2000 College Recruiting Statistics to
benchmark with other CNRG members. Their homework assignment
included the number of schools visited, schedules, campus interviews,
recommended hires, offers extended, and hires made. The other topics
discussed were: Trends -- What Went Well, Metrics, Technology &
Recruiting, and Business case for College Recruiting. The minutes and
results can been viewed by selecting the hyperlink below.
http://www.netrecruiter.net/sa/2000/aug/cnrg.html

The Student Recruitment Report 2000: Understanding The Student
Perspective
In February and March 2000, WetFeet.com did a quantitative survey of
869 students from more than 50 campuses, and conducted qualitative
interviews with 20 more. The goal of WetFeet.com's research was to
find out:
* What students experienced in their job search
* How they define their career preferences
* What they value in an employer
* How student recruitment is changing
http://www.erexchange.com/poffo/productd.asp?ProductID={92EDD0C6-4B48-
11D4-82EC-00105A12D660}

KPMG recently questioned college graduates and found that a casual
dress code may make the difference in where a graduate goes to launch
a career! Those students noted that clothing conveys a relaxed
culture much more inviting for young professionals making the
transition from college to corporate life.

"A Corporate Guide to College Recruiting" takes companies step-by-
step through the recruiting process from analyzing who should be part
of the recruiting team to leveraging the Internet to attracting
college students to making a final salary and benefit package offer.
http://www.collegehiring.com/

SITES

Building a Better Surfer
Buzz Notes has set out to make surfing a bit easier. The site claims
to customize search results based on your preferences. How does it
know your preferences? It asks you some demographic questions. If you
liked all the same Web sites as all the other folks with your age and
gender, this would be a brilliant initial setup. But in case you
don't, the engine learns. With an ever-enigmatic reference
to "proprietary software", Buzz Notes figures out what you like by
asking you to rate Web sites via a frame interface as you go, thus
enabling it to send you more relevant information every time you
interact with it. We're saying all of this theoretically, since it
didn't seem to get smarter while we surfed, but we only played with
it for a couple of days. Dang that short attention span.
http://www.buzznotes.com/

Instant Fame Through Self Publishing
MightyWords is the new secure digital marketplace for unique written
content. They provide you, famous authors, undiscovered authors,
academics and professionals, the control to instantly publish and
sell your intellectual property directly to an eager audience.
Search on any one of these books: EB00017311, EB00016547, EB00017141,
EB00016497, EB00002929, EB00002139
http://www.mightywords.com/

The Web's Reference Engine
Content aggregators are hot because they're useful and often more
focused than portals and directories. One fine example, Xrefer, cross-
references encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, and books of
quotations. Content providers include Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Market
House, Oxford University Press, and Penguin. There seems to be a
British influence, as you might gather from the results of a search
on "lawyer". The reference engine expands your search terms when you
submit a query - search on a topic, and you get results from one
source with links to related topics at other sources. You can use an
asterisk as a wildcard - a big advantage. Many entries are prefaced
by, or linked to, quotations by cultural figures. Lovers of crossword
puzzles may go nuts here. Teachers, librarians, editors, and
barristers will also find much of interest.
http://www.xrefer.com/

CAREER PORTAL REVIEW

During July, I was given unrestricted access to evaluate
JobWarehouse.com. This Orlando-based site has come a long way since
its start in 1997. JobWarehouse.com is an established online career
source specializing in I.T. jobs and candidates that receives over
1.1 million hits and 100,000+ unique visitors per month (measured by
a real-time software statistics program) The demographics consists of
U.S. professionals who are degreed with an IT focus. This is further
broken down to an average 4+ years professional experience with a BS
degree or better. There are approximately 20,000 resumes from 1 to 45
days old always in the database, plus an archive that can be
reactivated at any time of over 150,000 resumes. All resumes are
scanned and qualified before being placed in the database. Resumes
are maintained on the database for 45 days.

JobWarehouse.com has partnered with Vault.com and IIRC, and is
crosslinked to over a hundred high-traffic sites, and currently cross-
posted to Yahoo with several others in progress. Current methods of
advertising include magazine publications, newspaper, Internet,
direct mail, direct-call, billboard, fleet, and eventual radio and
television spots. Over 20,000 jobs are listed on the site.
JobWarehouse.com will also post any employer's jobs for free using a
format that can be batch uploaded by email. Subscribers may also use
FTP to immediately post jobs.

