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322 items in SOURCING

Always great to hear from one of the real legends of the sourcing game. Brainfooder Dean Da Costa adding sharp observations on why human recruiters can and do still outperform AI on Chad and Cheese. Have a listen.
Issue #425 published 1 Dec 2024
We are on the cusp of the ‘super sourcer’ - in fact, I suspect a few of our number may have already achieved the sort of synthesis with tech to be able to do amazing things when it comes to finding candidates. How about this technique / tool on automated data scraping using AI? Somebody give this a go and report back. Incidentally, we’ll be talking about the State of Sourcing in this week’s Brainfood Live - Friday 12pm PT - sign up here.
Issue #422 published 10 Nov 2024
Been a while since any sourcing content has appeared in this newsletter - I’ve kind of been waiting for posts like this. The base use case for LLM is ingesting unstructured data at scale; combine this with a prompt interface and some automation rules and we might actually have a super powered ‘centaur’ sourcer. Must read for any technically minded recruiter out there - again, brainfood live on this if you have given this a go.
Issue #421 published 3 Nov 2024
Back to the mundanity of recruiting, and maybe back to the future with this thoughtful piece from brainfooder Toby Culshaw, on how the emergence of mass outreach by AI will saturate the inboxes of the highly skilled, in-demand who will revoke their attention from the public inbox - leading to a return to low volume / high value human driven sourcing. Is this the way sourcing rebounds? I think and hope so.
Issue #414 published 15 Sep 2024
Nice piece of data analysis on the decline of what was once the premier online community for software developers. The decline began before release of ChatGPT, but AI has surely been an accelerant to the trend. Paradoxically, it might end up being a better site for candidate sourcing - abandoned community often have candidate information which is still current…
Issue #412 published 1 Sep 2024
Reddit remains one of the most visited sites in the Internet, and because it is mostly text, it is a potential goldmine for candidate sourcing. What we need is an article which collects together the tools and techniques on how to do it in one webpage, so here you go.
Issue #412 published 1 Sep 2024

Know how many users are online at any given time. Currently monitoring 65+ sub-reddits.

….which seems like a very useful tool for anyone sourcing in subreddits. Remember, build personal brand by being a helpful community contributor - see ‘How to Source on Reddit’ Brainfood Live before you doing anything else!
Issue #411 published 25 Aug 2024
Big Lists are simply useful resources. This notion page put together by brainfooder Adriano Herdman is a collection of tech communities, which looks pretty useful as a list of sourcing sites.
Issue #410 published 18 Aug 2024
‘Google will now google for you’ is a very nice way to describe the direction of travel signalled in Google’s latest search update. This tweet thread gives a good idea as to what’s available, including AI overviews and search with / on video. Some deep implications for the future of the web which this superb essay outlines. If Google can generate good enough answers for the enquirer, then it will reduce the incentive for that person visit the source site. The era of clicking on blue links may be coming to an end, and with it, the web as we know it.
Issue #397 published 19 May 2024
Brainfooder José Kadlec has been one of the great contributors to the sourcing community over the past decade. It was a pleasure to receive a copy of his book HR Robo Sapiens, a tremendously illustrative piece of work which outlines the real applications of GenAI to recruitment specific use cases. No less value is this updated list of Blacklisted LinkedIn Plugins - use any of these to boost your LinkedIn game at your own risk.
Issue #390 published 31 Mar 2024
Warntracker
SOURCING
Without being too depressing but this is an interesting tool for US brainfooders. So it turns out that US employers need to give 60 days notice when they plan to conduct large scale layoffs. This is obviously registered in a non-descript government website somewhere, but it is public data, which can be aggregated, and which can be presented in sites such as this. ‘Layoff intelligence’ - never thought that would be a thing but here we are. Might be useful for sourcing. H/T to brainfooder Stanislaw Wasowicz for the share in the online community.
Issue #387 published 10 Mar 2024
More behavioural insights data in this report from Ashby. They actually have a series of these and all of them are worth checking out. This one focuses on sourcing performance - how many messages are optimal in a drip campaign (3), what is the best day for sending outbound, what is the best hour in the day for sending out etc. It’s all Ashby customer data so not market wide scope, but really interesting insights. If you prefer to watch / listen to brainfooder Willem Wijnans talk us through the report, it was the topic of Brainfood Live last Friday (excuse the heavy breathing, my nose was blocked up!)
Issue #387 published 10 Mar 2024
Dan Luu refusal to update his website is starting to annoy me 🤣, but his content continues to be so epic that you just have to plough through the wall of text . Here he is investigating the efficacy of search engines, especially as we all see to intuitively sense that they are getting worse. Are they really, how bad is it, and which products are the worst culprits? It’s a typically brilliant exposition of the state of search engines, highly relevant for sourcers.
Issue #386 published 3 Mar 2024
So you should have all watched Brainfood Live last Friday on the death of LinkedIn X-ray - if not, please do so here. A few commentators mentioned that there are more to ‘sourcing than just LinkedIn’ which is true but …got me thinking about what other sites are beginning to also block Google from crawling their pages, essentially sacrificing SEO in exchange for protecting IP for a future AI trained on proprietary data. Turns out, it’s getting to be quite some list. Future of the Internet will become a series of walled gardens, with attendant implications for recruiters.
Issue #384 published 22 Feb 2024
Found this useful website when writing up the How to Hire for AI essay. As mentioned there, not sure about how they do the rank order, but the main Universities you need to search for are all here.
Issue #383 published 11 Feb 2024
Remarkable post and comment thread on yet another sourcer-damaging product update from LinkedIn, this time impacting Recruiter. Three reasons to share this here 1) Great video by brainfooder Gabi Preston-Phypers describing the nature of the problem 2) Fantastic response from Dan Reid, Director of Product Engineering at LinkedIn and 3) a fantastic comment with some of the smartest sourcers in our industry commentating. It turns out that it might have just been a bug, but it tells us how even inadvertent changes on LinkedIn might have industry wide impact. Make sure to connect with Dan btw, and thank him for being so responsive - useful to have a recruiter advocate in LinkedIn Product engineering…HT to brainfooder Irina Shamaeva for the share
Issue #383 published 11 Feb 2024
The more research our expert sourcers do, the more likely it seems that LinkedIn X-Ray is indeed if not dead then very much on it’s way to dying. Brainfooder Irina Shamaeva providing solutions and workarounds quickly, as you might expect. We’re talking about this in ‘sourcers town hall’ on Brainfood Live next month - make sure you sign up. As for sourcing leaders, we might want to review our KPI’s / forecasts back to business - sourcing functions will find it harder to be as effective in delivery if these changes from LinkedIn become fixed.
Issue #381 published 28 Jan 2024
A sensational headline by brainfooder Marcel van der Meer but one which may in this case be fully justified. Finding LinkedIn profiles via Google ‘X-ray’ is perhaps the quintessential sourcing technique and its curtailment will significantly impact the work of recruiters worldwide. As brainfooder Irina Shamaeva also noted, this is bad news for people aggregators, and anyone else doing data enrichment on people data. We’re going to get all the wise heads in sourcing together in a Brainfood Live to discus, so register here. NB: it’s not all doom and gloom, change happens and the best recruiters always adapt. Brainfood Jan Tegze with some workarounds in his latest post on the topic.
Issue #380 published 21 Jan 2024
SearchGPT
SOURCING
Custom GPT’s are turning out to the a similar category of product to Custom Search Engines - useful, pre-configured tools for a specialist audience, but without the distribution channel to ever achieve mass adoption. With OpenAI GPT store now delayed into 2024, we might be waiting a little while before we can effectively discover useful tools. This one might become one of the more popular for us in brainfood - a GPT optimised for sourcing-like prompts. Check it out.
Issue #373 published 3 Dec 2023
So prior to Open AI’s shocking sacking of Sam Altman last Friday, the big news was the release of GPT builder, which enabled anyone to create custom GPT’s. Some excellent examples already shared in community, but I highlight this one from brainfooder David Galley, given its application to the task of sourcing and assessment in bulk, which gives inspiration on what could be done with this technology.
Issue #371 published 19 Nov 2023
Great to see more community members start documenting and sharing their approach to their work. Brainfooder Ach Petrosyan is one of the best sourcers around and this post on how & why to use sourcing planning gives some insight on what makes her so good. Sourcers: have a read here
Issue #369 published 5 Nov 2023
Brainfooder Alla Pavlova co-hosted Brainfood Live last Friday and found the time to put together a spreadsheet of all the useful AI tools she had discovered in the past 6 months. The clamour for the spreadsheet was such that I had Alla open it up for additions. Check it out here and if you can add anything that you think is valuable, please do so.
Issue #368 published 29 Oct 2023
Useful looking template from brainfooder Ivan Harrison. Most of us have likely never seen something like this, but a quick scan tells us immediately how it might be valuable in ensuring we cover all the significant aspects at the start of a recruiting project. Access it here
Issue #367 published 22 Oct 2023
Sourcing only exists because inefficient online databases are hard to interrogate. LinkedIn have a vested interest in making it easier. Fascinating post from LinkedIn’s engineering blog which details one of the ways their recommendation system is evolving - new term for us to learn: Embedding Based Retrieval (EBR). Technical but accessible enough, and of interest to anyone who wants to know what happens when you input search terms into LinkedIn. H/T to brainfooder Ben O’Mahony for the share.
Issue #365 published 8 Oct 2023
Super valuable piece of work from brainfooders Balazs Paroczay and Alexandra Gyetvai on what sourcing metrics to use to measure the quality and efficiency of your sourcing efforts. Needless to say this is one for all of those in sourcing or recruitment operations. Download it here
Issue #365 published 8 Oct 2023
Simple stuff but how many people have actually done this? Great example of the mother helping her son identify some leads by using sourcing mentality - and generative AI - to increase the relevance of the results. You can deploy this technique today for sourcing candidates or BD, but more importantly, building the mental habit of thinking outside the (LinkedIn Search) box. H/T to brainfooder Donna Svei for the share.
Issue #361 published 10 Sep 2023
Email finders are probably the most in-demand tool in our business - we know the candidates name, but what is their email?? This comparison blog is super useful for anyone who is looking to get one, particularly the table of the 30 apps tested. Thanks to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych 🇺🇦 for the share in the online community
Issue #361 published 10 Sep 2023
Searching for video was one of the most fiendish challenges but with software now able to transcribe audio, the pathway to effectively searching billions of hours of Youtube is now here. Cool tool which you can use recreationally, also for content marketing (if you’re looking to make a gif) but also for sourcing, as there are going to be a load of people who have put their expertise into Youtube via talks, tutorials, webinar appearances and so on. Have at it, here
Issue #360 published 3 Sep 2023
It might not surprise you to know that I am the most endorsed man on LinkedIn (for LinkedIn endorsements…) but I - like almost everyone else on the platform - have generally forgotten about this early social verification feature from LinkedIn. Not so brainfooder Mike Santoro, who has figured out the boolean search string to X-ray candidates who have them.
Issue #357 published 13 Aug 2023
Google’s original mission to ‘organise the world’s information and make it useful for people’ crashes headlong into values of privacy and security with this latest update, which enables everyone to Google results about you and request removal of contact information. We probably have a Janus-like perspective on this - as individuals we might welcome it, but as sourcers, this will become another point of friction to candidate engagement. H/T to brainfooder Brian Fink for the share in the online communityPS: US only atm, so VPN to check out beta
Issue #357 published 13 Aug 2023
Well this is useful isn’t it? Thanks to brainfooders Irina Shamaeva and David Galley for updating their sourcing comparison table between LinkedIn Recruiter and X-raying the site off-platform.
Issue #353 published 16 Jul 2023
If AI does kill sourcing, it will do so at the interface. In the pre-GAI world, human users had to develop advanced search skills because precise inputs were required to extract relevant information from massive but dumb online systems. But what if AI powered systems were able to effectively respond to imprecise inputs? Sourcing will evolve from the design of complex boolean strings toward dialogual skills with the interface.
