By Barbara Ling
Flipping web sites. Gives you a mental picture of Ringling Brothers
dancing across your screen, eh?
The term, flipping web sites, or lately being hailed
as 'xraying web sites', simply means finding contact and other
information like email addresses, phone numbers, the all-elusive
invisible nirvana-like company directories, resumes, etc., that
are kinda-sorta-but-not-really hidden in company, college
and other web sites.
Wasn't that simple?
I've got simply swimming news for you! Flipping web sites can be
a very simple thing to do. And if you do find difficulty, you can
always sign up for seminars at RISE at
http://www.riseway.com.
Before flipping a web site, you want to first list terms that
would be appropriate for the kind of information you are seeking.
They would include "resumes" (as my stepson would say, well, duh!),
"HOBBIES" or "INTERESTS" or "OBJECTIVE" or "SKILLS"
(terms often included on resumes. Note the capital letters), "Meet
the team" (a phrase often used in project directories), "Employee
directory" (nowadays, not that often), "people", etc. These are the
keys that will help you discover the info you need.
Next, go to Altavista at
http://www.altavista.com (I bet you thought
I'd say Hotbot, eh? :-) That is also a good engine to use!), and search
on
host:netscape.com title:resume
In other words,
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?sc=on&hl=on&q=host%3Anetscape.com+title%3Aresume&kl=XX&pg=q
You'll find a link to the machine
http://people.netscape.com, where there's lots of employee resumes.
Keep in mind, though, the above is not very common.
More and more companies are realizing the benefit
of putting their employee's materials behind firewalls.
If a company does so, respect that. Don't try to
break into a company's web site - it's simply
wrong. Besides, there are dozens other great techniques
that will allow you to access the information you
need honorably and with great rewards.
Perhaps instead of companies, you would like to
find college resumes. Did you know that just about
every large college has its own individual
search engine, right on the site? Visit Princeton
at
http://www.princeton.edu, go to their search at
http://www.princeton.edu/Siteware/Search.shtml,
and search for
engineering resume
You'll see what I mean.
One last example! Think of what companies usually
write about their support or sales - they'll call it
"Meet the team." So! On Altavista, search for
"Meet the team" host:*.com +computer
ie,
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?sc=on&hl=on&q=%22Meet+the+team%22+host%3A*.com+%2Bcomputer&kl=XX&pg=q&search.x=24&search.y=17
The host: construct tells Altavista to target only
those sites that end in .com (ie, throw out .org or .edu),
and also give weight to sites that contain the word
"computer".
As you can see, rocket science it's not!
Article courtesy of Barbara Ling. For more information, please go to:
RISE seminars at:
http://www.riseway.com or
The Internet Recruiting Edge at:
http://www.barbaraling.com/recruiting.html.