Several companies were invited to try out this service during the
evaluation phase. Here are two testimonials of recruiters who used
the service.

I was able to find some very useful resumes
John R., Huntsville, AL

I like the site and will even get a hire out of it. They do have
access to a lot of resumes.
Mason S., Denver, CO

Standard pricing for one location (allowing password access for up to
5 users) is available both monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, and
annually. Additional branches receive a 50% discount.
http://www.jobwarehouse.com

SOFTWARE

A Custom In-House Search Engine
Intelliseek is offering you a free search box to put on you site.
This product is basically BullsEye on a server. It is an adaptive
meta-search tool, which combines speed, ease-of-use, and a high
degree of relevance and efficiency in Web searches across hundreds of
targeted sources. This service comes along with your co-branded
BullsEye and is completely free.
http://www.intelliseek.com

Make Your Help Interactive
Qarbon.com distributes Viewlets, which evolve standard text help
files into vivid "How To" demonstrations and easily play on any web
site. The company's business model Viewlet authors and participating
web sites, and a Viewlet syndication process designed to promote the
use of Viewlets across the web.
http://www.qarbon.com/

Copernic Us
Copernic consults multiple Internet search engines on the premise
that since no engine currently indexes the entire Web, the odds of
relevant data being uncovered will increase as the number of engines
consulted grows. And you don't need to know anything about Boolean
logic to use it. You can phrase your query in plain English (or five
other languages), and Copernic attempts to find an answer. So far,
pretty standard. But the software also validates the results and
removes most dead links, and so presents a cleaner and leaner list of
live, potentially relevant links.
http://www.copernic.com/products/free/

TRAINING SCHEDULE

Internet Recruiting Strategies - TECHNIQUES
Develop a focused Internet recruiting strategy for only $199!
Participate in an all-day, hands-on workshop on Thursday August 24 or
31 in Falls Church, Virginia. Work at a comfortable pace and conduct
actual Internet recruiting searches on a live workstation dedicated
to you. Be one of only 20 participants per workshop, using state-of-
the-art computer systems with high-speed T1 Internet access.
(Participants who register and prepay at least two weeks in advance
of class date also receive a $20 cash rebate at class to cover
parking, breakfast and lunch) Onsite Corporate training is also
available.
http://netrecruiter.net/calendar.html

EVENTS

NetExpo Washington
This e-Business Expo and conference will be held at the Washington
Convention Center at 900 9th St., NW, in Hall D, on Thursday, August
16-17, 2000. My contribution is a 45-minute topic starting at 1pm on
Thursday, August 16 will be "Effective Recruiting Begins At Home".
Here is the intro: By applying some best practice models you can
effectively recruit the best hi-tech professionals for a fraction of
the cost of using conventional advertising methods. Learn how to
maximize on in-house applicants who have previously inquired or
applied to your firm. Learn about effective tools for building
productive relationships with both your employees and your
applicants.
http://www.netexpowashington.com

NACCB 13th Annual Conference
Plan now to attend the 13th Annual NACCB Conference &
Exhibition, "CONNECTIONS: Taking Care of Business in the 21st
Century", Fontainebleau Hilton Resort & Towers, Miami Beach, Florida,
November 8-11, 2000. Attendees will benefit from an expanded format
that includes tracks, breakout sessions, seminars, group panels &
roundtables. Program tracks at this year's conference will focus on
vital information for Executives, Recruiting & Retention, Front
Office Operations, Back Office Operations, Sales & Marketing,
Specialties & Solutions, Legal & Legislative, Products, Services and
Personal Effectiveness. This year's schedule also features more time
for networking and affinity group events to allow you to discuss
experiences, successes, failures, insights, needs, and more with your
peers from other parts of the country.
http://www.scan-ex.com/naccb/naccb.asp

SEARCH TIP OF THE MONTH

The tips this month come from a very informative newsletter produced
by the Tiburon Group. The newsletter is aptly named, "Tiburon Tip of
the Week," and distributes weekly.
http://tiburontips.listbot.com/