Issue #352 published 9 Jul 2023
Been a while since we’ve featured a Boolean Strings post in brainfood, as I’ve basically been distracted by AI, but it remains a treasure trove of sourcing hacks which every recruiter who actively searches for candidates should be reading. This post, looks like a decent workaround on finding Github email profiles. Must read for any tech sourcer.
Issue #351 published 2 Jul 2023
Another great post from a hiring team which is really producing the sort of content we could all do more of - commentary on operational problems in recruiting. We’ve all encountered this one - fake LinkedIn profiles - and with GAI increasing the plausibility of fakes - likely one which will become an increasing problem. How to ID fakes, how to help stop them. H/T to brainfooder Alexey Geht for the share
Issue #350 published 25 Jun 2023
DorkGPT
SOURCING
A Google ‘dork’ is basically an advanced search operator for Google, so why not use a GPT to help you generate them? Pretty simple idea of using today tech to produce outputs which can be used for yesterday’s tools. Someone give this a go and let me know if it is any good.
Issue #350 published 25 Jun 2023
Brainfooder Alexey Geht and his team at AddedValue have been producing some excellent material recently. Here Shiri Horn-Brezel writes about her experiences and learnings from a recent sourcing project for Deep Learning engineers. This is what I mean about ‘open kitchen’ - share what you are doing, share what you are thinking. It makes the best, and most useful content.
Issue #348 published 11 Jun 2023
OK some practical know-how for you here from brainfooder José Kadlec, who runs through all the AI tools you need to know in order to power up for LinkedIn. Not easy to do a 1 hour monologue to the screen, but Jose does this better than most. One for the sourcers at the coalface.
Issue #347 published 4 Jun 2023
Sell out crowd for last Friday’s Brainfood Live on this topic, and I thought that it would be timely to share some official documentation from Google on what we can expect when ‘Search Generative Experience’ (SGE) gets rolled out to the rest of us over the next few weeks. The tl;dr is this: Google’s generated content will be above the fold dominating the screen ahead of retrieved content. Big implications for web traffic, SEO, content marketing, and probably, sourcing.
Issue #347 published 4 Jun 2023
ChatGPT has plugins, which unlocks the possibility of non-technical people writing natural language instructions to AI and have that AI execute decisions to deliver the desired outcome. I haven’t tried any of this yet, but I’m going to, especially having now watched brainfooder Denys Dinkevych’s how-to here.
Issue #346 published 28 May 2023
Great post from a former skeptic (weren’t we all?), now convert to ChatGPT. I love particularly the self reflection at the beginning of the post, and then of the excellent ideas which other recruiters can use today to get better at ‘prompt engineering’. The mindset shift from keywords input to dialogue, is the critical step. Thanks to brainfooder Alexey Geht for the share.
Issue #344 published 14 May 2023
PeopleGPT.io
SOURCING
Does this kill sourcing? I think it kills sourcing
Issue #343 published 7 May 2023
For those of you who saw Brainfood Live last Friday, you will have seen brainfooder Enrico Heidelberg running through the process of how he interacted with one piece of software (ChatGPT) to create another (Chrome Extension). It’s was a superb illustration of the democratisation of app building provided by GAI (Enrico is not a programmer), and also now a very useful lookup tool which anyone can use.
Issue #340 published 16 Apr 2023
This an excellent example of how a little knowledge of Excel / Google Sheets, combined with free data scraping tools and basic search engine know-how can produce outstanding efficiencies in sourcing. Get good at this folks and then supercharge it even further with AI and Automation. Excellent post by brainfooder Katinka Fekete, thanks to Alexey Geht for the share.
Issue #340 published 16 Apr 2023
Ethan Molick has been a must follow on Twitter on for a long while now, and his SubStack is equally worthy of the follow. Here he is doing a deep dive in Bing AI, which he categorically states is superior to ChatGPT, primarily because it combines generated content with retrieved content. Need to really fire up my moribund Microsoft account and get into this. Also need to do a Brainfood Live on this topic.
Issue #335 published 12 Mar 2023
Brainfooder Jose Kadlec takes us through an hour long screen shared tutorial on how ot use ChatGPT and MidJourney in Recruiting. This is an accessible watch and fantastic for anyone at any level of familiarity with these technologies. If you’re entirely new to it and have been resisting the inevitable so far, let this be your starter pack.
Issue #333 published 26 Feb 2023
Excessively in-depth posts are what make First Round special in my view. There’s no need for this degree of comprehensiveness, but why not do it anyway and take as deep a dive as you can on a niche topic. Probably no role is more resilient in the GAI current than Data Scientist, so here’s everything you need to know on how to hire for one. H/T to brainfooder Todd Raphael for the share
Issue #332 published 19 Feb 2023
It’s amazing to think that a product that no one had ever used 8 weeks ago, has forced not one but two of the big tech giants to pivot or accelerate their product strategies in response. Sundar Pichai announces Google’s Bard competitor last week, whose underwhelming performance in live demo reputedly cost $100 Billion share price collapse, whilst Satya Nadella launches ‘new Bing’, which this post does a great job of previewing. You’ll have to join the waitlist …and find your moribund Microsoft profile but the promise seems to be worth it.
Issue #331 published 12 Feb 2023
This is rather clever - an app which finds social media accounts which have been registered using a particular email. Now you may ask why you would need a persons social media profile if you’ve already got the email, but you never know where a person might prefer to be contacted, or what insight you can derive from the places he or she likes to spend time. A little bit technical but these days, you can ask ChatGPT how to use it if you don’t already know.
Issue #328 published 22 Jan 2023
Has there been ever been a hotter topic in recruitment than ChatGPT? The excitement is palpable in every conversation I have - those of you who joined us on Friday will know what I mean. Great to see how we’re sharing of what we’re discovering as we go - latest great post on the topic is from long time recruitment hero and brainfooder Jacco Valkenburg, who chains the hype to reality with some concrete examples of how to use this technology in common recruiting use cases. We better be quick too, as it looks like Open.AI will be charging month for this soon, with the likely price point to be around $42USD per month mark, something which you might be able to pay for by actually being so good a ‘prompt engineer’ that it becomes your profession.
Issue #328 published 22 Jan 2023
Wonderful to see this type of content from brainfooder Jim Stroud - its kind of exactly what we needed when it comes to breaking the ice with the technology which I think is going to transform a great part of recruiting work. I’m telling you now, its essential we get good at this. 18 minutes of easy watching / learning right here. H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the fb group
Issue #327 published 15 Jan 2023
The ongoing dialogue between LinkedIn engineering and brainfooder Irina Shamaeva is fascinating and invaluable. The vital information we can glean from these exchanges tells us that a great deal of official recommendations are at best outdated. Here we look at the use of quotation marks on LinkedIn search and how LinkedIn retrieves, reorders and presents your results. Search is in the middle of a identity crisis. Must read
Issue #326 published 8 Jan 2023
Sourcing nerds will already know how cool brainfooder Irina Shamaeva is. Her refusal to accept LinkedIn’s broken search experience has led to LinkedIn engineering actually responding to her posts, and in some cases actually fixing some of the issues. This never happens. Yet this post is showing that really is, so thanks to Irina’s tenacity (and credibility), we might actually be getting tangible improvements on how Linkedin search actually operates. Interesting bullet points at the end of the post too, which all sourcers need to be aware of, especially the general trend away from boolean, and toward semantic search. Must read
Issue #322 published 11 Dec 2022
Kind of perfectly timed podcast by Freakonomics, the complaints about the efficacy of Google are pretty much in the mainstream. Great discussion as usual on this excellent podcast, maybe worthwhile pairing this listen with giving ChatGPT a go.
Issue #321 published 4 Dec 2022
As an example of work required to retrieve information from inefficient systems, this post from brainfooder Mike Santoro is both a great illustration of the problems ChatGPT is trying to solve, as well as a useful do-it-today technique find more candidates on LinkedIn. It’s about adding a filter, then taking it away, to reveal new results. Smart thinking from a smart fellow. Follow Mike, read this post here
Issue #321 published 4 Dec 2022
End of social media will happen not through some sort of recognisably cataclysmic event, but through low profile, high impact administrative changes like this. As users, we will likely not mourn the end of unnecessary data collection, but as recruiters we may like to note that the golden era of sourcing was contemporaneous with the rise of social networks, where user profiles had usable biographical. Future will look like TikTok and it’s a lot harder to source there.
Issue #320 published 27 Nov 2022
We were talking about Dean Da Costa’s Start.me pages in Brainfood Live last Friday, and it got me thinking about what other Start.mes are out there which might be useful to use recruiters. Good job some enterprising soul has scraped them all into this aggregator where the search is snappy and seems to immediately bring up relevant results.
Issue #319 published 20 Nov 2022
Some cool resources for us: Layoffs FYI are aggregating lists of employees of tech companies making said layoffs (H/T to brainfooder Christian Payne for the share in the fb group), PLEO provide a great example of how to do layoffs with their Alumni List Coda (H/T to brainfooder Deborah Caulet for the share) and Gergely Orosz (follow on Twitter) has coordinated a massive list of 750+ tech organisations still hiring engineers, and therefore, maybe also recruiters (H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the fb group)
Issue #319 published 20 Nov 2022
Fascinating exploration by brainfooder Marcel van der Meer of how various accounts on LinkedIn can fail to find real profiles on platform. Apparently, there are 84 million+ who do not come up on search because of a discrepancy on the location pickup. Must read for two reasons - firstly, for a lesson on not always trusting the results the machine gives you and secondly, because this might actually have an immediate way of finding candidates that have been entirely untapped.
Issue #317 published 17 Nov 2022
Is data scraping even legal? It’s been grey area since the social web became a thing but last week’s court case victory for LinkedIn may be bad news in the long run for us recruiters, as many of us use tools which can help us access publicly available data in an automated way. The ruling is specific to LinkedIn - hiQ Labs lost on grounds of breaching platform TOS - but it feels like another brick in the road toward a future where data scraping anywhere becomes verboten.
Issue #318 published 17 Nov 2022
This is the sort of post only brainfooder Irina Shamaeva can come up with - a one page comparison chart on how various ways to source actually compares. It’s just brilliant stuff, and might just save your TA department some serious $$$.
Incidentally, Irina has also been talking to Google’s product team on search and will updating us on whether Boolean Sourcing is Broken on Brainfood Live later this month. What can I say, other that save your seat.
Issue #316 published 17 Nov 2022
This is the sort of post only brainfooder Irina Shamaeva can come up with - a one page comparison chart on how various ways to source actually compares. It’s just brilliant stuff, and might just save your TA department some serious $$$.
Incidentally, Irina has also been talking to Google’s product team on search and will updating us on whether Boolean Sourcing is Broken on Brainfood Live later this month. What can I say, other that save your seat.
Issue #None published 30 Oct 2022
Bellingcat may well have started OSINT as a thing when founder Eliot Higgins first began covering the Syria war via forensic analysis of Youtube videos uploaded by the combatants. Whether he is a Mi6 or not is besides this particular point, because it so happens that he runs the occasional hackathon. Here’s the write up of the second event, which also includes a list of cool tools and techniques for sourcing enthusiasts to get their teeth stuck into.
Issue #314 published 16 Oct 2022
Maybe sourcing already has changed. Search aficionados have been reporting unusual results on used before searches before and - you have to wonder - whether these are not simple bugs as Irina thinks here, but a sign of a more fundamental re-architecting of how search works, leading to incomplete or erroneous results, hidden by the the sheer volume of results returned.
Update: see Google Search team actually responding to Irina’s post in comments
Issue #313 published 9 Oct 2022
There is something seriously wrong with search if a video short platform like TikTok begins to supersede it. Yet that is precisely what is happening as Gen Z reject the desktop search experience, festooned as it is with ads, SEO and irrelevant results. Google’s response may be try and copy TikTok’s visual appeal, which this article from Verge does a decent job of outlining. Implications for recruiting is significant (maybe already felt, see below) because if Google moves away from text, then sourcing will change. Have a read here
Issue #313 published 9 Oct 2022
One person’s troubles is another person’s opportunity. 81,000 people have been laid off from tech startup since the start of 2022, so a list of resources on where to find them might be useful. H/T to brainfooder Jan Tegze for the share in the fb group.
