This is perhaps the most commonly asked question I get when presenting workshops, seminars, and keynote addresses. Allow, via this humble blog post, my attempt to answer this question for recruiters by and large. Please note that I am writing this not with full-time, dedicated sourcers in mind, but for you, the full-desk recruiters who struggle to create time enough for completing your required tasks, much less for filling a pipeline with so-called passive candidates.

As my full-time sourcing brethren well know, there can never be enough research conducted as there will always be more we can do to find the right people for the right jobs, so please excuse me, but this is not written for you. For all the rest of you who carry large loads of requisitions, I hope this gives you peace of mind.

Not All Reqs Are Created Equal

Though it may feel like they are, not all of your requisitions are of the absolute “highest priority.” In fact, most of them don’t require much sourcing at all. Before you guffaw, let me define what I mean by sourcing — I mean research and identification of leads for hard-to-fill positions. Or another way to put it would be name generation for positions which cannot possibly be filled using traditional talent sources. Most reqs could benefit from some downloaded resumes, but that is a task simple to automate and one that creates little heartburn for experienced recruiters.

About 10% to 15% of open requisitions on a typical recruiter’s desk can only be filled by some kind of direct sourcing activity. To avoid a debate about this point, let me explain that of course that percentage is going to vary by industry, by function, and even by organization, but 10% is a good starting point for this example. Say that you work 35 simultaneous requisitions. Then by this calculation roughly four of those may require serious research. The rest will have an influx of candidates from one to a myriad source, with varying quantities and assorted quality.

Set Aside a Sourcing Block

Allocate a block of sourcing time lasting 60 minutes of research once per week and work each of those four reqs for 15 minutes straight. During this 60-minute sourcing block time, be absolutely jealous about your time and focus strictly on generating leads for those four reqs. In other words, during your weekly sourcing block do not:

1. Answer the phone
2. Check voicemail
3. Call anyone back
4. Reply to emails
5. Go to meetings
6. Initiate contact with any of the leads
7. Follow “interesting” links that appear to lead to cool info
8. Take a “coffee break”

Instead, unplug your phone and email, let calls go to voicemail, let your inbox fill up, and bookmark any links for later review. You can get to everyone right after your “sourcing hour.” Put a “Do not Disturb” sign on your door if that’s what it takes. Keep all the leads you found in a spreadsheet, but don’t spend any time grooming the list during your sourcing hour. This spreadsheet becomes your call list for the week, and you can groom it later as you make the calls.

The vastness of information available on the web makes it quite likely that you will waste time online if you do not focus this activity. Such focus will keep you on track and make you more effective, and prevent the loss of important steps and details. The problem with stop-and-go sourcing is that you can easily lose track, and research is a task that requires intense concentration. Any time-management course will teach you that blocking out time for important activities during your day makes you more efficient. All the distractions that make up your day, from the necessary meetings to the incessant phone calls, make it very difficult to focus on research. Blocking out this sourcing hour is the most significant time management activity in which you will engages.

A Sourcing Block Does not Suffice

So you have been disciplined about doing your weekly sourcing block, and you’ve held your ground without getting distracted. Congratulations! That’s your first step. The next step is to commit to specific results during that block of time. This is a bit harder, but while sticking to the sourcing hour commitment is good, actually achieving a target number of leads is even better.

Set aside a reasonable goal of identifying anywhere from 20 to 50 useful leads during your sourcing hour. Some projects of course are going to be much more difficult, but 50 is a good round number of cold calls to make in a week, so shoot for that to start. And remember not to stop to call or email someone who looks good! This isn’t the time. Put them in the spreadsheet and call them later. Besides, it may take you a bit more research to get an updated number or email address. That is something that better suits a stop-and-go workday where you can “sneak in” a few research minutes here or there.

Once you establish and get used to practicing your “sourcing hour” you will find that during that hour you are able to find more leads than you would during a regular week full of interruptions. As an aside, such focus is also quite useful when improving your cold-calling skills. Once you have collected your 20 to 50 leads, you can set aside an hour or two during your day to run down the list and call them all. Since calling takes longer than sourcing, you may likely need to block out a cold-calling hour each day of the week.