Active Sourcing Tips
Certified technology professionals are highly valued by recruiters in
today's marketplace. However, finding these people with specific
certifications can sometimes be a daunting task. Luckily, many
techies now include the image or logo for their certifications on
their online resume.
http://www.tiburongroup.com

1) Go to: http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web

2) Type in this formula:

(image:mcse OR image:"Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer") AND
(url:resume OR title:resume OR resume)

3) Narrow the same results down to location. In this case, the
following formula looks for MSCEs in Chicago:

(image:mcse OR image:"Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer") AND
(url:resume OR title:resume OR resume) AND Chicago

4) This also works for Cisco certifications:

(image:"Cisco Certified Networking Associate" OR image:CCNA) as well
as Novell certifications
(image:"Certified Novell Engineer" OR image:CNE)

Acronyms vs. Full Text
Whether you are doing a simple keyword search or a complicated
Boolean search string, including both the acronym or abbreviation for
a keyword and the full text will improve results dramatically. A few
common examples include:

Technical Terms: ASP and Active Server Pages; VB and Visual Basic;
MCSE and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer; OO and object
oriented; AS400 or AS/400 or AS-400 etc...

Educational Institutions: ASU and Arizona State University; NYU and
New York University; BC or Boston College etc...

Titles: Dir. and Director; Eng. and Engineer; VP and Vice President;
Sr. and Senior; Mgr. and Manager etc...

Cities and States: Use the abbreviation and the full name

In situations where you are doing a simple keyword search and not a
Boolean string, you may have to repeat the search several times, one
time with the abbreviation and one time with the full text.

Search Example:

Resumes of people from the University of Texas that are web skilled
with ASP experience. The full search string looked like this:

{resume.html OR resume.htm) AND ("web developer" OR "web designer")
AND (UT OR "University of Texas") AND (ASP OR "Active Server Pages")
AND NOT (careers OR position)}

For best results remember to include both the abbreviations/acronyms
and the full text of terms in all of your search strings. The few
extra resumes that result may be link to the best candidates.

ARTICLES

Jobless Rate Holds Steady at 4 Percent - Wages Grow Faster Than
Expected
http://www.netrecruiter.net/sa/2000/aug/jobless.html

A Competitive Edge for Online Job Ad Performance
http://www.headhunter.net/JobPoster/Hireadigm/Inside.htm

Recruiter 10-point Check-Up
http://www.recruitsoft.com/checkUp/

The Hiring Crisis - How to find, keep, and motivate employees in the
new economy and steal the best ones from your competitors.
http://www.zdnet.com/smartbusinessmag/stories/all/0%2C6605%2C2577897%
2C00.html

8 Deadly Job Post Errors
http://www.recruitersonline.com/help/help_post_guide.html

It's Not Recruiting, It's Marketing
http://www.headhunter.net/JobPoster/Hireadigm/Biz.htm

How to Write On-line Position Descriptions that Attract Super Stars!
http://www.galileoconsulting.com/article11.htm

Benefits Top Money
http://www.careertv.net/newsbrief/062100.asp

The Forgotten Art of Listening
http://www.speaking.com/articles_html/EdBrodow_285.html

ODDS & ENDS

Kingdomality
My distinct "Medieval" personality is The Benevolent Ruler that was
found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. I am an
idealistic social dreamer. My overriding goal is to solve the people
problems of my world. I am a social reformer who wants everyone to be
happy in a world that I can visualize. I am exceptionally perceptive
about the woes and needs of humankind. I often have the understanding
and skill to readily conceive and implement the solutions to my
perceptions. On the positive side, I am creatively persuasive,
charismatic and ideologically concerned. On the negative side, I may
be unrealistically sentimental, scattered and impulsive, as well as
deviously manipulative. Interestingly, my preference is just as
applicable in today's corporate kingdoms.
http://www.cmi-lmi.com/kingdomality.html

Online Schedule Parser
Getting tired of trying to match up your dayplanner with everyone
else's? This Web-based meeting scheduler/reminder service employs
color and a scheduling matrix to compare your availability with those
of your co-workers. When all participants have input their schedules,
the software parses the information to generate a matrix showing the
best times for all participants. The results easily update to reflect
changes in any participant's schedule. A free version allows up to 10
participants to be scheduled per event; more participants and events
can be scheduled by purchasing a one-year license, which adds other
features as well. The format is easy to use, and seems ideal for
setting up teleconferencing or videoconferencing among widely
scattered participants.
http://www.jovialgenie.com/

