My CollegeRecruiter.com | Employers & Advertisers
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 'x-raying 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? :-), 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+tit le%3Aresume&kl=XX&pg=q
You'll find a link to the machine http://people.netscape.com , where there's lots of employee resumes.
Want more specific? How 'bout people who live in NJ, know java, and have worked at AT&T?
Visit the Advanced search at http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&stype=stext . Don't get fazed by the textbox for bolean searching - all that means is simply gathering up your search components in a logical fashion. For example, perhaps you want to find java professionals in NJ. Ask yourself, what are the area codes involved? What are the words you want to find? What's the link for AT&T? The resulting query looks like
(title:resume or title:resumes or url:resume or url:resumes) and (908 or 732 or 973 or 201 or 609) and NJ and java and link:www.att.com ie,
Check it out, you'll be most gratified by the results.
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+hos t%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.