After you, and your co-workers, get used to your “blocked out times” you may find that setting aside a bit of time daily when you reply to voicemail and non-urgent email may also help increase your efficiency.

Additional Resources:

• Get more efficient with “Managing Information Overload”

(http://jobmachine.net/io)

• The JobMachine “12-Step Sourcing Program”

(http://jobmachine.net/sourcer/12step)

While many of the “twits” or posts on Twitter offer little clues or meaningful context, it’s possible to extrapolate a few juicy tidbits of information.

One such example is when people use the phrase “I work for” followed by the name of a company. This is a great technique on any search engine, but it’s particularly useful on blog search engines because people love to talk about themselves. With Twitter being a microblog (only 140 characters allowed in a post) the brief comments offer little other information. But this is one of those short phrases where the context tells us much more than the text itself.

For example, a search for “I work for Microsoft” reveals a few people like:

• ThatGuyNamedKen
• Tafelzoetstof
• Rickster_CDN
• rtvenge
• Lindsi
• Vriyait
• ClarkeZone

Among others, of course. Now, that in and of itself is not very revealing. Other than knowing where they work, you can’t really tell what they do…unless, of course, you see their other posts. For example, in one of ThatGuyNamedKen’s posts you find out on April 18 he got a job offer from Microsoft to be a “Support Operations Analyst.”

“Great, Shally, but now where does he live and how do I contact him?”

Well, that’s a bit harder. If you look at his profile, you can tell he lives in Winnipeg (Canada, of course). As for contacting him, though, unless you want to commit to some CyberSleuthing, it’s probably easiest to just “follow” him on Twitter. Then you can send him a private twit by texting 40404 with a message that starts with @thatguynamedken: followed with a short (140 characters or less) message.

You may be wondering why I am qualified to write an article on diversity sourcing.

My buddy and diversity recruiting guru Martin de Campo and I discussed this at length, in a dark dining room in downtown San Jose surrounded by rich hardwood paneling and more multicultural influences than you can shake a stick at. It became apparent that not only did we both share a passion for this topic, but we approached it from two very different yet complementary and equally successful angles.

So I asked Martin, “Why me?” Is it just because I was raised in Colombia, South America, and like many other Latin Americans, immigrated to the United States in 1989? Nope. Is it because I once ran a passive candidate diversity-sourcing team for a well-known software company? No, that wasn’t it either.

That fateful day Martin said something that reverberated in me like a giant gong. He said diversity recruiting is all about relating, knowing your audience, getting in the mind of the very same groups you are attempting to recruit. That’s why I am qualified to write this article. I strongly believe that finding diversity leads is only slightly different than finding any other types of leads.

To find anyone, you have to think like them. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for software engineers, accountants, or Hispanics. Just like software engineers and accountants, Hispanics join communities and interest groups where they get together and discuss topics they care about.

To find software engineers since 1996, I’ve gone to groups and “locations” where they exchange ideas about C++ or Java. Finding those groups has enabled me to identify talent that mainstream recruiters are not typically contacting.

Why would it be any different to find Hispanics? Frankly, the most self-evident way to find people is to go where they go. But what do Hispanics talk about, what groups do they join, and where do they go? That’s the big question.

It’s not about what these candidates look for in an organization. Aside from some minor differences in our perception and preferences originating from our cultural heritage, we look for the same things everyone does for the most part. A good job is just as much a good job to a Hispanic as it is to an African-American or Asian. What matters is where we are. Think like us and you will find us. We post resumes on Monster like everyone else, but how do you find us in there?

There are two sides to finding that out. Martin’s focus is on strategic and offline techniques, while mine is more about getting deep into the details of online research. Both approaches used together lead to a balanced perspective on traditional/face-to-face and advanced electronic tactics.