What Year Was It?
A house cost $22K, car was $1,950, milk was $.92, a gallon of gas was
$.23, and a first-class stamp cost 3 cents.
http://dmarie.com/timecap/

How Nutritious Is Your Diet?
The first paragraph of RateYourself says it all: "the only site
focused solely on the World's most important person: YOU!" As if
living on the Internet wasn't self-absorbing enough, the site
provides a virtual navel you can gaze further into. Psychologists and
human resources experts have designed daily surveys ("Male: How
Romantic Are You?") and "self-probing" personality, career and
relationship tests. The career quiz turns up results ranging
from "You occupy a much sought after, but rarely achieved position in
life", to "It's time to think seriously about changing jobs". And if
you get "You are on your way to Splitsville" in the Love and Sex
quiz, maybe its time to hit that shut-down button.
http://www.rateyourself.com/poll.cfm?Subject_ID=3&Poll_ID=2421

How to Keep an Idiot Busy
http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/wilsdf/idiot.html

The Images of Mother
http://www.funstun.com/mom.htm

BOOKMARKS

300+ Free Resume Databases
http://www.careerkey.com/resume%20databases.htm

WebHarbor.com provides corporate and individual users with the
quickest and easiest access to volumes of information on the
Application Service Provider (ASP) marketplace, which delivers
timeshare applications on a per-use basis.
http://www.webharbor.com/

Message Boards/Discussion Groups
http://www.careerkey.com/discussion%20groups.htm

Federal Government Pay Rate Calculator by Locality
http://www.fpmi.com/

Salary Surveys
http://www.careerkey.com/salary%20surveys.htm

FREEBIES

The Strategy Magazine for the IT Staffing/Services Industry
Purple Squirrel is the first and only strategy magazine in the
country that exclusively serves the business and information needs of
IT staffing professionals. Each month, Purple Squirrel gives staffing
professionals the latest strategies in recruitment and retention,
product reviews on software and hardware, internet recruiting trends,
training and certification, testing, financial and business advice,
and expert opinion from some of the industry¹s fiercest minds.
Sign
up for your Free subscription. All entries must be on or before
August 20, 2000, in order to start receive the first issue in
September.
http://www.purplesquirrelmag.com/sub/sub5.html

Free Unlimited account focusing on Systems Administrators- access
resumes, post unlimited jobs. Only the first 500 respondents will get
this, "no catch" offer.
http://www.sysadminsrus.com/offer/top500.htm

What's On Your Mind?
Create a free, web-based survey that allows the respondents to be
anonymous. Consider the following nine questions as a possible first
survey to your client base, derived from the Tiburon Tips issue
entitled Alternative Recruitment Strategies.
1) What is your job function? (Sales &
Marketing/Accounting/Technology ­ this will help categorize trends
by
department)
2) What web sites do you visit most frequently for your personal use?
(You can even break this down further into categories like: hobbies,
music, interactive games)
3) What search engines do you use most regularly?
4) Where do you get your news/weather online?
5) What kind of events do you participate in your time off?
6) How often do you frequent local community sites like the
citysearch or metromix sites?
7) What kinds of web sites do you use during the day for
work/interaction purposes?
8) What kind of sports do you enjoy watching or playing? Are you
involved in any recreational sports teams (softball, volleyball,
hockey etc.)?
9) Also ask an open ended question like: Can you think of any events
where your company should advertise job opportunities to attract
talented employees like yourselves? (ie. local music festivals, fun
runs, art fairs etc..)
http://www.zoomerang.com/

