By AIRS Staff Writers

Easily overlooked as merely a place where people display pictures of pets and family, virtual communities are actually powerful databases filled with people... databases five to ten times larger than any career site on the Web. One of the most well known virtual communities, GeoCities, should rank high on a recruiter's list of places to hunt resumes. GeoCities is consistently rated among the top most-trafficked Web sites according to Media Matrix, the leading Internet measurement firm. While size and traffic are unreliable factors in choosing a career site, they are important metrics for identifying a virtual community as an abundant resume repository.

There's Gold in Them There Communities

Touted as the world's largest and fastest growing community on the Internet, GeoCities has gained lots of attention and earned members with promises of free Web pages, free email, chat, forums and secure shopping. Launched in 1995 (as Beverly Hills Internet), GeoCities quickly attracted people with a hip mix of member-driven content and easy-to-use tools. GeoCities also attracted a buyer: Yahoo! From a base community of 1400 "homesteaders" in 1995( what GeoCities calls its members ( they grew rapidly, reaching half a million members in April 1997. In June of 1999, when Yahoo! integrated the homesteaders' virtual paradise into the Yahoo! Network, it boasted over 4.6 million members. That's a lot of rich mining territory for recruiters and one that continues to grow more fertile daily as more and more people join.

It Takes All Kinds

GeoCities promotes itself as a user-friendly, high-visibility site, offering access to the latest Web technology and plenty of resources for building homepages. Gone are the days when only technical candidates could publish homepages. With the profusion of page building options and tools at GeoCities, anyone can create a homepage ( and does. At the same time, the choices aren't dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. So all members, from the newest Web users to those with programming experience, can find the tools right for them. And that means GeoCities attracts technically sophisticated candidates to their site even while they're busy garnering the attention of mainstream users.

While You're At It... Why Not Post a Resume?

GeoCities suggests ideas about the kinds of pages to create. One of their top ten great ideas for Web pages cites "post your resume on the Web," and one of their standard templates is called "Resume," paving the way for passive candidates. This is certainly great news for recruiters. It promotes the idea of posting resumes on the Web and provides a simple format to use for creating a resume online. Anyone who even considers putting his/her resume on the Web will have that idea reinforced at GeoCities.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Within GeoCities there are 41 themed neighborhoods (communities where people with similar interests might congregate. Intriguingly named neighborhoods cover a wide range of interests and locations from Baja to Paris, from WallStreet to Area51. Each neighborhood focuses on a set of interests, such as small business, the military or country music, but people can join any neighborhood they want ( and no rules dictate special residency requirements. Many neighborhoods are related to personal interests or hobbies. Others, like ResearchTriangle or Silicon Valley, suggest that they are a natural match for your IT candidates. Good candidates may gather there, but don't limit your searches to those neighborhoods. That Java programmer you're looking for might be an avid hiker who has created a homepage in the Yosemite neighborhood. On the flip side: just because someone creates a homepage on MadisonAvenue doesn't mean he's involved in advertising; he might actually live there (or want to live there (or aspire to a glamorous career change that will take him to Madison Avenue).

Some neighborhoods have created features targeted toward members with specific interests. One popular feature is clubs, which are easily accessible from the Yahoo! Clubs page. You can find the link to this page from either the GeoCities or the Yahoo! homepages. A quick look at the directory inside the "Computers & Internet" category shows that the topic "Programming Languages" contains over 1,200 clubs! Digging deeper, you can access clubs about Perl, SQL, Visual Basic and Java, to name just a few. Perl lists 25 clubs in that category alone. The clubs offers access to chat rooms, forums where members can post messages about various technical, and not so technical, issues. You can see at a glance what the clubs are all about and how many members are there. Delving into some of these resources may help you find candidates with specific talents, especially in the Internet arena.

Begin at the Beginning

But the quickest way to locate the resumes that you want is by searching right on the GeoCities Web site. GeoCities has an on-site search engine, powered by Inktomi, one of the primary search engine technology companies. This search tool is powerful (supporting Boolean operators) and well worth using in your searches ( in fact, this should be your first search destination in Geocities. Be sure to use commands like AND OR to limit or expand your searches. The search feature, "Explore Our Community," limits your search to just GeoCities member pages, which is exactly what you want to do.

AIRS Glossary of Terms Used in This Article

- Boolean Operators - the terms used in Boolean logic (a system of logical thought) used to express the relationship between two different sets of keywords. Boolean Operators are what power your advanced searches on the Net.

- Chat Rooms - online "rooms" in which people can talk about various topics of interest.

- Homepages - personal pages that individual users create to describe themselves, their interests and skills. Such pages serve as invaluable resources for finding candidates on the Web since they often provide as much information as a resume. Sometimes the term is used to describe the starting page of a Web site.

- Java, Perl, and SQL - Computer programming languages.

- Media Metrix - Media Matrix offers consultation services to help you with your Web design, development and Internet marketing needs. Media Matrix has begun expanding into Web publishing.

- Neighborhoods - Themed communities in which you can design and build a homepage in Yahoo! GeoCities. There are no regulations as to which Neighborhood you can belong.

- Virtual Communities - Web sites that offer free homepages to the public and provide ways for people to share information, interact online and communicate with one another.

- Visual Basic - a programming environment from Microsoft in which a programmer can create their own code using a beginner's code programming language, and then modifying it.

-- This article is part of a series from AIRS, a global leader in Internet recruitment, tools, news and information. Excerpted from AIRS Search Guide, Copyright 1999-2001 Hanover Capital Management, Inc. AIRS teaches recruiters and high-growth companies to find passive candidates hidden inside directories, databases, archives and the public Web servers of over 400,000 companies and organizations on the Net. For more information about our cutting edge training seminars, publications, or web applications, please go to http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/airs.php.