Because identifying where diverse candidates hang out depends greatly on learning to think like them, I only have room in this article to focus on the “big three” groups that many diversity efforts tend to focus on: African-American, Hispanic, and Asian. Of course, there are many more, and quite a few different ways to define diversity.

Population segments like veterans, the vision-impaired, and Native Americans tend to get overlooked in conventional diversity efforts. It’s impossible to cover all diversity sourcing approaches for all diversity groups in one single article, but my hope is that through a few examples many of the techniques will give you the opportunity to explore diversity recruiting for those groups as well.

Big Boards

Naturally, with so many millions of job seekers using the major boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs, going to the big resume databases ranks at the top of the list for diversity-candidate sources.

As a job seeker, when I think of getting my resume into the hands of recruiters, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t, “I’m Hispanic, so where should I go to post my resume?” Instead, I think, “Where is the best place for me to put my resume so recruiters can see it?”

Later on, I may start focusing on some of the other places, but to start out I’m going to go where I get the most exposure. This is why diversity resume databases have a much smaller population than the big boards.

But searching on the big boards is tricky because whether by choice or unintentionally, most diverse candidates don’t clearly state their protected status on their resume. So even inside the big boards the amount of people who self-select to be listed under the “diversity” section is relatively small.

To get around that, use a multi-pronged approach to basic keyword searching. If I’m Hispanic, I may be proud of my involvement in groups like NSHMBA or SHPE and therefore mention the organization on my resume, describing my role as chapter president, or my participation on any of the committees.

If I’m African-American, I may belong to NBMBAA or NSBE. So by looking for those keywords on resumes we find a high percentage of Hispanic resumes. Keep in mind that not everyone who participates in these groups is going to self-identify their protected status when they complete their employment paperwork.

What if I didn’t join one of those professional organizations? Well, I may have had an active social life in college that included belonging to one of many brotherhoods or sisterhoods. I may mention that on my resume instead.

For example, black females may have joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sisterhood while their brothers joined Alpha Phi Alpha. Latina women may have joined Kappa Delta Chi while their brothers joined Omega Delta Phi.

Asians would have joined cross-national Asian fraternities like Lambda Phi Epsilon or maybe they went for a more focused group like Beta Chi Theta, focused particularly on South Asian members.

Besides social organizations like fraternities and sororities, there are also clubs, student associations, service groups, and student unions, many of them with ethnic focuses.

Many years after graduation I may still be involved with these groups, or I may have decided to join other groups like NSHP or NAAAP where I take on a more national role and continue to support the professional development of my peers from the same ethnic background.

Appropriate Language

All of these associations make for great keyword searches on the major job boards, but that’s not enough. There are a great many diverse candidates who either didn’t join them or left them out of their resume for any number of reasons.

It would stand to reason that searching for words like black, Asian, or Latin may work. However, that doesn’t work very well. Think of how many resumes are going to have the word black in the context of “six sigma black belt” or “black box testing” a software QA methodology.

Phrases like “work with Asian countries” or “business in Latin America” don’t necessarily point to diverse candidates. Even keywords like “Spanish” or “Chinese” when used alone can be misleading.

What can work in limited amounts is searching for “natural phrase” keywords such as “African American,” “Asian American,” and “Latin American.” Though not widely found on resumes, such natural phrases do occur, and when used inside OR statements along with names of professional and educational organizations, they can be an effective way to expand a search.

Another way is to combine languages with the use of natural phrases like “native Spanish” to find people who are native Spanish speakers. Frequently, people who are native speakers will instead state that they are fluent, hence searching for “fluent Cantonese” or “fluent Korean” works well. Searching for both the words “Cantonese” and “Mandarin” is a great way to find Chinese candidates because typically only native speakers are going to list both on a resume.

This also works well for other ethnicities, where it’s common to speak multiple languages, such as “Hindi” and “Urdu.”

Searching for the language in its native spelling can also be very useful. Try Espa?ol instead of Spanish, for some additional results.