Issue #312 published 2 Oct 2022
Love it when practitioners build tools for their own use; love it even more when that person is brainfooder Balazs Paroczay. This is cross referencing tool, to quickly find a prospects other social profiles. Needs a ‘select all’ as default I think, but hopefully that will come. Give it shot, will probably save you a load of time.
Issue #311 published 25 Sep 2022
Seeing as we’re going to be talking about ‘how to source on Slack’, this mega list of tech community slacks might be a good companion asset to have to hand. Watch the show before you pile in….
Issue #310 published 18 Sep 2022
So this looks like kind of a CSE for Github, searchable by location and language. Useful for tech sourcers. H/T to brainfooder Joey NK Koksal for the share.
Issue #309 published 11 Sep 2022
We know that majority of recruiters (70% in house, 44% agency) have access to LinkedIn Recruiter accounts. What we have never seen though is any kind of forensic breakdown as to how to optimally use LIR for sourcing efficiency. Brainfooder Michael Talarek, with a magnus opus on how to do it. Recommend all sourcers read this
Issue #309 published 11 Sep 2022
There’s another way to get candidates, and that’s through interacting with them on posts they publish on social networks. Some clever thinking by the author here, who finds a way to ID viral posts on a topic he cares about, and uses comments to set up the follow up DM. A do-able technique.
Issue #308 published 4 Sep 2022
A massive list of OSINT tools, in a one page start.me page. What else is there to say? Click and bookmark if you’re in the business of finding candidates. Thought tbf you can just find it in the larder.
Issue #308 published 4 Sep 2022
Interesting innovation from Brave browser, currently at public beta - kind of like a social, custom search engine. Create your own, add it to the community, browsers CSE’s that others have created. Obviously application for sourcing, maybe for content marketing also.
Issue #307 published 28 Aug 2022
Brainfooder Balazs Paroczay is coming up with some great content these days. This technique reminds all of us that ‘webpages’ are published, they are just hidden from obvious view. One for tech recruiters out there, check it out.
Issue #307 published 28 Aug 2022
This is a great series of experiments from brainfooder Marcel van der Meer - checking the filters on various LinkedIn accounts and then seeing whether they are accurate. Seems that they are always wrong in some way, rendering significant numbers of profiles invisible if you solely rely on them. Some D&I implications, as well as general efficacy of the search. Have a read here
Issue #306 published 21 Aug 2022
OSINT and Bellingcat have been synonymous since founder Elliot Higgins started publicly sharing open source intelligence techniques that outperformed the likes of the CIA and MI6 - two of the most well funded intelligence services on the planet - in validating claims in the Syrian War. Well, Bellingcat have now conducted a survey on tools usage most popular by membership - it’s well worth a look at what they are - some obvious applications to sourcing here.
Issue #306 published 21 Aug 2022
Some changes on how the world’s most used search engine works. Worth keeping an eye on this, as Google do make announcements but they are hardly ever amplified to the consumer product. Quotation marks now have some sort of impact in search. HN thread generally is a critical screed of Google, but contains some great comments on how search improvements might work - of interest to sourcers generally I think.
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
We not only depend too much on LinkedIn, but we trust it too much also. Some fine research from brainfooder Marcel van de Meer on how the application of location filters can simply remove large numbers of potentially suitable candidates. Main lesson here? Never blindly trust the output of a database search.
Issue #305 published 14 Aug 2022
Been meaning to listen to this one for a while, but only just now managed to catch up with it. It’s recruitment legends and long time brainfooders William Tincup and Vanessa Raath in conversation on talent sourcing. Great listening folks.
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
Really liking the TA content production coming out of Doctolib. I think this helps with EB, more effective hiring for recruiters and also, I suspect, improve retention rate. Check it out here. H/T to brainfooders Rassam Yaghmaei for the share and Paul Mouchet for being such a great interviewee!
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
Brainfooder José Kadlec has taken it upon himself to write some excellent sourcing blog posts recently. This one involves combining several search tools popular in the OSINT community to find candidate information via image search. Not sure how many hires you’ll make doing all this but you will train the ‘sourcing mindset’ - which is the most powerful tool of all. Must read folks.
Issue #303 published 31 Jul 2022
So this website looks like some sort of ‘multi-search’ tool, which auto populates a search term across a huge number of searchable sites. Obvious application for sourcing, so sourcers get to it, here
Issue #302 published 24 Jul 2022
You’ve probably heard of Discord already but chances are you’re not a member of one - yet. It’s ultimately a decentralised way to host a community and it’s a big deal amongst those who feel Slack is too work focused and FB is too Zuckerberg. Don’t worry Brainfood has a Discord Server, I’ll be firing this up when the time is right for us. But in the meantime, check out this comprehensive post on how it all works. I should imagine it will also be useful for sourcing candidates.
Issue #301 published 17 Jul 2022
One of the only ways to search video is to first transcribe the audio file and then search that. This is an interesting looking aggregator which makes such an attempt, the results look dependent on tagging (which can be easily gamed) but there could be something there. Sourcers, give this a go, and let me know what you think. H/T to brainfooder Dezso Papp for the share in the fb group
Issue #301 published 17 Jul 2022
Brainfooder Irina Shamaeva never ceases to amaze with her discoveries on how search engines work. It takes a combination of knowledge, discipline and curiosity to come up with techniques like this. Must read for all sourcers, as usual.
Issue #300 published 10 Jul 2022
So the first thing to say is brainfooder Noé Antona needs to have more follows on his Medium than he currently does. His post here outlines why your sourcing function fails - and it’s most often due to structural issues with the other parts of TA and with the wider business. Essential reading if you’re in a performance turnaround or greenfield set up scenario. H/T to brainfooder Guillaume Alexandre for the share - I was indeed busy at Recfest!
Issue #300 published 10 Jul 2022
It’s a resource rather than a tool, but this is a pretty decent Coda of all the employees at Coinbase who have been let go recently. Categorised by job function, with LinkedIn, email and some phone numbers available. Someone should really build a site which can aggregate all these databases together, that would be cool.
Issue #299 published 3 Jul 2022
Do Look Up!
SOURCING
During our great conversation on last week’s Brainfood Live (recommend you watch if you’re a sourcer), we ended up discussing a look up tool brainfooder Balazs Paroczay had put together. Well here it is. Useful if you have a list of something (i.e you’ve scraped Meetup event) and want to find their LinkedIn’s. Going to save you time, so go check it out.
Issue #298 published 26 Jun 2022
This is super simple but when it comes to sourcing, the best stuff usually is super simple. Brainfooder Balazs Paroczay shows us how to identify what a country is talking about on any given day on LinkedIn with this sourcing string and Ctrl+ F. Think about engagement, think network building, think about candidate identification through the conversations they engage in.
Issue #297 published 19 Jun 2022
I have been waiting for this post ever since brainfooder Mike Santoro penned Pt1 in Boolean Strings a couple issues ago. Another outstanding deep dive into how to X-ray LinkedIn, and get better results without LinkedIn Recruiter license.
Issue #295 published 5 Jun 2022
Great find by brainfooder Mike Santoro, writing as guest on the awesome Boolean Strings blog, on hidden search operators which allow you to X-ray for profiles without LinkedIn Recruiter. Approx 50% of us here do not use LIR, so this type of research is invaluable in helping balance the field. Also, we are doing a Brainfood Live special on ‘how to source w/o LinkedIn Recruiter’ - register here if you want to watch.
Issue #294 published 29 May 2022
Always good to have a nice blog post on Google Search Operators. First published in 2020, it’s unclear whether this post is being continually updated, but many of the advanced operators here still work as described. Useful, in case you ever fall out with LinkedIn. Incidentally, there’s a Brainfood Live on non-LinkedIn sourcing next month - sourcers, sign up.
Issue #293 published 22 May 2022
With TikTok overtaking Youtube as the most app on which we spend most time, it might be worthwhile for us to start thinking about actually using it as source site for candidates. Not easy to do, given the nature and architecture of the platform, but this technique has some promise, though it is a bit technical (you are going to need to know a bit of Python..). One for the technical sourcers to play around with, have a go here
Issue #292 published 15 May 2022
The mission of every in-house recruiter is to build the recruiting capacity of the entire business - get everyone contributing to the hiring effort. This is as good an example of how you can do it. Excellent post by Tereza Machackova on how to organise ‘sourcing jams’. Must read folks
Issue #292 published 15 May 2022
Is sourcing fundamentally an invasion of privacy? Increasingly it seems that it might be, as the mood on data ownership and data privacy manifests in policy changes in both public and private sector. Latest update from Google last week - you can now ask for phone number, email and address to removed from search results.
Issue #290 published 1 May 2022
Another new sourcing related innovation - Brave is providing a different type of results from search - not just blue links to other sites, but also links to human discussions on the topic. Exciting mashup of traditional search + commentary. Some obvious implications for candidate sourcing. Update here
Issue #289 published 24 Apr 2022
Reddit’s massively popular yet ramshackle website has long needed improved search functionality, so this update last week is hugely promising for anyone who might be interested in using comment search to identify candidates. No excuse for sourcers to avoid Reddit anymore - check out the update here. H/T to brainfooder Dezso Papp for the share in the fb group.
Issue #289 published 24 Apr 2022
Not sure how useful this tool is but I am a sucker for any search engine which has a map based UI. Ostensibly designed for freelancers / students to identify which companies use the technologies they practice, I’m pretty sure that the main user base of this website are going to tech recruiters looking for source sites for candidates or leads for business development. Take a look here
Issue #288 published 17 Apr 2022
I’m twitter a lot (follow me here, mainly for dinosaurs), but I don’t actually do a lot of searching on it. Maybe I should because there are some interesting, yet non-intuitive ways to find user profile data, as Tessa Davis here explains with an excellent short thread on the search techniques.
Issue #288 published 17 Apr 2022
So this was an impromptu charity event which was organised by Elena Volk and to which I was very happy to provide some moderating support. Nearly $9K USD raised for humanitarian relief for the people of Ukraine after one one week from conception to execution. With superb assistance via presentations from brainfooders Irina Shamaeva, Kasia Tang and Jan Tegze. Might be a series coming up on this - check out the video on the learnings here
Issue #287 published 10 Apr 2022
Free (and ad free) search engine. I presume it might be useful or interesting for sourcers interested in figuring out whether you can find candidates from this. Check it out.
Issue #287 published 10 Apr 2022
‘The Digital Markets Act puts an end to the ever-increasing dominance of Big Tech companies,’ says lead MEP.
Also looks like aggregating social profile data will become unlawful. Given that ‘sourcing’ as a discipline really emerged through the mining of unstructured data voluntarily publicised by users, this EU ruling has huge ramifications for how a lot of candidate sourcing work can be done. Summary post here, HN have some illuminating discussions here. Full text here
Issue #285 published 27 Mar 2022
Here’s a clever way to think about candidate / lead generation. LinkedIn events will inevitably become an increasingly prominent player in the event management scene and they naturally pre-select for interest. So, can attending as a guest give you a chance to find some new candidates or leads? Pretty much - yes!
Issue #285 published 27 Mar 2022
MetaOSINT
SOURCING
MO enables open-source intelligence (“OSINT”) practitioners to quickly identify relevant, publicly-available tools and resources, saving valuable time during investigations, research, and analysis.
What more do you want? It’s a massive list of 4000+ sourcing resources, here
Issue #283 published 13 Mar 2022
See the world’s top startups and startup jobs in one place. Filter by industry, company size, funding stage, location and more.
