Jigsaw: www.jigsaw.com is less well known but is a similar idea to Linkedin. Quite simply it’s a gold mine for finding people. So if you’re on the look out for an SEO expert, just select the Advanced search option, type in the job title you’re trying to fill, select a location and it will produce a list of everyone who has registered their profile matching your requirements.

Linkedin and Jigsaw are a headhunter’s nightmare and dream rolled into one. A dream because it’s now so easy for them to identify who’s who at just about every company but a nightmare because it’s now so easy……..why don’t you just do it yourself and save the £15k fee?

Blogs and groups

A bit like using the Groups facility on LinkedIn. There are bound to be blogs/group sites that cover your field and allow members to post articles and comments. Just put a request for help on them (‘we’re recruiting a ……does anyone know someone’ etc) or better yet, start contributing and joining in discussions. Alternatively and even better still, set up your own company blog and write pertinent articles on your field of expertise or updates on what the company is up to. You’d be amazed who will follow you. Just make sure you’ve got a mechanism built in (RSS) which allows people to do that. Oh, and keep mentioning the roles you’re trying to fill.

Tumblr

This is a great site which allows you to create a company (or personal) blog in seconds and it also synchronizes with your Facebook and Twitter pages. In addition, on any job advertising you do, invite people to follow your company blog and if they have any questions on the role (which you should also post onto your blog) they can ask them confidentially on your blog. When setting up on Tumblr there is a tick box option to allow other people to ask you a question confidentially……so just tick it. Thus it becomes a 2 way communication tool for jobseekers to find out more about the role without you having to give out your email address.

Facebook

You need to be a bit careful with Facebook as you don’t want to spam your friends or friend’s friends but if you’re really struggling put a post onto your Facebook page…….’We need to hire a Web Developer…….any recommendations etc’ and get it messaged to all your mates. Just don’t make a habit of it otherwise they may well not remain mates if you send one to them each week.

Have you created a company Facebook page yet? Well if you haven’t, you should. People who may want to work for you, or just keep abreast of what you’re doing as a business so when you’re hiring, add it to your company Facebook page and get it sent out to all those possible applicants. The other advantage to having a company Facebook page is that you can keep it updated with stuff going on at the company: sports and social events, photos or videos of the office or messages from key people. All of this is a doddle on Facebook but not so easy on your corporate site. Jobseekers want to get a feel for the company and letting them check you out on Facebook is a great way to attract them (just go easy on those embarrassing Xmas party photos).

Finally, encourage all your staff to update their Facebook profile by ensuring that they list your company name as their current employer. Why? Well there are Facebook apps out there (Branchout) that make it easy for people to talk to people they know at a given company so if a jobseeker sees your job advert they can then do a quick search of people they are connected to see if any of them work or worked at the company or know someone who does. It might just help get your company’s praises sung a bit and find you that star candidate. If all this extra work to utilize social networks seems a bit daunting, you can use iKrut’s built in social media distribution service which will do much of the above automatically for you, for a small annual charge.

Google

Google + is of course the elephant in the room. Given Google’s resources and dominance of the search market it’s difficult to imagine that it will not become a major player in the social media arena in some form or other. If you’re not familiar with it then it’s a little like Facebook and if you’re doing a bit of hiring you’d be well advised to create a company Google + page which potential jobseekers interested in your company can join, read your announcements and begin to interact with you. You can of course list all your jobs……..free.

Try a meta search

A what? A meta search. A meta search is when you look for something on a meta search engine. These are websites that search across multiple search engines. So if you’re looking for an Online Marketing Manager in New York, type in:‘online marketing manager’ ‘New York’ ‘cv or resume’ and see what comes up. You won’t find that many cvs but increasingly web savvy people are listing their profiles online for search engines to pick up. It’s worth a try for digital or technical roles as these types of people are most comfortable posting resumes online. Here are a few meta search engines:

1. http://www.zapmeta.com
2. http://www.browsys.com
3. http://www.dogpile.com

The only downside is that it’s a bit hit and miss as the search results will also contain quite a few entries which are not people’s resumes. But a free hire is always worth the 10 minutes it takes.

Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject of search engines, take a look at Google Alerts which is a great new tool you can use to find cvs. Just type in a search term and Google will email you (whenever you tell it to) if a new cv appears on the internet matching up. So if you’re continually trying to hire Research Scientists in Miami or Tax Accountants in Zurich, it could be just what you want. It’s a sort of free cv alert service.

And finally….. The traditional way of sourcing a candidate if you do it yourself is to plonk a job advert somewhere like a magazine, or job board. That’s fine but can be costly if you’re using 2 or more job boards and print publications are never cheap. You might want to try the new breed of job search engines like Simply Hired, Indeed, Check4jobs and Jobrapido. They allow you to synchronize your jobs from your careers pages and have them appear instantly (and free) on their site. If you don’t get the response you’re looking for you can then just pay on a pay per click model, paying a specified amount each time that job is viewed. But since there are now so many of these search engines appearing, if you post it to enough of them you’ve got at least a reasonable chance of the ideal candidate viewing it and you can then hire without having to pay anything.

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This blog post series is from the e-book: The 21 tips and tricks they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School about recruiting. It can be viewed in full at: http://www.zodo.co.uk/zodo.pdf