Other keywords you can use to search are the names of educational institutions that focus on a particular population segment. For example, Morehouse College is an all-male black college. Including the names of HBCUs (historically black or predominantly black colleges) like Morehouse and those listed here can also lead to the inclusion of diverse candidates in your search results. With little effort you can also identify lists of predominantly Hispanic colleges, women’s colleges, and other similar keywords to include in your search.

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar estimates that humans can only maintain stable relationships with around 150 people. That number refers to significant relationships like those in a family or tribe and other purposeful groups.

Yet in today’s over-informed digital business world, where bloated data moves at the speed of thought, it’s not who you know that really counts, but who knows you.

Professional online social networking tools are invaluable in creating personal brand equity and raising awareness about who you are, especially beyond your 150 closest friends.

Networking works because talented people have two things in common:

1. They easily relate with people they already know
2. They love to talk about themselves

But why invest time in an online social network, and not just continue our business as usual?

Major Benefits

Online social networking software enables you to find quality people who may not be familiar with you, or with your organization, and creates an opportunity to connect with them and sell them on your opportunities. They may be unfamiliar with your company or business, or may not have even been looking for something.

Because you already know someone who knows them, you can feel more comfortable that they are a quality prospect or at least can do some checking around. Also, because of that mutual connection, you can more easily overcome cumbersome barriers and begin a relationship with a little more trust and warmth than with a total stranger.

Like “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” social networking sheds light on the contacts you never knew you had.

For example, you can contact people in your network to:

• Rekindle old connections
• Maximize value in your weak connections
• Build business relationships with clients or hiring managers
• Find and meet prospective job-seekers
• Grow a referral network
• Heighten your corporate and personal brand
• Make new connections and grow your sphere of influence
• Open doors to future career opportunities, increased pay, or promotions
• Increase visibility, which improves influence and effectiveness internally with your organization as well as externally

Social networking also helps you find new leads for networking into companies to:

• Educate yourself and ask questions about other organizations
• Conduct competitive intelligence on companies, industries, or individuals
• Make fewer cold calls and better prepare for them
• Leverage contacts you already have

Major Players

With most services the initial signup is free. We begin by filling out a form with personal data and then invite our friends. With some networks, we can upload our current contacts, but with others, we need to invite our contacts directly through the application’s interface. Our connections then invite their own contacts, and that’s how our network grows.

There are hundreds of online social networking sites. Most of the applications competing for your attention offer a combination of professional and personal networking. Some are better suited to find a date while others are more business-oriented. After joining and reviewing the top-20 players, three stand out:

1. LinkedIn.com

• Profiles look very much like a resume, excellent mix of people from different levels in the organization, and many industries
• Endorsements set trusted people apart.
• Search for industry experts, potential employees, hiring managers, deal-makers, people from specific geographies, or people with particular keywords in their profiles
• Particular focus on business networking; over 8.5 million members

1. Plaxo.com

• Keeps current contacts’ information updated automatically; useful in rekindling old relationships and staying in touch
• Not a tool to build your network, yet, though it does have a very useful “mini blog” feature to help you keep friends informed; about 15 million members

1. Spoke.com

• Focused on providing sales prospects through a large database; however, not very “recruiter friendly”
• Deeply integrated, extracts contact data from enterprise applications (i.e., Outlook, Notes) to establish and leverage connections; about 30 million contacts.

Other Networks to Explore

While there is a long list of social networking sites with a business focus, there are only a few with large enough populations to be of use in recruitment. In fact, there are so many social networks that they are too numerous to list in this article. A majority of them, like Friendster.com, Flickr.com, and Orkut.com, among hundreds of others, tend to revolve around strictly social categories like dating, common interests, finding friends, and photo sharing.

Arguably, community sites like MySpace.com, Windows Live Spaces, LiveJournal.com, and Blogger.com are also networking sites. Here are some other notable networks with a decidedly business or professional purpose, ranked by size:

1. Hi5.com: 50 million users. General social networking and business.
2. Passado.com: 4.7 million users. Europe’s largest business network.
3. Xing.com: One million users. Was OpenBC. Business networking.
4. Ryze.com: 250,000 users. Business networking.
5. Ecademy.com: 100,000 users. Business networking.