Pretty much exactly what it says in the description👆. Good database, easy to use and filter, probably quite good for lead generation / candidate sourcing. Have a play, here
Issue #281 published 27 Feb 2022
Excellent slide deck on the mindset and motivation of passive job candidates, and what techniques might activate them to become active candidates in pipeline. From the Ivy Research Council, now known as Veris Insights. H/T to brainfooder Syeda Younus for the share.
Issue #279 published 13 Feb 2022
FilePhish
SOURCING
If you’ve ever used the filetype operator in Google, then this is a pretty cool tool to try.
Issue #279 published 13 Feb 2022
Instagram has kind of been overtake by TikTok but it has been entirely blown away - over 1 billion people have an account. Consequently being able to search it with a simple aggregator might be more than useful. Here it is, a pretty cool tool.
Issue #277 published 30 Jan 2022
You are always going to get something interesting from brainfooder Jose Kadlec. This provocatively titled sourcing handbook is deeply technical and definitely veering into grey hat territory. I am not sure how many of us are going to use this - or even if we should - so lets understand this as a decent training exercise for cultivating the sourcing mindset.
Issue #276 published 23 Jan 2022
For some jurisdictions - in some industry sectors - it may indeed still make sense to use the phone call as first contact with potential job candidates. This post compiles a number of sourcing techniques and tools for finding US phone numbers, so useful for our US readers who want to do this type of outreach. Also a decent training tool for cultivating the ‘sourcing mindset’. Take a look, use with care. I wonder whether it could be used in combination with Balazs post earlier in this newsletter.
Issue #275 published 16 Jan 2022
Valuable piece of work by brainfooder Balazs Paroczay who is trying to solve the problems of searching on Facebook by building CSE’s dedicated to the task. As Balazs says, if you’re hiring for registered nurses, truck drivers or any other kind of front-line worker, you won’t be finding them on LinkedIn.
Issue #275 published 16 Jan 2022
Would be it be useful to have a single interface to create and run boolean searches on Google and Bing? The massive input box is enough for this cool tool to get a thumbs up from me.
Issue #269 published 5 Dec 2021
Periodically, brainfooder Andrew Stetsenko produces lists of software engineers (with emails!) who actively want to relocate to specific countries. It’s a free list of available software engineers who want to hear from recruiters. This is a gimme, so have at it here
Issue #267 published 21 Nov 2021
Any PhantomBuster fans out there? I suspect this post might make a few more. Illustrated with realistic use cases, this post outlines 4 ways in which connecting together different tools and platforms can accelerate your sourcing. Have a read here
Issue #265 published 7 Nov 2021
…which sounds like something we recruiters might want to know. Brainfooder Jan Tegze, thinking outside of the box (as usual) with clever usage of MS Teams contact manager. If finding people and contacting them is part of your job, you need to read this.
Issue #264 published 31 Oct 2021
It’s uncanny the impact brainfooder Irina Shamaeva has - again with the simple, do-it-today sourcing techniques which you should already know about - but didn’t. It’s brilliant stuff.
Issue #263 published 24 Oct 2021
Dataset Search
SOURCING
A search engine for datasets. Not 100% sure what the sourcing use case is for this, but it seems that there must be one? Also good for sourcing citations when you are building a presentation of some sort. Take a look
Issue #261 published 10 Oct 2021
With over 300 million registered users, Discord is primed to become the next big community space where interest groups will cohere. A primer to source from it then, probably will be useful at some point.
Issue #260 published 3 Oct 2021
Does anyone source on Facebook these days? It still has more user profiles than any other social network - by some margin - so maybe we should. You can probably get something from group / interest search - this resource gives you some url mods you can try. One for the sourcers.
Issue #259 published 26 Sep 2021
You know you might as well go ahead and directly subscribe to brainfooder Irina Shamaeva‘s blog - almost every post she writes usually makes it into brainfood. Simple, do-it-today tips on how to find more candidates.
PS: don’t forget, Irina makes her Brainfood Live debut next month - register here
Issue #258 published 19 Sep 2021
Which are the best European countries to source Java programmers? This is the question, amongst others, that our buddies at AmazingHiring started to ask themselves - and their answer is this breakdown of programmers per language, per country, in Europe. Tech recruiters, take note.
Issue #257 published 12 Sep 2021
Brainfooder Irina Shamaeva again, keeping us up to date on what is going on in the world of sourcing and LinkedIn. It’s not always good news. PS: Irina is guesting on Brainfood Live for the first time ever next month - this is not to miss - make sure to register here.
Issue #257 published 12 Sep 2021
OSINT - ‘open source intelligence’ - is a term coined in the information security space, but readily adopted by the more technical members of the recruiting community. Brainfooder José Kadlec writes an enormously rich post - what OSINT is, how it can be used, and what specific tools and techniques are most applicable and when. Must read for sourcers.
Issue #256 published 5 Sep 2021
So brainfooder Irina Shamaeva has updated her top sourcing tools list. There’s a ton of stuff here that I bet you never heard about. Avail yourself to it, chances are you’ll stumble across a tool or technique which is going to change and improve the way you source.
Issue #255 published 29 Aug 2021
Classic stuff from brainfooder Irina Shamaeva, whose straightforward posts always offer new angles on venerable topics. Did you know that Google search is no longer really ‘boolean’ search? I didn’t. Have a read, being good at google is like being good at SEO - you constantly have to keep pace with changes Google makes.
Issue #253 published 16 Aug 2021
Following on from last week‘s super popular sourcing presentation by brainfooder Alla Pavlova, I’m going to repeat the trick and highlight another fantastic sourcing presentation, from one of the greats, brainfooder Irina Shamaeva. This one is on sourcing software engineers on Github. You would otherwise pay good money for this type of training, so have at it here
Issue #250 published 25 Jul 2021
Great presentation by brainfooder Alla Pavlova on sourcing mindset. The best sourcers seem to say the same things - it is not about the latest cool technique, it is about the mindset & approach. 60 minutes of training for you on developing it - have a watch
Issue #249 published 18 Jul 2021
I’ve been refocused on Twitter lately, and I think the threading feature has great potential for delivering written content. I’ll be doing more original content over there, so feel free to follow my page if you want to get this stuff first. It has got me thinking about sourcing though, as very few of us actually use the platform for candidate discovery. This post from brainfooder Alexey Geht is a great guide on how to get started.
Issue #247 published 4 Jul 2021
You know what you get with an Irina Shamaeva post - a genius workaround on a frustrating sourcing challenge on LinkedIn. This is one re-enables a way to message people you share group membership with. Now as dead as LinkedIn groups might now be, they are still a great identifier for candidates. Sourcers: read this
Issue #240 published 16 May 2021
First time since 2015 that LinkedIn search has been rewritten, so glean what you can from this summary of how they have done it.
Issue #239 published 9 May 2021
Curious design / typeface on this website, which disguises it’s value as a comprehensive how-to on searching on the Internet. Dive deeper and it is packed full of advanced search techniques - going to be one or two things even the expert sourcers amongst here don’t know. Have a read here. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share.
Issue #237 published 23 Apr 2021
Reddit Search
SOURCING
The most popular platform for online community in the world, Reddit’s barely designed interface is a mess and usually too intimidating to navigate to be useful for sourcing - unless you’re either Erin Mathew or Wim Dammans 😅. So this search interface might change the game for the rest of us - no training or signup need, just type in your terms and use it.
Issue #237 published 23 Apr 2021
More sourcing genius from brainfooder Irina Shamaeva. Should be pretty by now that if you’re sourcer, you should be following Irina on LinkedIn and making her Booleanstrings blog a consistent read. This post is typical of the style - do-it-today advice that will supercharge your sourcing.
Issue #236 published 18 Apr 2021
Amazing sourcing guide by our buddies at Codersrank. Top tips on how to use X-ray and other techniques, across a plethora social networks and platforms. Must read for any tech recruiter - so read it here.
Also: Codersrank have offered a super generous deal for us - 29% off all prices for brainfooders only - activate here
Issue #236 published 18 Apr 2021
People tend to join Clubhouse under their real names. This makes Clubhouse is a new source of recruitment.
I know I know - why do recruiters have to ruin everything? 🤣. Well because recruiters job - at least the sourcers job - is to identify potential candidates for the job. Excellent breakdown on those who are on Clubhouse. You’re welcome btw to join Recruiting Brainfood there too
Issue #236 published 18 Apr 2021
Are you following Irina Shamaeva yet? Going to keep posting her blogs here until you do. More actionable insight for sourcers on how to use LinkedIn Recruiter. Nobody knows more about how LinkedIn works than Irina - and that includes people at LinkedIn. Have a read here on how to get more results from your searches
Issue #235 published 11 Apr 2021
“If you use it right, Twitter is the most powerful platform in the world. But Twitter does a horrible job of showing you its advanced features. Here are 10 of them you probably know nothing about”
I certainly had no idea of half the techniques outlined in this outstanding thread. Why on earth are these techniques so opaque? Sourcers: must read
Issue #234 published 4 Apr 2021
Do you use Spoonbill? It tracks copy changes in twitter bios, so some obvious application for market researchers, internet sleuths, stalker ex’s and - of course - us recruiters. Another fantastic essay from Fadeke Adegbuyi whose commentary on digital culture is always a must read. Have a read his latest piece here
Issue #233 published 28 Mar 2021
With everyone terrified by the monstrous Mark Zuckerberg, the flight for alternatives to his products has spiked the growth of apps like Telegram, which has long been popular in places where Facebook’s products are banned or restricted. This website catalogues of 50,000 Telegram public groups, which you can join to discover new chats, new friends or as the sourcers in this group might have instinctively guessed, new candidates.
Issue #232 published 21 Mar 2021
It’s another post from Irina Shamaeva, so you know that is another do-it-today sourcing technique which you haven’t even thought of but might find immediately practical to use. Sourcers need to read this post and follow Irina - it’s that simple.
Issue #231 published 15 Mar 2021
You won’t find anything impressive in this article. No crazy hack, no crazy exotic sourcing, no database leak exploit. This article is made for people starting in sourcing.
Still great stuff though by brainfooder Noé Antona. Great to learn about the mindset and process of a pro sourcer. Have a read if this is your career path. H/T Guillaume Lhote for the share
Issue #230 published 7 Mar 2021
Is there anyone on the planet who knows more about LinkedIn than brainfooder Irina Shamaeva? You are overconfident if you have your hand up because Irina proves it with a relentless consistency. Simple, yet invaluable discovery on how to isolate US based profiles by X-ray. Must read for the sourcers out there
Issue #227 published 14 Feb 2021
Last weeks post from Balazs Paroczay summarising Andre Bradshaw’s‘s textual analysis of the use of the term 'sourcer’ in LinkedIn profiles proved to be hit. So here is the man himself with on screen walk through on the project.
Issue #226 published 7 Feb 2021
When did ‘sourcing’ become a thing? Great write up by brainfooder Balazs Paroczay on Andre Bradshaw’s textual analysis of the 120,000 LinkedIn profiles of recruiters, which suggest that the sourcing golden age was between late n00ghties to late 2010’s. This makes sense as it tracks the exponential growth of big data produced by social media users which smart recruiters could convert into usable recruiting information. Peak sourcing might have passed though, as instances of the term is in decline - perhaps evidence of the shift of priority from ‘finding’ to ‘engaging’ candidates - and consequently a folding of the function back into just plain old vanilla recruiting. H/T to brainfooder Adriaan Kolff for the share in the fb group
Issue #225 published 31 Jan 2021
There isn’t a successful community out there that doesn’t become a sourcing site for recruiters who know their way around how the Internet. Great breakdown here from brainfooder Jan Tegze on sourcing on Clubhouse. Obviously don’t be a d1ck about it. H/T to brainfooder Tris Revill for the share
Issue #224 published 24 Jan 2021
Bellingcat have had a good 2020, ending it especially well with the its astonishing investigation of the Alexey Navalny case. They are basically an investigative consultancy which bases it’s research on online sleuthing, typically using publicly available if somewhat esoteric toolkit. And they are pretty happy to tell you what that toolkit is
Issue #220 published 27 Dec 2020
Aggregated and indexed all the public data on Github from 2011 to 2020. Some obvious search / sourcing application here. Tech sourcers / recruiters need to take a look.
