Cheap Alternatives to TalentBin

I recently had a demonstration for Monsters new tool Talent Bin.  I was interested in TalentBin before Monster got their grubby little hands on it.  It's actually a great tool.

So what is TalentBin?

TalentBin is all about the Holy Grail of Recruitment, the elusive Passive Candidate.  It basically scrapes the internet to find you talent.  It basically gets the information from multiple sources and compresses it into one nice little profile.  One of the clever things about TalentBin is that if the system can't find the information on someone, it won't show them in the search.  It keeps looking and slowly builds up their details over time as it finds them.

I know this post is titled cheap alternatives to TalentBin.  However, I'm not saying I'm going to find a free product that will be as good as TalentBin.  I might be able to offer some free products that can do some of what TalentBin can do.  Honestly, if you want something as good as TalentBin.  Then buy TalentBin.  If you're not in a position to get it, then hopefully you might find these tools below useful.


SourceHub by Social Talent

SourceHub is not only a time saver, it's a recruitment lifesaver.  Time is money and all that.  For any recruiter who is worth their salt, they'll understand how to search for talent.  I'm not just talking about a quick LinkedIn search.  I'm on about a full Boolean search across multiple platforms.  Anyone who has worked in recruitment will know that this is very time-consuming.  However, its worth the effort if you want to find the best talent for your role.  SourceHub will now build a search for you.  You fill out a few criteria, and based on research Social Talent have done.  They will give you the Boolean strings for you.  Not only that though, they even recommend sites you might want to search.  The thing that makes this a truly great tool though, the fact you can edit searches yourself.  Take out skills that are irrelevant and replace with other skills.  All that and it's completely free.


Prophet

So you've found a list of prospective candidates.  Now it's about doing some more research and finding their contact details.  This is where Prophet comes in.

Prophet is one of the most useful tools I use in my day to day.  Prophet is a Chrome extension that will offer you someone's email addresses or other Social Media channels.  It can basically cut down the amount of time it can take you to research someone, and then enable you to contact them.  One of the things to take into consideration about Prophet is that it won't find 100% of the people.  Don't get me wrong, it works most of the time and even if it only found 50% of the people it's still going to save you a lot of time.

Similar tools:  There are some similar products out there.  However, Prophet is the one that I've found to be the most successful.  The other ones are:  Connect6 PeopleDiscovery & 360Social


MailTester.com

Now although Prophet will check for emails, and advise if the ones it's found are verified.  There is a site which will enable you to check to see if an email address is correct.  Obviously you'll have to do some searching on Google to find the email format.  However, once you've got an email address.  Type it into Mailtester and see what it says.  Again this isn't going to be 100% successful as some servers won't allow email verification.  You will find that it works most of the time though.

Zip Profiles

Now this one is relatively new to me.  It was a recommendation from RecruitingBlogs.  In a nutshell, it can be used as a CRM system.  Enabling you to keep track of candidates that you find, and associate them with a particular vacancy.  It allows you to extract people from LinkedIn and message them outside of LinkedIn.  By using the Chrome Extension, you can also build a search which will search LinkedIn (not as precise as using SourceHub, but pretty good).  One of the best features I've seen on it is the ability to predict email addresses.  It will advise as to what it feels the domain part of the email is, and then give you potential choices.  You can use this in conjunction with Mailtester.com and get some great results.

It post is by no means suggesting that you don't get TalentBin.  It is just offering you some potential tools if you're not able to get it.  Although, I would suggest you check out these tools even if you already have TalentBin.

I personally feel that Sourcing is all about: "AND" not just: "OR".  Use this tool AND that tool.  Not just this one OR that one.  Use all these tools together and I feel you'll get some great results.

Let me know your thoughts?  Always interested in hearing about other sourcing tools or techniques.

Dale

Inappropriate use of LinkedIn

Someone I know; and is highly respected in the Talent Acquisition / Social Media space, mentioned the other day on Twitter that she had received a Valentines card through LinkedIn.  She was rightly offended, as that's an inappropriate use of LinkedIn.

It got me thinking about how some people can be inappropriate in their use of Social Media.

I doubt you're now thinking, "So what's wrong with sending a Valentines card to a contact on LinkedIn?"  However, just in case anyone reading this, is actually thinking that.  Let me explain.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site.  It's where business leaders, experts in their field and professionals generally contact other similar people.  It's also where a lot of recruiters will look for talent for the roles they're looking to fill.  I've worked in Recruitment for over 15 years, 10 of that using LinkedIn.  I've never thought about approaching someone on their for a date.  The only romancing I thought about doing; was for them to fall for the job I was recruiting for at the time.  See what I did there?

I've started to see a pattern forming on LinkedIn over the past few months, and this is clearly being generated by the misuse of the site.  One of the handiest tools on LinkedIn is, "People Also Viewed".  However, on the candidate side I'm finding it becoming less effective.  Usually, it will be based on what profiles other users have viewed after viewing that particular candidate.  This is great if, the other users have been interested in the person for their skills and background.  What I've been finding recently, is if I'm looking at a woman's profile, and she's quite glamorous.  The "People Also Viewed" section consists of a number of other glamorous women who have no matching skills what-so-ever.  This is a massive concern for me.  This means that inappropriate behaviour of people on LinkedIn; is actually starting to affect the effectiveness of searching.

I use LinkedIn on a daily basis for searching.  I've had to adapt in the past to how I use LinkedIn.  However, this usually stems from LinkedIn trying to get people to pay for a Premium account, and I didn't feel the value.  As far as I'm aware this is the first time that people's misuse of it has affected my use.

So if you're in LinkedIn thinking about dating and want to approach someone.  DON'T DO IT!  Get on Match.com or some other reputable dating sites.  People on LinkedIn don't want a personal relationship with you.  If they were looking to date, they'd be on a dating site as well.