Major Concerns

However, some people have major concerns about social networking, including lack of privacy and loss of the “real,” among others.

Privacy

• Online networking is safe. The major players are mindful of your privacy. That said each network has its own privacy policy; read it and if you don’t like it, don’t join!
• Uploading your contacts doesn’t mean they get to keep them or use them in any way. They use your contacts only to tell you who is already registered, or to help you with your connections. Be careful, however, because if you invite someone who wasn’t already a member and they join now that person will be available to others who may want to connect directly with them.
• If someone gains access to your passwords they could login and export all your contacts. Use good judgment protecting your account.
• Remember, the more you share the more you are exposed. But, you will increase your benefit from the network with more exposure.
• The basic concept involves a little trust. Reciprocity ensures the network is the most useful. People who are very guarded about their privacy may not get great results from using these networks.

Barriers of Entry

• Getting started means investing time to enter your information into the application. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how much you want to get out of using the network. The more you share about yourself the easier it will be to make connections.
• If you only upload a few contacts you get very little benefit since these systems only search for connections through people you already know.
• You need to know at least one person with a large network or else you are very limited with whom you can reach. Search for people you know who may already be in the network and ask them for a connection, particularly if they are well connected themselves.
• The most challenging barrier is getting people from your “in-person,” real-life network to sign up. You know they have lots of connections, and they would be willing to help you, but they are not already signed up. If you get them to sign up, you can both benefit from each other’s connections, but then you become their mentor and may feel obligated to help them more than you would otherwise.

Maintenance

• If you have a large network, you could get to a point where you are getting barraged with requests. The good news is you can turn on or off e-mails about your accounts or from your network, and with some networks you can even change your settings to accept requests from specific levels. The other side of turning off the communication is that you lose out on reminders that help you to remember to groom your network.
• Evaluating new “friends” is difficult. You may get requests from people you don’t know or don’t remember and it can be awkward to write back telling them you don’t remember them. Just like meeting someone in person, you may have to bite the bullet and confront them with a “have we met?” or you may need to just ignore them.
• Don’t add everyone indiscriminately. Be just a little picky in adding new friends you don’t know. Remember, you are a reflection of your networks. People know you not only by who you are but also by whom you choose to associate.

Integration With Software and Between Networks

• With Plaxo you can export your data in a flat-file format, making it easy to transfer your contacts to a new application.
• Some networks like LinkedIn have useful Toolbars that integrate with Outlook and make it easier to keep your network fresh.
• With most of the networks you can export your contacts. Do this regularly so that if your account is lost, you can retain your connection’s contact information. You can also take it with you to import it into another network.
• Note that it’s impossible to synchronize across networks. You may find some of the same people in several networks, but the best strategy is to choose your favorite three or five and stick to them, or else you will be spending all your time maintaining several networks.

Losing Touch With the “Real”

• E-mail is very cold and unemotional. Relying on e-mail and similar messaging to connect with people can wash out the emotional side of building relationships.
• Remember to pick up the phone and call your contacts, too. This way, they are more likely to forward your requests, and ask you for requests, making your network stronger.

Free Now, Pay Later?

• Many of these services are not currently charging fees to get started, but they may begin to impose membership fees for even the basic accounts or activities.

Social networking is getting involved and getting your name out every chance you get. Like meeting people in person, it can be hit or miss. The powerful advantage of online networking is finding new connections you didn’t know you already had.

It takes time and energy to build a network, either in person or online. With the Internet, we have the ability to reach more people.

Don’t be afraid to connect, stay connected, share, participate, be vulnerable, and open yourself to the world. Being connected in this way is an incredible leverage that will prove invaluable in your business development. Connections can have many unexpected positive results.

In the Recruiting Leadership forum, Amy Johnson asked some key questions about how to design and build an internal team dedicated exclusively to sourcing. In my book, Electronic Recruiting 101, I review in detail the structure of a successful centralized sourcing team.