Issue #219 published 20 Dec 2020
Irina Shamaeva is like a human aggregator of sourcing intelligence. Her collections are always excellent, mainly because you know that she is a practitioner and a tester before being a publisher. She is a brainfood treasure and this is sourcing gold.
Issue #218 published 13 Dec 2020
Well argued thread from Tricia Wang defending the act, art and science of web scraping - the automated collection of public data. As Tricia makes clear in this thread, the practice is foundational to a great deal of the modern internet, powering indie tools to global applications. It’s also essential to sourcing community, yet it might soon be considered a criminal act. Must read thread
PS: the Van Buren highlights the risk of out of touch legislators who have the power but not always the competence to make rulings of this type; see AB5
Issue #217 published 6 Dec 2020
Brainfooder Jonathan Kidder with a straight forward how-to on sourcing on Amazon Reviews. There’s practical value here but its the creative thinking which is the most important lesson - websites are webpages, and those pages often contain ‘human capital information’ useful for recruiters.
Issue #216 published 29 Nov 2020
Following on from last week’s popular post by Irina, brainfooder Glenn Gutmacher arrives with another ‘exceed the result limit’ hack, this time on Bing. Seems like including image results is the common denominator. Must read if you’re in sourcing
Issue #215 published 23 Nov 2020
It is Irina Shamaeva so you know what this means: a succinct single page post with some simple workarounds to what previously seemed to be intractable search problems. Irina is a must follow, and this post - for sourcers at least - is a must read
Issue #214 published 16 Nov 2020
Well Jonathan 17 cannot be described as ‘massive’ but I think we can let this one slide because this post is - as with most of Jonathan’s writing - just really good value. If you’re hiring for tech, you really need to click here. Also: Mr Kidder is actually writing a book - get a preorder here.
Issue #212 published 2 Nov 2020
This is a cool resource maintained by brainfooder Erin Mathew on sourcing on Reddit. Mainly a big list of interest group communities, these provide excellent ‘source sites’ for connecting with the audience you want to recruit from. As ever though with community, respect the rules…
Issue #211 published 26 Oct 2020
Been a lot of great presentations released this week, after the two mega events of SourceCon Digital and RecFestOneWorld. This one from brainfooder Erin Mathew is one of my favourites, not least because recruiting brainfood is in it (paypal ok Erin?)
Issue #207 published 27 Sep 2020
What tools can you use to automate parts of your work as a sourcer or recruiter in order to to massively improve your efficiency?
Asks brainfooder Adriaan Kolff. It’s a rhetorical question as he proceeds to outline how to do it. Excellent, in-depth, high value post. H/T to brainfooder Michiel Wiersema for the share.
Issue #206 published 20 Sep 2020
So it turns out a ‘Google Dork’ is advanced search operators for Google. Taken from a hacker forum, but as Mark Tortorici has previously observed, there is a thin line between what hackers do, and what a technical sourcer might do. If you’re the latter, this post is going to be useful.
Issue #205 published 13 Sep 2020
Alternative careers for recruiters was the most popular post in last week’s brainfood, so this post by brainfooder Erin Mathew should also hit the mark. What else can you apply for your awesome sourcing skills to and for? Smart, funny, thought provoking…..
Issue #202 published 23 Aug 2020
Interesting research carried out by the DomainTools security research team comparing, the reverse image search capabilities of several major search engines including Google, Yandex, Bing, & TinEye. Of interest to all the sourcers out there. Yandex is the winner I believe…
Issue #201 published 16 Aug 2020
I keep telling you…..you have got to be following brainfooder Irina Shamaeva and her blog, Booleanstrings if you’re a sourcer or otherwise finder of candidates. Her do-it-today sourcing tips are ingenious in their simplicity and immediacy. Title of this post is self explanatory, so have a look here
Issue #200 published 9 Aug 2020
Cool speculation by brainfooder Mark Tortorici on what the act of sourcing actually constitutes, and how similar it is straight up hacking. Both are grabbing information that perhaps the subject did not intend for you to grab. Perhaps less of a blurred line, more a line lightly traced? Have a read and a think, here
Issue #199 published 2 Aug 2020
Can connecting with people on LinkedIn can actually damage your discoverability? Stunning revelation provided by brainfooder Guillaume Alexandre who demonstrates in this post (+ short video) the different results you get by connecting or not connecting with the searcher. Big implications for user behaviour on the platform, depending on whether are you doing searching, or wish to be found. Got to watch this folks.
Issue #198 published 26 Jul 2020
Following Irina Shamaeva is step No1 to improving your sourcing game. She isn’t always ingenious but she is always on it. LinkedIn’s new feature to help out of work users is public, and therefore, open for X-ray search. Simple yet massively useful post - as usual. 
Issue #197 published 19 Jul 2020
You know what the person looks like - you have the picture! - but you’d really like to know more. This guide from the pillars of OSINT is probably as good a guide to reverse image search as you can find. Interesting, Yandex, not Google, might have the strongest capability. Must read for sourcers.
Issue #196 published 12 Jul 2020
Irina Shamaeva is regularly featured on this newsletter for the simple reason that she consistently provides practical advice and resources which anyone can use immediately. This self explanatory post is a great instance. Get the good stuff here
Issue #194 published 28 Jun 2020
The existence of ‘unofficial Facebook pages’ - autogenerated by the platform when a user creates an employer alias - is the key to this sourcing technique from brainfooder Balazs Paroczay. Great example of how close we are to incredible sources of candidate data, if we just played around a little more with everyday social media.
Issue #193 published 21 Jun 2020
When brainfooder Irina Shamaeva discovers something new about sourcing, it pays to pays attention to what she has found. This discovery is a nice combo of cool tools, logical thinking and practical value. Look and learn here folks.
Issue #192 published 14 Jun 2020
Do you know what a ‘Google Dork’ is? Basically advanced instructions to the search engine to 'limit results to’. All sourcers need to be aware of it, and of this site, which is an extensive database of such dorks. Check it out here
Issue #191 published 7 Jun 2020
Does anyone know how to source from TikTok? The only social media rocketship that is still flying north east, TikTok continues its extraordinary rise and it’s about time we recruiters knew how to make it work for us. This post from Bellingcat is as comprehensive a guide as you’ll find. H/T brainfooder Yulia Bondar for the share in the fb group
Issue #190 published 31 May 2020
Simple yet smart, which describes the content that brainfooder Jonathan Kidder consistently produces. If you’re on the hunt for ready-to-go candidates from companies making layoffs, you can and should do all of these tips Jonathan recommends in this excellent how-to post
Issue #189 published 24 May 2020
Lay off lists, searchable candidate databases, crowdsourced google sheets - you name it, Bret Feig has collated it. Useful for jobseeking recruiters or recruiters looking for ready-to-go candidates. Take a look here
Issue #188 published 17 May 2020
What if you have candidate email but want to map to the candidates LinkedIn profile? Nice way to do this data enrichment through Outlook manager. H/T brainfooder Guillaume Lhote for the share
Issue #188 published 17 May 2020
Superb how-to on something really quite basic - you can search for emojis and it can lead to candidates. I particularly like this post in the way it reminds you how dumb search engines really are - they will deliver what you ask them - you just have to ask the right questions…..
Issue #187 published 10 May 2020
Well presented how-to on global sourcing - obviously pertinent to the current remote-only working circumstances most of us find ourselves in. Some intelligent thinking here - have a read before you embark on your global sourcing journey. H/T brainfooder Denys Dinkevych for the share
Issue #186 published 3 May 2020
Excellent from brainfooder Balazs Paroczay - whose active blog on sourcing is a must follow. This is a great how-to on Facebook sourcing and a must read for anyone in the business of finding candidates. 
Issue #186 published 3 May 2020
Working smart before working hard is the impulse behind all great sourcing ideas. This post by brainfooder Balazs Paroczay is a great example - building on LinkedIn discoveries by Irina Shamaeva (who else?) and automating the boolean build. Great post and cool tool.
Issue #185 published 26 Apr 2020
Sourcing.Games
SOURCING
We learn best when having fun, so this is a great initiative by Jan Tegze on using online games to teach and practice sourcing techniques. Give it a go folks - possible training tool, certainly a team building one. 
Issue #36 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s a community of tech recruiters who are actually themselves quite technical. They often surface up cool resources like this library of public / free API’s. As the era of easy data scraping comes to the close, collectively as an industry, we need to get better at using API’s. Have a look here
Issue #158 published 23 Apr 2020
Irina Shamaeva, relentlessly adding value to the sourcing community - again. More do-it-today sourcing tips for the one of the originals - two undocumented search operators to try on everyone’s favourite social network.
Issue #107 published 23 Apr 2020
Cool post listing twitter tools useful for social media research. Clearly useful for anyone at the sourcing end of the recruiting. Discovered in Sourcers Who Code, a rather cool fb group which often surfaces up material of this sort. You might like to join it
Issue #159 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder is one of our favourites in brainfood - he consistently produces top quality content with ready-to-use sourcing tips like this. Supercharge your efficiency with IFTTT. Read this, and follow him. 
Issue #71 published 23 Apr 2020
I’m willing bet real money that Irina Shamaeva knows more about LinkedIn than folks at LinkedIn do. Here she is breaking down the search capabilities according to the plan you have. Thinking about upgrading your LinkedIn account? You got to read and bookmark this
Issue #129 published 23 Apr 2020
Google’s Dataset Search is basically structured markup for datasets, but it enables users to be much more efficient when looking for those datasets. Read this for some additional background and click on this link and have a play. H/T brainfooders Lee Candiotti and Irina Shamaeva for the shares in the fb group
Issue #174 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s a few recruitment agency industry groups around, but I’m not sure there are too many that give consistent value like The Recruitment Network. Led by James Osborne and Gordon Stoddart, they put together a fabulous event series for members, as well as high value products like this Sourcing Hacks booklet. Click on all the links here folks, and reach out to James or Gordon if you’re an agency owner interested in upping your game.
Issue #138 published 23 Apr 2020
‘Open Source Intelligence’ - the art, some might say 'dark art’ - of using forensic techniques to extract data from the Internet. Here’s a site from brainfooder Denis Dinkevich (follow this guy) which lists the tools you can use to do it. One for the technical sourcers out there, bookmark it if you haven’t already.
Issue #113 published 23 Apr 2020
Great to see my buddy Willem Wijnans back in the recruiting game - innovating, writing, sharing. Here’s his collection on ingenious ‘recruitment hacks’ from some of the smartest folks around, which I’m pleased to see several brainfooders amongst them. Recruiters, get inspired and have a read.
Issue #113 published 23 Apr 2020
SourcingHacks
SOURCING
A collection of sourcing hacks and tools crowd sourced from #truMunity events. There’s a couple hundred here in this sister site we’ve built off WorkShape.io, crowdsourced from recruiters as far afield as Delhi, Cape Town, London, and from last week, Berlin!
Issue #61 published 23 Apr 2020
It never goes more than a few issues before Irina Shamaeva makes it back into brainfood. Here’s her method on how to conduct accurate searches on facebook for employees of a specific company. Have a read folks, and make sure to check out Irina’s blog, Boolean Strings - it’s full of anyone-can-do-it sourcing tips like this. 
Issue #93 published 23 Apr 2020
Being super efficient in our business is close to being super good at it. Aaron Lintz, our guest on Brainfood Live this week, is certainly one of those. This post on how to use a couple of boring old tools (LIR, Google Sheets) to extract people data in bulk is a lesson on what quality sourcing is all about. Have a read here, and make sure to catch Aaron on the show this week - register here.
Issue #176 published 23 Apr 2020
Is sourcing the first or last thing recruiters do when a role comes live? OH subscriber Tris Revill has a clear answer - it should be the former, but it’s too often the latter. In this post, he explains why this is a mistake. 