CareerBank.com is a full-service career site designed exclusively for
accounting and finance professionals. Job postings are free.
http://www.careerbank.com/signup/freeregister.cfm

iTechScreen
Outsource the technical skills assessment of potential candidates to
objective experts using a live, interactive interview. Avoid
committing internal resources to the processes of scheduling and
conducting face-to-face interviews until after the candidate is found
to be technically qualified. Minimize the opportunity cost and
aggravation factor of utilizing existing IT staff for assessment
process. This is accomplished by on-line RecruitAgents, possessing
the IT skills required for a given vacancy, who test & assess the
candidates' technical aptitude through a focused interactive Q&A
session with live examples, using web-based live text chat technology
to conveniently reach candidates. The comprehensive process consists
of a repository of interview questions of 200 questions per supported
specialty. Upon interview completion, the client will be furnished
within 24 hours an assessment report that reflects the candidate's
scoring. The first 100 firms who sign up will receive three free
assessments that can be used within a 14-day period.

http://www.fatsplash.com
An overview of the program is detailed in this PowerPoint
presentation.
http://www.netrecruiter.net/sa/2000/aug/itech.ppt

Get your own free anything.has.it URL.
http://www.has.it/home.html

Turn Your License Plate into E-Mail
Your license plate number becomes your username at this free e-mail
site. If everyone used this service, you could e-mail folks you run
into on the road. There are a lot of ifs here, and so-so service, but
it's a cute idea, and who knows....
http://www.bumpertag.com/

Free, unlimited Job Posting to the CareerPal.com Jobs Database
http://www.careerpal.com/postjob_public.html

Post up to 25 separate jobs with limited access to their Resume Bank
(limited free two week demo)
http://www.computerwork.com/cfm-bin/recruiters/packages.cfm?promo=DEMO

Xtreme Recruiting: Human Capital Management in the New Millennium
http://www.intralect.com/event_form.html

Free biweekly webcast series titled IDC Live
http://events.network24.com/A350/sessions/Home/pages/preview/page$.asp
?eid=A350&sid=Home

Post jobs for free with Vayamundo.com e-recruiting. This is a new job
search site focused towards highly qualified Bilingual/Spanish
speaking employees. Vayamundo.com is allowing jobs to be posted for
free until October 1, 2000.
http://www.vayamundo.com/

Turn Your Phone Number into E-Mail
This is pretty good for free e-mail. Once you sign up, anyone knowing
your phone number has a working e-mail address for you. For example,
send a message to 3013657728@.... You're encouraged to
autoforward your phonenumber@... address to your most often
read e-mail address. This idea's a winner.
http://www.phone.net/

ADVERTISERS

Invariably, when a subscription base reaches a certain level, many
vendors arrive at your doorstep offering their wares. At first, I
attempted to evaluate all these. But eventually it became almost a
full-time effort to test or pilot and then draft up the results.
Hence, now you will see a list of many new players or folks who have
enhanced their existing product or service and have asked for some
additional exposure. These are all the firms that asked me to
showcase their wares since the beginning of April. This is for your
information only. I do not support or represent any of these firms.

A Targeted Resume for Peanuts
A major study conducted in 1999 by a well-known HR organization
determined that it cost the average employer over seven dollars to
collect one resume. This was measured from the initial identification
and write up of a need, the ensuing advertising, and the eventual
delivery or arrival of the resume. However, the key point unsaid or
not measured was what percentage of those received hit the mark at
least 50% or better. Major job portals like Monster.com spend
millions to attract job seekers, and their costs are about half of
that figure and they too don't deliver consistent winners. How about
a unique resume sourcing service that is not contingency based and
costs so little you wonder how they make any money?
http://netrecruiter.net/sourcing.html

Internet Job Search support for job seekers. Free resume distribution
to employers.
http://www.emailresume.org/

Resume Robot has developed a search engine for resumes, to find the
resumes of "passive" candidates who are not listed on the resume
posting sites. Resume Robot uses the entire internet as a gigantic
database, and delivers web page resumes to the recruiter's desktop
with the click of a button.
http://www.resumerobot.com

2000 Electronic Recruiting Index Rated NationJob #1 Site Overall
http://www.nationjob.com/comparefind/

The Oracle Job Network now has a Resume Database of over 11,500
Oracle candidates.
http://www.oracjobs.com

_______________________________________________
Letters to Editor -----> bret@...
Back Issues ---------> http://netrecruiter.net/resource.html
Home Page ----------> http://netrecruiter.net
_______________________________________________

SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE (c) 1999-2000 NETRECRUITER, All rights
reserved.
SOURCERER'S APPRENTICE is a trademark of NETRECRUITER
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