But the question wasn’t a request for an infomercial. Amy asked some specific questions about building a sourcing team inside of a corporation, so I would like to offer my perspective based on having been instrumental in building several sourcing teams (Motorola, Cisco, Coke), architecting and managing two of my own (Google, Microsoft), and consulting on the design of numerous others.

Question 1: Do you currently have a dedicated team?

Yes, it’s absolutely critical in order to reach the deepest of the talent pools, or those candidates who don’t take the initiative to seek out career opportunities on their own. Check out this Kennedy Audio recording about just this subject, as well as the article I published in ERE’s Journal in February 2006. (You can get past Journal issues here.)

Question 2: What metrics do you use to measure the team’s success?

There are so many ways to measure, and only a few experts I can point to who totally understand them. People like Dan Kilgore and Dan Hilbert, or websites like Staffing.org and HRmetrics.org, can give you the full scoop. From having led my own teams, I advise that you do not forget to establish a baseline and track trends over time, not just take snapshots.

Anyone can look like they are flying if you take their picture while they are in the middle of a jump shot, but then again, anyone can look like a loser if you take their picture while they’re in the middle of defeat. Don’t take two-dimensional metrics; make sure there is enough comparison to clarify what the measurements mean, not just show the “current state” of your team.

Therefore, be sure to track the following metrics:

1. Sum of offers accepted (all the salaries added up)
2. Number of hires
3. Costs (total burdened cost of recruitment)
4. Costs per hire
5. Time to fill (be careful where you start counting)
6. Customer satisfaction
7. Quality of hire

Question 3: How does the team interact with the client?

The answer is very carefully.

I’m trying to be funny, but this is really important. If you are too aggressive, you will alienate recruiters because you are dealing too directly with hiring managers and leaving recruiters out of the process.

If you aren’t aggressive enough, you will be relegated to a basement function that nobody knows about and you will be the first to get cut when budgets are tight. Deal with each group in the way your customer wants to be dealt with.

Not all your customers are going to want multiple points of contact (recruiter, sourcer, account manager, staffing manager, HR contacts, etc.), yet some will want to know who to go to for each function. Negotiate what is best for you customer group (business unit, branch, division) but include your hiring managers, business leaders, staffing leaders, and the recruiters in this discussion.

Question 4: What service level agreements are put in place between the recruiters and sourcers?

The short answer is to keep it simple.

The more complex answer is to provide a simple commitment that explains what is needed, what you guarantee to deliver if you get what is needed, and a promise that “if we deliver that, then this is what you promise to do in return” works best. If you need an attorney to decipher your SLA, then your customers won’t know what to make of you.

Question 5: When do the sourcers hand off the candidate?

The short answer is when the candidate tells them to.

In some industries, candidates don’t mind being approached by sourcers, but in others they would prefer the first call to come from a hiring manager, or even a business leader. Only you know your industry well enough to answer this.

Generally speaking, you want to hand off at the most natural point in the conversation, where there’s the least potential for friction or drop off. There are a few places in the process where there is less friction: before you call/email the lead for the first time; when they are being scheduled for an interview; and when they show up for their interview.

One of those three should suit your candidates fine, but there are other places like technical phone screens and “initial conversations” with hiring managers where a natural handoff can occur.

Question 6: What challenges have you run into?

The short answer is that I have encountered all of them. This can be a very complex sell into the organization. The top-10 roadblocks I’ve seen include the following:

1. The expectation that the sourcing team will deliver a short-term solution to what is a long-term problem.
2. Lack of buy-in from upper management after a leadership change, restructuring, re-org, etc.
3. Oops, we have to cut the budget! Oh, I know, let’s start by cutting this sourcing team because we don’t really understand what value they add.
4. Recruiters afraid to pick up the phone and follow through with leads that have been sourced.
5. Hiring managers not having a clue how to treat a candidate who still needs a bit more romancing.
6. Recruiters thinking of sourcers as junior (i.e., thinking sourcers want to grow up someday and be a “real” recruiter).
7. Inadequate contact management technology, both in the CRM system as well as the applicant tracking system.
8. Over-reliance on email as the initial outreach.
9. Lack of follow up with future-interest candidates.
10. Failure to invest in the development and training of the sourcing team (yes, even sourcers can learn a few things!).