Issue #43 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s plenty in leads generation that is relevant to recruiters - in many respects, we’re data gatherers, as much as anything else. This is an interesting growth hacking tutorial on how to scrape attendee email addresses from conferences. 
Issue #43 published 23 Apr 2020
There is an entire eco-system of chrome extensions which modify - and lets face it - improve the experience of LinkedIn for many users. The good times are over says brainfooder Josef Kadlec, who reports on the disappearance of popular apps from the Chrome store and product owners being summarily blasted off LinkedIn. Must read post folks.
NB: not all recruiters agree with this analysis. Read this thread
Issue #105 published 23 Apr 2020
How to hire via Slack is going to be a topic of Brainfood Live at some point. As a taster to what to expect, this simple technique by ‘foodie Pierre-Andre Fortin is a decent example of how to scrape a website for 'human capital information’
Issue #136 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you follow Denis Dinkevich? You really should, if you are into the technical side of sourcing. I think he is a ‘metasourcer’  - consistently finding and sharing creative ways to find candidates. Check out this latest 'hack’ using a new sourcing feature on AngelList. Simple stuff, that works. 
Issue #76 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder doesn’t go more than few weeks before popping up in brainfood. One of the most valuable contributors to the recruiting community, he is back with a cool tool review on scraping Facebook Groups. Get the tool here
Issue #80 published 23 Apr 2020
Great inside look at the thinking and working of a top tech recruiter. Enrico Heidelberg details his examination of his own ‘sourcing effectiveness’ over 5 months of recruiting for tough engineering assignments. Also check out his earlier post Part I here.
Issue #59 published 23 Apr 2020
AmazingHiring
SOURCING
Our buddies at AmazingHiring have been doing some great work in helping recruiters source tech candidates. Free access to their awesome tool is usually 72 hours, but with this promo code, you got 2 whole weeks. You have to take a demo call and give up your email, but if you’re hiring for s/w engineers, it’s probably going to be worth it. Click on this link and use BRAINFOOD as promo code. 
Issue #124 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder doesn’t usually go more than a few weeks before making an appearance in this newsletter. Reason? Super practical sourcing posts like this. Great learning opportunity for anyone who is getting started / wants to get better at boolean search.
Issue #124 published 23 Apr 2020
Email is still the contact channel which works best, which is why it’s good news that my friend Jan Tegze tested some of the most popular chrome extensions on their effectiveness in harvesting them. He profiles 21 and shares the results here. For recruiters / sourcer types, this is a mandatory read.
Issue #121 published 23 Apr 2020
Always cool when a candidate takes an interest in the tools we recruiters use to get hold of their contact details. Antoine Neuenschwander, a software developer, breaks down popular contact finder app Lusha and shows us how he ended up getting headhunted by recruiters who used it. Fascinating for the technically minded to know more about how these tools work, and also raises important ethical questions on the type of work we do. Have a read here
Issue #175 published 23 Apr 2020
1. Always be sourcing 2. Build relationships before you need the transaction 3. Make it easy for someone to connect with your brand. Good stuff from AngelList, on tech hiring, but useful for any situation where you are persistently hiring for the in-demand. H/T to brainfooder Denis Dinkevich, always on the ball for great content.
Issue #96 published 23 Apr 2020
Irina Shamaeva is a treasure. If finding people is what you do for a living, you need to follow this lady and read her blog - it’s full of snackable, do-it-today sourcing tips like this. 
Issue #100 published 23 Apr 2020
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Hiring for gender diversity? Why not conduct a boolean search on female first names? Here’s a mega .txt file which you can plug into any input field which supports basic boolean operators. H/T to On Hiring subscriber Natalie Glick for the share. 
Issue #25 published 23 Apr 2020
If you’re a digital marketer, data analyst or growth hacker or recruiter into data — this post is for you. Stefan Petterson with a how-to on getting data from an API without knowing how to code. The era of cheap-and-easy data scraping is coming to a close, the API may be the only route we’re going to have left. Learn about it here.
Issue #156 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder consistently produces easy-to-do-right-now sourcing tips which can obviously improve your recruiting performance. Follow his work, as it almost always makes it into brainfood. 
Issue #73 published 23 Apr 2020
Kamran Ahmed’s diagrammatic explanations of complicated ideas has been a hit with brainfood before - search for ‘developer roadmaps’ here. He’s now taking on the browser experience - what actually happens when you execute your boolean search. Sourcers, you will like this
Issue #132 published 23 Apr 2020
GiveHub
SOURCING
So this is a sourcing tool for GitHub. Probably something recruiters for developers should bookmark, I’d say. Thanks Aaron Lintz, a constant source of sourcing good stuff
Issue #23 published 23 Apr 2020
The breakthrough insight for sourcing is recognising that websites are textual documents which can be interrogated. Irina Shamaeva (who’s in London in June btw) shows us simple techniques to get different results on common places like LinkedIn. Her Booleanstrings website is classic which is full of useful little sourcing nuggets like this. Read it, follow her.
Issue #81 published 23 Apr 2020
Aaron Lintz is one of our faves on Recruiting Brainfood - a technical sourcer in the truest meaning of the term. Here’s a method post of using advanced Excel for data cleanup. 
Issue #49 published 23 Apr 2020
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks Bret Feig should have more followers. Jonathan Kidder explains why with this excellent review of Bret’s own review of a new Facebook scraping extension called: DiG. Read Jonathan’s review, and watch Bret’s how-to. H/T also Michał Bieńko for the initial share.
Issue #120 published 23 Apr 2020
Does what it says on the tin - two chrome extensions, used in combination - to automate the scraping of public data which can be used for recruiting. It’s a quick win folks, so take a look here
Issue #166 published 23 Apr 2020
If you were in any doubt that Google are taking recruiting seriously, the launch of ‘candidate discovery’ should expunge it. Two of the best analysts in the business, Matt Charney and Joel Cheesman have been quick with their initial thoughts. Check out Matt’s post here and Joel’s here. Also see Joel’s interview with Bogomil Balkansky in Who’s Talking, below. 
Issue #77 published 23 Apr 2020
Brainfooder Jonathan Kidder is an outstanding collector and distributor of great tools and techniques for top of the funnel recruiting. Check out his amazing list of free sourcing tools. There’s a few in here you don’t know, but should.
Issue #114 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder with a do-it-today boolean string which can help you find job active software developers - you just have to tell Google what to do. Have a look here. PS Jonathan will be featuring on Brainfood Live next month - register for the show here
Issue #177 published 23 Apr 2020
It’s not only recruiters who know how to ‘source’. Extraordinary document from First Draft on how investigative journalists do it. There’s a lot in here we likely don’t know. H/T Denis Dinkevich for the share. He is a fellow you should follow btw.
Issue #171 published 23 Apr 2020
Great to see Jonathan Kidder back in the game when it comes to content production - his stuff is excellent quality - and usually very practical. This post certainly is - pre-built boolean strings you can copy and paste into google to help diversify your talent pools. US centric (not his fault - someone do a European / Asian / African one) and mainly focused on gender diversity, but definitely worth a dive into, especially the massive first name search string.
Issue #171 published 23 Apr 2020
Not enough recruiters know that Google is configurable. Fewer still have ever done it - H/T to recruiting legend Irina Shamaeva who is the obvious exception to this rule. The good news for everyone else is we have found a huge list of custom search engines collected together in this here spreadsheet. There’s some gold in here folks.
Issue #69 published 23 Apr 2020
Jonathan Kidder is back with a follow up to the LinkedIn account restrictions controversies of the past month. Turns out: nobody really knows, but I do like the claim that your past behaviour creates the barometer. Must read for anyone who has recently visited LinkedIn gaol. 
Issue #69 published 23 Apr 2020
This is pretty good. Shared again by Denis Dinkevich who is like a meta sourcer - finding sourcing tools / techniques / methods which help other sourcers get better. The fella also posts regularly in Tris Revills awesome Growth Hacking Recruiters FB group. Connect with these two, and join the group…
Issue #111 published 23 Apr 2020
Irina Shamaeva’s contributions have featured in brainfood more than any other author. Reason? Because her content packs maximum value in the smallest possible package. More sourcing greatness from one of the best. Take a look here
Issue #111 published 23 Apr 2020
Is a better place to find Slack communities? Right now, I can’t think of one. Enormous list of slack groups which you might like to join. Obvious sourcing value for recruiters here. 
Issue #42 published 23 Apr 2020
And it’s yet more goodies from LinkedIn. Filtering by ‘connections of’ will provide users with much greater granularity on the results they see - should improve relevancy, promote better outreach and ultimately improve user experience. Not yet rolled out on my account, so give me a shout whoever sees this first. 
Issue #42 published 23 Apr 2020
If you’re a technical sourcer you probably be following Susanna Frazier. Currently out in New Zealand where she is presenting at the inaugural #RHUBNZ, Susanna is a recruiter who always comes up with interesting, do-it-today tips on getting better at the job. This tweet on a data scraping technique is a great example
Issue #162 published 23 Apr 2020
Guess what? It’s Irina Shamaeva again with another gem of a post in Boolean Strings. This is classic Irina - simple, do-it-tomorrow how to posts on an important sub discipline of sourcing - how to scrape data.
Issue #145 published 23 Apr 2020
Probably a touch out of date (can any sourcers validate?), but this might be the most comprehensive resource on the topic I’ve seen out there on Facebook Graph Search. If even half of it still works, it’ll be an essential resource for all sourcers out there.
Issue #123 published 23 Apr 2020
Bellingcat is the website of Eliot Higgins, the amateur forensic online investigator who has since popularised the OSINT movement. Recruiters - especially the more technically minded sourcing community - have jumped on some of these techniques. This latest post investigating LinkedIn is accessible to most and is a super interesting read on the techniques and mindset of online investigation. H/T Denis Dinkevich - an OSINT aficionado - for the share.
Issue #128 published 23 Apr 2020
Are LinkedIn listening to their users? I’m sure they did, so well done those noisy folks in the recruiter community who joined the outcry. An important product has got better and it didn’t cost anybody anything.
Issue #28 published 23 Apr 2020
Crowdsourcing is the most efficient way to create snackable content of real value. This is excellent from SourceCon. 
Issue #28 published 23 Apr 2020
Irina Shamaeva consistently uncovers ingenious ways to use common tools. Her is latest discovery is a flaw in the synonym feature on Google which enables you get around the 32 word keyword limit on search. Jaw drop, mind blown etc. Must read for every sourcer
Issue #164 published 23 Apr 2020
Sometimes, the simplest tools as the best. This is couldn’t be simpler - a text doc of women’s names which you can copy / paste into their input box with a data base behind it. Won’t solve your diversity challenge, but it’s got to help. 
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
SourcingHacks
SOURCING
At WorkShape.io, we’ve been collecting of sourcing hacks and tools that we crowd source from #truMunity events. We’ve even built a website specifically for it. 100’s of sourcing tools, hacks, processes and techniques from recruiters as far afield as Delhi, Cape Town and Berlin. 
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s plenty in leads generation that is relevant to recruiters - in many respects, we’re data gatherers, as much as anything else. This is an interesting growth hacking tutorial on how to scrape attendee email addresses from conferences.
Issue #63 published 23 Apr 2020
It never goes more than a week or so before Denis Dinkevich makes it back into brainfood. Here’s his recent share of diversity sourcing guide, second guide also here. H/T to original authors and fellow brainfooders Cody Horton, Jim Stroud and Glenn Gutmacher. 
Issue #89 published 23 Apr 2020
For those of us who have been following an otherwise obscure legal case of hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp, this week might prove to be momentous. Bottom line: it’s ok to scrape public data from LinkedIn user profiles. Massive implications for software providers who do said scraping and the folks who probably find most use from the scraping - us. Read all about it, here
Issue #153 published 23 Apr 2020
OP states in his post: “Important clarification — all source materials in this article are presented solely for informational and educational purposes. The author doesn’t encourage their use for commercial purposes”
So, get educated here
H/T brainfooder Irina Sharafan for the share
Issue #153 published 23 Apr 2020
Let me know if you get tired of me talking about Irina Shamaeva. [Spoiler alert] I won’t stop regardless of what you say because she consistently produces outstanding how-to content like this superb post on sourcing on Github. Tech recruiters, must read.
