A New Year – 2009

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday time off.  We can all look forward to making 2009 great for us.  Amid all the negative news, layoffs, economic uncertainty, now is is a good time (as any) to challenge ourselves learning and growing.  I’ve been meaning to share a couple books I’ve recently read and would highly recommend.

Finding Heroes is a great book by Larry Dillon.  I had the privilege of working alongside during a portion of his time while at NetApp.  This book uncovers what questions to ask, but also help you differentiate and find the best candidates.   If you learn what questions to ask, training your eyes (via screening resumes correctly), and ears (listening/understanding their answers) to uncovering the best – You will find companies wanting your talent.  It should be used anytime as a desk-side reference for any recruiter to hiring manager.

The other book while not exactly recruiting related can help you in virtually all areas of your life.  The book is 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class by Steve Siebold.   He outlines what actions, habits, performance, and philosophies to have within your thought process that will make you a focused champion in whatever you decide you want in life.

Lastly, I want to plug Shally Steckerl’s jobmachine training.  I was fortunate enough to take one of his 1-on-1 web/phone trainings in 2005.  His methods, processes, and techniques for uncovering talent on the web are absolutely one of the best! He can help you or your team have a solid understanding of internet sourcing and uncovering the talent on the world wide web.  His trainings truly can take you/your team to the next level.

Checking out Usernames! People-Finding and Research

I love finding talent in many different ways.  Here’s another web tool I found last week and been playing with.  Userrnamecheck is interesting in that it goes through many common social sites and searches for a particular handle or username.  I like it because through this I can do a lot of research quickly and easy on someone I’m targeting, or better yet find more information or other talent – coworkers/friends/or a forum board to links they and similar others maybe active on

This might be most similar to an internet site such as Spokeo.  There is another online web tool that comes to my mind also that searches boards, conversations, and forums.  Cocomment searches for and tracks comments or postings within websites and forums.  I first found out about Cocomment last year at the Techcrunch 9 August Capital party where I met the owner and found out he is an avid motorcyclist too

[Note: I noticed while Usernamecheck isn't perfect all the time, it has on several occasions for me thus far uncovered good free competitive intelligence to information on talent.  An example of how I used it last week would be that I was curious about discovering more information on Gov. Sarah Palin so I typed in gov.sarah (and possible alternatives such as sarah.gov or gov.palin and more) into the username field box at the top.  I then searched and saw what results and possible common social sites she may have an account or presence on.  So...a common handle I usually use is people's first part of a person's email as usually most people keep their same patterns or shorten versions of it. The "handle" I mentioned could also be as a blog, website or something they go by like researchgoddess, recruitinganimal, or idonato.]

Hope this may help give you additional insight into talent and/or lead you to discovering others!

All The Best!

On a side note I will be at a luncheon from Noon-1:30pm at Birk’s restaurant in Santa Clara on Wednesday, October 8th to learn and see more about JobFox.  JobFox is hosting this FREE luncheon! To learn more about JobFox and grab a possible free lunch on them at Farallon, Birk’s or Zibibbo next week in the bay area please e-mail dweiss@jobfox.com for more information/reserve a free seat!

Just a Quick Note!

Hello Everyone! Just a quick note that my linkedin inmail box has almost 400 messages (invites, messages, etc) – I’m still trying to play catch up!!! Also, I still am about 2 weeks behind within my own personal yahoo email account!!!! Oh my gosh! PLEASE, if you have an important message I haven’t gotten to yet (which I know most I haven’t touched or seen) or need to reach me more immediately please email me to my work email at danh@netapp.com – I will respond within 24 hours or call me. Look at my visualcv resume for my personal cell# (a few posts ago)
Ok, on to sourcing tool today I’m looking at: Searchme is a website that allows you to visually see and preview webpages on a particular search or in categories. You can type in a person’s name for example and see maybe their webpage, to comments on sites they made, to other pages where they are maybe quoted or found. While its still trying to index the billions of pages on the internet, I find this tool visually interesting. (A quick note that this website is currently still in beta and will require you to register and ask for an invite)

Semantic Searching

While most of us use Yahoo or Google for our standard searches; The future will be changing. Semantic search is on the rise as it allows us to just type in a question we would ask naturally. We would then get (mostly) relevant type results we would want. There are a few semantic search engines. A couple I’ve been currently using and tried is Hakia and Powerset. These both might be something to check out and watch as more people use this type of next generation search technology. I personally need to invest and spend more time in Powerlabs as I believe they have great ideas and always looking for feedback to improve and make powerset better! I would also like to mention I had an opportunity to meet and listen to Dave Copps at Sourcecon who gave a very entertaining presentation on his pure discovery intelligent search engine he’s developing. Exciting times for all of internet search geeks ahead! Speaking of Sourcecon, I heard there is a newsletter in the works and needs a name. Go over and visit Moises Lopez at SourcingCorner and also visit Amybethhale website for more info!

Wishing All my readers the very best in everything you accomplish and do!!!
All The Best!!!
-Dan
650.426.5475
dharris {at} verisign dot com
Sourcer/Talent Researcher

P.S. If any of my readers have additional websites or notes particular on semantic and intelligent searching, Please feel free to comment or ping me. All The Best!