By Barbara Ling, RISE Seminars
Unless you've been hiding on Gilligan's Island, you've probably been bombarded sometime, somewhere, with the joys of instant messaging. ICQ at http://www.icq.com! MSN Messenger at http://messenger.msn.com/ ! Yahoo! Messenger at http://messenger.yahoo.com/ ! Heck! A whole bunch of messengers at http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/Chat/Messaging_Services/ !
It boggles the mind. By using these tools, you can stay in real-time contact with your family, friends, colleagues, clients, and candidates. Alas, because there isn't one industry standard for messangers, they don't talk with one another - for example, if a client of mine is on Yahoo! Messanger, and my preferred app was ICQ, I'd have to download and install Yahoo! Messanger so I could talk with them.
Luckily, this is no problem - it seems like I'm collecting messanger services just to stay in touch with my close friends. Just started running MSN yesterday.
Anywhos, while the realtime talk is certainly peachy keen, the other great aspect of messanger services is the incredible breadth of user interests that abound. Did you know that you can search for people with specific interests (say, oracle, marketing, kung-fu) etc.? And that communities where these people gather are very easy to find?
Let's take ICQ for an example. You can visit their groups page at http://www.icq.com/community/groups.html and either search for interests or just browse there directory. Perhaps you'd like to find folks who are interested in java.
Searching on
java
like so
http://search.icq.com/dirsearch.adp?query=java&wh=is&users=1
will lead you to several groups, including http://groups.icq.com/ScienceandTechnolo/group.asp?no=740914
Now, keep in mind, netiquette must be observed! You can't just start sending pages to the entire world, hoping to find your candidates! You must first become part of the community instead to maximize your results.
Communities are formed in other ways as well. ICQ has PeopleRings at http://www.icq.com/icqring/ , where one can find web sites that are linked together, based upon a specific interest. Just about all of the messanging web sites have access to communities of this nature as well.
When recruiting on the Internet, don't just stop at the basic "I need to find resumes!" quest. Always ask yourself, where can I find people instead? It might make a tremendous difference.
-- 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..