Issue #165 published 23 Apr 2020
I suspect Irina Shamaeva might know more about the LinkedIn than anyone at LinkedIn. More do-it-today usefulness from the queen of sourcing. Read her post here, and I highly recommend recruiters follow her blog here.
Issue #102 published 23 Apr 2020
If you’re comfortable with amending some jquery on the browser, this little hack might be of use to you - especially if you’re a LinkedIn Inmail addict. Lesson: everything you see via a browser is a webpage, which ultimately can be modified to purpose. 
Issue #38 published 23 Apr 2020
LinkedIn is great for looking for new contacts, but is it the best tool for searching through your existing network? The answer is no it isn’t so here’s a handy workaround from my friend and OH subscriber Kasia Borowicz. It’s a worth a read folks. 
Issue #27 published 23 Apr 2020
Loving the work by OH subscriber Andrew Stetsenko and team. The GlossaryTech chrome plugin was perhaps the most popular cool tool ever on this newsletter (download it here), and now we have this - a big list of cool tools which recruiters should know. If you’re a people finder, this is a gold. 
Issue #51 published 23 Apr 2020
Facebook’s pivot to privacy this year has meant the end of one of the industry’s most useful tools - the graph search. Or has it? You can always trust the OSINT community for coming up with ingenious workarounds. One for the more technical sourcers out there, but if you want to access the largest candidate database on the planet, you might want to deep dive into this post
Issue #150 published 23 Apr 2020
Great to see Jonathan Kidder back in brainfood - another favourite we’ve been missing for a while. Sadly, it’s with sub optimal news for us recruiters, as this post is a report on big tech’s inevitable response to the global privacy outcry. Its reduced tooling for us, especially if you’re into Chrome extensions. Check out this post and watch out, for this date.
Issue #150 published 23 Apr 2020
Michael Wright was one of the early favourites of brainfood. So it was a welcome surprise to see his return to this newsletter with this Youtube video. It’s got everything - great idea, great execution, great explanation of one very cool recruiting technique. Have a watch here. H/T brainfooder Jim Stroud for the share
Issue #150 published 23 Apr 2020
Absolutely massive post on how to scrape data using free / paid tools. From the growth hacker community but concepts easily applied to recruitment. It’s grey zone stuff but sometimes you got to do what you got to do. H/T OH subscriber Tris Revill for the share
Issue #45 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you know that you can configure Google? These ‘Custom Search Engines’ can massively improve sourcing efficiency for busy recruiters. Stefanie Proto has a public list of over 70 pre-configured CSE’s. If you’re a sourcer, you need to bookmark this
Issue #108 published 23 Apr 2020
I’m sharing this post for two reasons; 1) it may actually be effective in identify talent pools 2) it demonstrates the sort of url manipulation which is key to a great deal of modern candidate discovery. I’m not sure whether looking for faces is entirely unproblematic but we can leave that for a Brainfood Live at some point. Take a look at the technique, here.
Issue #178 published 23 Apr 2020
How good is your google fu? Mine could definitely be better, which I proved by viewing this search engine query guide which was shared with me by brainfooder Denis Dinkevich. It’s a comprehensive guide on how to use search operators, properly. If you’re a sourcer, you need to download / read this. 
Issue #74 published 23 Apr 2020
OSINT Start Me
SOURCING
You might have guessed that I like a big list or two. This one is from the OSINT community therefore full of the weird and arcane; some of it will be super useful for the core activity of recruiting; candidate sourcing. H/T Catia Sousa for the share
Issue #152 published 23 Apr 2020
Hat tip to my buddies at SourceCon who are in Budapest this week for the first ever SourceCon Europe event - I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it! What better than a European language sourcing top from brainfooder Iker Jusue to mark the occasion?
Issue #87 published 23 Apr 2020
More on Github. Here we have ‘foodies Sofia Broberger and Susanna Frazier collaborating to produce a Big List of Github search operators. And you should know by now, how much I like Big Lists.
Issue #135 published 23 Apr 2020
Early returns from the How to Hire Country Guide global survey indicates that Github as a source for candidates has broken through the mainstream. That means only one thing - the platform will close ranks and protect its user data. Good job we have Irina Shamaeva to hand to figure out the workarounds - it’s another must read.
Issue #135 published 23 Apr 2020
A bit technical but accessible breakdown on Jonas Schroder’s attempt to scrape the world’s largest repository of human capital information. Must read for any technical sourcer - so have at it here. H/T brainfooder Jan Tegze for the share
Issue #167 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you know what a Custom Search Engine (CSE) is? My friend Irina Shamaeva has been creating and sharing them for years. Here’s a handy collection of 10 of her best - essential resource if you want to get faster, more accurate results from Google. Have a look here.
Issue #125 published 23 Apr 2020
Did you know about ‘Industry Codes’ as a search operator on Linkedin? Nor me, but Irina Shamaeva does and she’s here to give us the good news. Please also make sure you follow Irina’s blog here - it’s full of snack able do-it-today tips like this.
Issue #110 published 23 Apr 2020
Brainfooder Jonathan Kidder has been MIA on brainfood for the past few months - more my lack of awareness, rather than any slowdown in his output - amply demonstrated with this fantastic listicle of free sourcing tools for recruiters. Some you might know, most you might not. Check it out here.
Issue #104 published 23 Apr 2020
Did you know that job functions on LinkedIn are numerically coded? ‘Foodie favourite, Irina Shamaeva has figured out the taxonomy and shares it with us here, along with clear examples of how to use it. Sourcers need to read this and follow Irina - you’ll simply get better at recruiting by doing so. 
Issue #142 published 23 Apr 2020
Our buddies at Standuply have compiled a list of 1000 Slack communities, well organised and handily available for this downloadable PDF. Thanks to brainfooder Denis Dinkevych for the share
Issue #60 published 23 Apr 2020
Too late to be of any immediate use for recruiting, but an interesting example of how to think about social networks as simply a collection of hackable webpages. Bug report and fix by by Tommy DeVoss
Issue #12 published 23 Apr 2020
This is ……kind of incredibly useful. All hail Erin Mathew for putting this superb list of reddit resources for sourcing. Probably going to have to do a ‘How to Hire on Reddit’ show at some point, cos I know nothing about it. In the meantime, sourcers, get to this
Issue #133 published 23 Apr 2020
Email Extractor
SOURCING
Great to see brainfood favourite Jonathan Kidder back in these issues. Here he is reviewing a useful looking email extractor from Boolean string’s Irina Shamaeva. Follow both these folks if you want to get better at sourcing, and download the extension here. 
Issue #90 published 23 Apr 2020
There’s been some changes to Facebook Graph Search recently, which Irina Shamaeva explains here, and now she shows you how to modify the url to generate the search results you need. Must read for recruiters, so do it here. 
Issue #90 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you use Chrome extensions to get more out of sites like LinkedIn? If you do, you should probably read this post from Corey Prophitt, a software engineer and builder of such plugins. Accessible for the lay person, and might tell you a few things on how exactly LinkedIn knows what extensions you’re using.
Issue #141 published 23 Apr 2020
Accessible 3 pager from Josh Bersin on how to select the right tech sourcing solution for your business. Documents like this can age quickly, but the framework for analysis may well stand the test of time. Take a look here if you are thinking of buying sourcing tech. H/T to ‘foodies Ivan Harrison and Sonia Parancin for the share
Issue #141 published 23 Apr 2020
So Bret Feig has a Youtube channel which provides sourcing automation / data mining / web scraping tutorials. It really should have more viewers. Check out this video on scraping AngelList, and here’s the link to subscribe to Bret’s channel. 
Issue #91 published 23 Apr 2020
More GitHub sourcing for ye.  These are the shortcuts -  five tools will help you find GitHub profiles and contact info. Missing DevScanner.com,  though which I corrected in comments!
Issue #19 published 23 Apr 2020
If you’re a tech recruiter, you probably know what Github is. Extracting useful recruiting information from it is a challenge for most though, as it’s primarily a place of code, for coders. Here’s a decent if long winded method of getting an email addresses from it. 
Issue #19 published 23 Apr 2020
More great content from OH subscriber Balazs Paroczay. The main point is that we put way too much time trying accurately filter data we cannot trust. Key to efficient recruiting is not to filter at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle. You should follow this guy.
Issue #19 published 23 Apr 2020
Guest post on sourcing from one of the undisputed masters of the craft, Martin Lee. Lesson 1: natural language search. Lesson 2: search by association. Martin and Irina Shamaeva are in London for June 19 sourcing workshop. Exclusive 25% discount for brainfooders who want to get training from two of the masters - book your place here. 

Issue #82 published 23 Apr 2020
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Josef Kadlec at #SOSUDE in Munich last month. He’s one of the pre-eminent finders of people in the game today. Here’s his action packed post of his covering new tech and traditional sourcing techniques, the combo of which is likely to make you better at the sourcing game. 

Josef’s a fan of the brainfood and has opened up his Talent Sourcing course for us with a massive 75% discount, using this link. Valid for 7 days only so get to it folks. 
Issue #82 published 23 Apr 2020
Wouldn’t it be great to have a single database of all of your contact data? Probably no one in the world of recruiting knows more about this than Aaron Lintz. Jess Roberts does a great job of summarising a quick hack to enrich LinkedIn data with personal contacts & social profiles. 
Issue #47 published 23 Apr 2020
The reason cited is the default restriction notice is use of browser plugins which breach terms of use. Brainfooder Jonathan Kidder suggests we use yet another browser plugin to figure out what LinkedIn’s looking to ban and not use them. Its a smart idea or a genius trap. 
Issue #67 published 23 Apr 2020
So this guide on data scraping really needs a better title. Because it’s actually a really good walk through on how to use some common (and mainly free) tools in combination to scrape public data and aggregate them into useful information for recruiting purposes. Practical stuff from brainfooder Marcel van der Meer, whose fb group tech sourcers should really join.
Issue #170 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you know Balazs Paroczay? If you don’t, you probably should. One of the pre-eminent sourcers in the world today. Also the producer of great recruiting content, such as this checklist post on setting up a sourcing function. 
Issue #18 published 23 Apr 2020
Great post by OH subscriber Tris Revill, on a distinction rarely made between a full cycle recruiter and a candidate sourcer. Two different roles folks, with different skills required. 
Issue #18 published 23 Apr 2020
Guess what folks? Recruitment is too noisy for the in-demand! Yet another post to join the catalogue of open letter complaints from developers, which now extends from agency recruiters to internal recruiters of name brand tech giants. As sourcing becomes easier, so engagement becomes more difficult. I’m sure there might be another way to do it. 
Issue #18 published 23 Apr 2020
This week’s announcement of a 40% downsizing of Soundcloud immediately resulted in tech community rallying to support. Here’s a crowdsourced list of on-the-market ex-SoundClouders. Some great people here, unexpectedly on the market. You know what to do. 
Issue #39 published 23 Apr 2020
Great how-to by the best recruiter training business around. Thumbs up to our buddies at SocialTalent for consistently providing value to the community!
Issue #21 published 23 Apr 2020
Great write up of the The Fall 2017 SourceCon Hackathon by Ben Solomon. This is a good inside look at the psychology, investigative problem solving and information retrieval techniques used by modern recruiters. 
Issue #55 published 23 Apr 2020
Great overview of how to use Github to recruit, written by Ninh Tran and Steve Jiang, founders of Hiretual. Worth a read this folks. 