Naturally, the list goes on. Each environment will provide its own opportunities or obstacles. One thing you can do is bring someone in as a consultant who has done it before to help you architect the team from the ground up. Perhaps they can help you tool up and get things rolling, then staff your team and leave it ready for you to manage.

1. Be totally forthright about who you are, include your full contact information.
2. Write from your real work email address.
3. Use an intriguing, but not misleading subject line. These are the my ABCs on writing compelling subject lines:
   • Action: Can I be more interactive? What am I eliciting them to do? Can I make it catchier?
   • Benefit: Why should they bother to open it? What’s in it for them? Am I stating what they will benefit?
   • Clarity & Conviction: Can I be more clear or concise? Can I say the same in fewer words? Am I convincing? How am I removing skepticism?
4. Don’t directly solicit a resume.
5. Write one message at a time.
6. Don’t try to sell anything.
7. Ask for some sort of action on their part.
8. Don’t harvest these addresses for a list, BCC, or email merge.
9. Once you establish communication, and if it’s okay with them, you could add them to your contact list for the future.
10. Offer them a way out, something like “Dan, I value your privacy. You haven’t been added to any kind of list or database, but if you would like me to contact you at another address, or never to contact you again, please let me know. I will respect your wishes.”

Here are a few ideas about openings to help you write your email message:

• Direct approach. “Dan, I read your review of Core J2EE Patterns on Amazon and thought that it was very insightful. You are the kind of expert we like to do business with. Would you be interested in…”
• Indirect approach. “Dan, I’m interested in knowing more about your thoughts regarding J2EE Patterns. I read your book review in Amazon and thought you may be able to help me… “
• Brutally honest approach. “Dan, I saw your profile on Amazon.com and was very impressed with your background. We need someone who can develop…”
• Flattering approach. “Dan, I was so impressed with the list of books you read and reviewed on Amazon.com that I added you to my Friends list. I was wondering if you could give me some guidance on…”
• Power approach. “Dan, I am the director of recruitment for one of the best software companies in the world. We are hiring the top talent in this space and I would be honored to get your suggestions about…”
• Vulnerable approach. “Dan, I need your counsel. I read the review you wrote on J2EE Patterns on Amazon.com and was wondering if you could spare a minute…”

Not all books will have reviewers, and not all reviewers reveal this much information. In fact, if you go back to the list of customer reviews you will find that clicking on a few others like “Robert” tells us practically nothing. However, on the list there’s also Vinit, a self-proclaimed “total Java geek” from Milwaukee with a listed email address. Want more? After Vinit is Thomas Paul from Plainview, NY. Thomas lists his email address and tells us: “I am one of the moderators and book reviewers for http://www.javaranch.com. I am a technical project manager working with server-side Java. I live on Long Island…” The 27 books he has reviewed are all Java related. Going to JavaRanch.com you will find more about him in a full-length bio, including links to his home page. How many more experts can you find from this book alone? But the fun doesn’t stop here! Don’t limit yourself to Amazon. Searching for books at Barnes & Noble reveals book titles reviewed by their customers in an open forum. Try finding a different book here, like, for example, “Thinking in Java,” and glance through the 11 reviews listed. There is far less information here about the reviewers, but frequently it is enough to identify a target candidate or networking opportunity. Tie these leads together with other research you have collected by using other cyber-sleuthing resources like White Pages, Google searches, lookups and paid research to complete the picture. Don’t forget that there are other online bookstores, and many other ways to find people who publicly express their opinion about a book. For example, now that you know which books the experts read, try searching on your favorite engines for people who talk about them in settings besides bookstore customer reviews. The answers are out there. Search for them. I would love to read about your exploits using this method. If you have any comments or questions, send them to me at shally@jobmachine.net.