Issue #13 published 23 Apr 2020
Massive resource of ‘social sourcing’ techniques coming out from our buddies at Recruitd. This chapter on Reddit is a taster on the content quality. Full pdf available (free) download here. Must read if you are a recruiter searching for platform appropriate techniques of candidate sourcing.
Issue #161 published 23 Apr 2020
Need I say more? Irina Shamaeva has another do-it-today blog post out. So give her a follow, subscribe to her blog and have a read of this. Like all great hacks, it’s simple an do-able by all - take a look here
Issue #126 published 23 Apr 2020
‘OSINT’ stands for 'Open Source Intelligence Tools’ - an outstanding collection of tools which can be directly applied to sourcing. H/T to long time brainfooder Denis Dinkevich for putting this together. He’s fast becoming one of the most useful people to follow in recruitment. That might be a hint btw. 
Issue #78 published 23 Apr 2020
As the Cambridge Analytica story rolls on, the tech giants are being forced to shore up their image by restricting access to data. We’ve likely seen the high point of scraping on the open web. For recruiters, that means the job of finding candidate date has just got harder - and likely - more expensive. 
Issue #78 published 23 Apr 2020
Facebook Graph Search was one of the most powerful (and underused) methods of candidate identification. So when it appeared to break this week. the OSINT community went apeshit. Henk van Ess has probably done more than anyone to figure out a workaround - check out his twitter thread here.
Issue #139 published 23 Apr 2020
Do you know what a custom search engine is? It’s usually a pre-configured google, and damned useful if you can spend the time to tune it. Luckily for us, the legendary Irina Shamaeva of Boolean Strings has done a bunch of them for us, for free. Must read / bookmark folks. 
Issue #57 published 23 Apr 2020
Jim Stroud brings his unique style to a well known hiring challenge - improving gender diversity in tech hiring. This is a super how-to packed with ‘do-it-today’ sourcing tips, presented in an inimical way. Tech recruiters please take note.
Issue #157 published 23 Apr 2020
Free copy of Full Stack Recruiter II - from brainfooder and resourcing hero Jan Tegze. His first book was excellent and now for some reason he is giving away his second for free in e-book format. No brainer this one folks - if you recruit for a living, download the book and pay it forward for the price of a social share.
Issue #106 published 23 Apr 2020
So apparently CV Library - UK’s largest searchable candidate database - still does a 7 day, no questions asked, no demo required free trial. Here’s the direct link for it - there’s a ‘might as well’ element here isn’t there? H/T brainfooder Karen Azulai for bringing this to our attention…
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
More on sourcing on Google products - where everything is basically a website with greater or lesser visibility - that means they are a recruiting goldmine if you know how to dig. Some new ideas and techniques from a master of the sourcing trade - Jan Tegze. 
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Recruiting has a simple rule: go where the talent is. Long time brainfooder, Adriaan van der Heijden shows us how in this post introducing groups in two of the most popular messaging apps around. 
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Did you know you can subscribe to your keyword search directly on Google? H/T Jonathan Kidder for an excellent method of post on a basic yet neglected sourcing technique
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Sometimes you just need someone to pull it all together for you in one place. For sourcers, this week, that person is Shannon Pritchett. Well linked post that takes up and down your sourcing stack. You saw it in the title - read it. 
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Massive piece of work from long time brainfooder Denis Dinkevych, who not only breaks down a Stack Overflow profile for the newbies but also provides advanced search and engagement techniques on and off the platform. It’s a must read for any tech recruiter. 
Issue #65 published 23 Apr 2020
Want some recruitment gold? I have some recruitment gold right here - a collection of Slack channels, teams, groups or communities, all in one incredibly well made and searchable website. Hat tip to Slofile and bookmark this page
Issue #117 published 23 Apr 2020
Marcel van der Meer has been producing these playbooks for some time now - accessible how-to guides for sourcers & recruiters. Want to message at scale on LinkedIn with non-pay account? Marcel has a playbook for that. Download it here, and make sure to join Marcel’s fb group here, in order to get more free playbooks.  
Issue #117 published 23 Apr 2020
Big news: Brainfood has secured an exclusive discount for Irina Shamaeva and David Galley’s new book, Sourcing Hacks. It’s down to $41 (from $59) to the first 10 brainfooders who claim. Use this link, and I’d suggest you snap to it.
Issue #117 published 23 Apr 2020
OSINT Framework
SOURCING
A list of OSINT or Open Source Intelligence tools and resources, superbly presented as an interactive mindmap. From these sources, it should be obvious why the more technical recruiters amongst us have embraced OSINT. If you want to do more than just search LinkedIn, this site is for you. H/T Catia Sousa for the share
Issue #148 published 23 Apr 2020
Can you even Google? Surprisingly, most of us really can’t, never going beyond the most basic AND OR operators. Here’s a list of 100 search strings you can use to find software developers - and learn something about how these operators really work. Must read if you want to improve your sourcing game
Issue #169 published 23 Apr 2020
Google’s attempt to reclaim its place one stop shop for specialised search takes a new twist with the release of College Search last month. Irina Shamaeva has hacked around the url to display the previously hidden advance search filters. Obviously useful for sourcing. Take a look here
Issue #155 published 23 Apr 2020
A.K.A ‘indirect search’, this excellent blog post by 'foodie favourite Sofia Broberger is a great example of thinking one layer deeper when on the search for the highly skilled, in-demand. Focused on tech, but the thinking is transferrable to any field. If you’re hitting the wall on your search, have a look at this.
Issue #134 published 23 Apr 2020
Perhaps the days of couch surfing are over, but this is an example of lateral thinking which separates the good from the great in the world of sourcing. And brainfooders Mark Tortorici and Balazs Paroczay are definitely pretty great
Issue #183 published 23 Apr 2020
Facebook’s drive toward a privacy orientated service means shutting down access to many of the features that have been useful for the sourcing community - namely Facebook Graph Search. We have the OSINT community to thank for working on workarounds, in particular ‘foodie Denis Dinkevich for documenting this technique (NB: should be obvious by now: follow Denis)
Issue #146 published 23 Apr 2020
Instagram has over 1 Billion users and is well known as the killer when it comes to engagement. Recruiters (some may say ‘thank goodness’…) don’t know how to use it, but with some OSINT techniques, there’s going to be a way. Here’s an accessible sourcing post on How to search and interact with Instagram. H/T Denis Dinkevich for the share.
Issue #146 published 23 Apr 2020
Typos
SOURCING
More sourcing genius from Denis Dinkevich. Quick tip here on the benefits of deliberating using typing errors in sourcing - the result? More results. Plus cool script on automatically building a boolean string of such errors. I’m telling you, should follow this guy. Dig into the good stuff here
Issue #85 published 23 Apr 2020
Building an internal recruiting capacity has become an increasingly attractive option for companies who are hiring at scale. But do they really know how much it’s going to take? Long time brainfooder Balazs Paroczay outlines his thinking of what to consider before your build your team. There is a bonus cool tool that’s free to use - check it out!
Issue #53 published 23 Apr 2020
Are you following Irina Shamaeva yet? You will immediately get better at recruiting if you do. Here she is with another vintage post - do-it-today sourcing tips, this time for developers, on Github. Simply sourcing gold
Issue #147 published 23 Apr 2020
If you don’t know Bellingcat by now you probably should. Online investigation using techniques which apply immediately to recruiting. This is a google doc which lists all of the tools Bellingcat’s investigators use. If you’re a sourcer, you must click on that link. H/T to brainfooder Liam Fitzgerald for the share
Issue #172 published 23 Apr 2020
Insanely useful list of of tools, hacks & M.I. sources from long time brainfooder Martin Freeman. Need a github scraper, chrome extension or some open source intelligence tools? Martin’s got you covered. 
Issue #84 published 23 Apr 2020
Those of you who have been following this newsletter know that I’ve been getting into OSINT of late. Not practically you understand - this is all too technical for me - but observationally, and you know what? It is a treasure trove of esoteric techniques you can apply to the finding of people. This open google doc from Bellingcat contains dozens of tools and ideas that a diligent recruiter can use. H/T Catia Sousa for the share.
Issue #149 published 23 Apr 2020
Europe’s biggest gathering of Pythonistas takes in Rimini in July this year. So here’s a great website of the attendees who’ve published their profiles. You might find a Data Scientist / Python Engineer or two here. Use sensibly folks. 
Issue #40 published 23 Apr 2020
Denis Dinkevich is back with another amazing how-to on sourcing automation. Here it is about enriching email data using a recipe of custom search engines, Blockspring and FullContact. This is how you get faster folks. Watch the tutorial here.
Issue #94 published 23 Apr 2020
Free Boolean strings list which will help you find contact information, resumes, xraying, flip-searches, to searching on social media sites etc.
Pretty much what it says on the tin. Great work Jonathan Kidder, a fellow you should follow, btw
Issue #173 published 23 Apr 2020
Great to see recruiting tech vendors come up with original content like this; our buddies Stack Overflow remain the pre-eminent only online space for software engineers so here’s a post by another one of our buddies - Seen By Indeed - on how to get better at sourcing on that platform. Must read for any tech recruiter
Issue #173 published 23 Apr 2020
Glenn Gutmacher is one of the OG’s of the sourcing world. Here he comes up with some innovative techniques to get around protected websites, mainly paywall news / resource sites. Useful to read as it is, but also as a how-to study on breaking into places where you shouldn’t
Issue #173 published 23 Apr 2020
Complete 12 segment, 100 page course teaching journalists how to google. In the age of fake news, online research and verification skills has become a premium for the 4th estate, and it’s pure gold for us reading this newsletter, as recruiters have similar pressures for similar skills. Must read for anyone searching for candidates. H/T to brainfooder Denis Denkivich, who you should follow
Issue #173 published 23 Apr 2020
Irina Shamaeva with the latest on the end of Facebook Graph Search. Extraordinarily powerful resource (for those who knew how to use it), now looks like being permanently disabled. Intelligence Search amongst many other chrome extensions affected. Sad day for sourcers and OSINT folks and a sure sign that the era of free personal data is coming to close. Seminal moment folks, so have a read here.
Issue #140 published 23 Apr 2020
Web scraping or crawling is the fact of fetching data from a third party website by downloading and parsing the HTML code to extract the data you want. But you should use an API for this !Not every website offers an API…
Quite technical but well laid out how-to post on extracting public data from a web site. Obvious applications for recruiting, candidate or client side. Have a read here
Issue #163 published 23 Apr 2020
Want a method post on Boolean X-ray sourcing that provides instant value? Michael Crouse not only provides the explainer (hint: you’re using the site: operator) but also helpfully lists dozens of links which puts your candidates one click away. More on refining Google search here. 
Issue #70 published 23 Apr 2020
So Willem Wijnans is one of those recruiters who really needs to write more. Now and again he’ll come up with something like this - a post a lot of people are going to get real value from. This post focuses on tools which help you get email addresses. So you probably should read this!
Issue #14 published 23 Apr 2020
Josef Kadlec is an ex-software engineer turned recruiter. I really like his systematic approach to sourcing. Here he is with an excellent and accessible method post in sourcing candidates from abroad. Also check out his excellent online sourcing course, you can do so here with a massive 50% off of rate card for brainfood subscribers.
Issue #97 published 23 Apr 2020
Brainfood favourite Irina Shamaeva is back, this time to highlight a couple chrome extensions which can be used to scrape & enhance candidate data. Useful blogging can be as simple as this. Update: Irina’s just updated here tools list also. Check it out here
Issue #97 published 23 Apr 2020
Been saying this for a while. Follow Irina Shamaeva if you want to get better at sourcing, and in particularly better at sourcing on LinkedIn from outside the platform. Latest sourcing genius from Irina, here
Issue #144 published 23 Apr 2020
More free stuff from our buddies at AmazingHiring. 10 outstanding hacks to power up your sourcing game. Great to see the list is entirely made of ‘foodie subscribers. Get the free book here. And - I think - AmazingHiring’s free 72 hour trial is still on using this link and the Promo code: BRAINFOOD…
Issue #127 published 23 Apr 2020