Did you know you could post jobs for free on LinkedIn by joining a group? You can also message the group members without using an inmail or getting an introduction. If you don't see a relevant group, you can even create your own.

Click on Groups, Groups Directory, then search for groups by keyword. The groups with the largest membership will appear first. For example, a search for Python yields the Python Community weighing in at 9200+ members. Don't bother joining any groups with less than 1000 members unless they are highly specialized and relevant to your needs because you can only join a maximum of 50 groups.

Once your membership has been approved, click on the group, and select the Jobs tab at the top, then Post a Job on the left hand side of the screen. After that you just enter the title, description, and apply-to message. To contact group members, click on the More tab, then Members, and you can see all the members in the group and send them an individual message.

Designed to replace the apply-to email address in your job postings, TheResumator is a low cost, robust alternative. It allows you to post jobs to both external job boards and to your own website, automatically sorts and attaches the submitted resumes for each job, and allows multiple users. If posting one job at at a time, the service is free and you can upgrade at any time. It is a good option for startups who don't want to spend the money on a brand name ATS system but are overwhelmed with emailed resumes.

I recently came across this article covering OtherInbox which I have since implemented. It organized all the social networking, vendors, offers, and other junk mail into one folder called OtherInbox. Basically it filters all the spam out so you can just concentrate on your real email. It is a huge time and space saver especially for internet junkies like me who like to try out all the new services in case they lead to additional sources of candidates.

When I read this article about Zoho's new ATS system, I was super excited to try it out thinking it would be a great low cost alternative ($12/month) to using email. Unfortunately I had technical difficulties and never received any customer support. Basically I was unable to verify my primary email address; thus, not able to email myself resumes from Zoho. Every time I requested the verification email, nothing appeared in my inbox no matter which email address I used as my primary email. I sent Zoho customer support an email, but never heard back. Arggggghhhh.

I recently came across imo.im an IM service that logs you into multiple messaging services including MySpace, Facebook, and Skype without having an account.

One interesting feature that caught my eye is the ability to send out free broadcasts to other imo.im users which number around half a million. At the moment, users can have just one broadcast posted at a time and they expire after a week unless you opt to renew them.

Creating one is very straightforward (screenshot 1) allowing the inclusion of URL, message, and icon. Once created, you are provided with some basic analytics around page views and clicks (screenshot 2). Finally the broadcasts are displayed at the bottom of the page for any user to click on (screenshot 3). Unfortunately I didn't get too many clicks on mine.



The other random feature they offer is a whiteboard where you can have many editors drawing and typing away at the same time - think Google Wave only better. The application of this particular feature for recruiting and HR purposes eludes me other than to say you could collaborate on job descriptions and perhaps org charts. It would be much more useful for an engineering team that works remotely. This is one service to keep an eye on as their user base grows.

If you are like me and use the status messages on your various social networks to advertise jobs, blog posts, and job search updates, then you will love ping.fm. It allows you to quickly and easily update over 40+ social networks at once via a dashboard, email, SMS, iGoogle gadget, IM, Skype, iPhone apps (Pingle, QuickPing, and PingIt) and more. I personally use it to update LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, AIM, GTalk, and Yahoo Profile.

Just be careful to keep it professional and don't do what I did which is to update your LinkedIn status message with news that you are getting a new epic mount in World of Warcraft. One way to avoid that mistake is to create groups. For my status updates, I have 2 groups: one for personal updates such as World of Warcraft announcements and the other is for professional updates like job postings and blog posts.

Another very similar site is HelloTxt. I gave it a brief perusal but it didn't seem to have as an extensive social network list at ping.fm.

Back in 2006/07 I thought there had to be a better way to find candidates than just sourcing on job boards, so I started looking around on the internet and discovered several free blogs dedicated to sourcing such as Jim Stroud, Shally Steckerl, Barbara Ling, and Glenn Gutmacher. I started scouring their (at the time free) blogs for creative ways to find candidates. I even bought a few books which proved to be pretty outdated since the internet is constantly changing. Unfortunately, I didn't really understand what the boolean strings meant as I was simply copying and pasting from the sites and just changing up the keywords.

Then I came across AIRS in 2007 which helped me put it all together. At the risk of sounding like a commercial for AIRS, it was like a light bulb went off. For those of you unfamiliar with them, they provide over 40 courses online and in-person ranging from 1 to 8 hours long on various recruiting topics, but mainly focused on sourcing passive candidates. The training exposed an untapped source of candidates that my competitors weren't taking the time to harvest. Right away I was a convert, became certified, and convinced the global recruitment team to also take the training.

Since then I just recently re-certified since the certification expires after 2 years. This time around my employer paid for a 1-year all access pass for every course. After taking 16 courses and scheduled to take 6 more, I can say it has been a bargain. At the bare minimum, you would want your recruiters to take the SearchLab & XtremeLab courses. The 1-hour courses, while fun and interesting, simply do a deeper dive on topics that are already lightly covered in the SearchLab & XtremeLab courses. For the same cost as those 2 courses combined, you could just buy the 1-year pass.

Taking the AIRS courses helped me to be not only a better sourcer of candidates, but also a better researcher in general. I highly recommend having at least one of your more technically savvy recruiters or sourcers take the certification courses and then he/she can train the rest of your team on the basics.

AutoSearch Mobile is a nifty little app for sourcing candidates straight from your iPhone. The premise is that you don't have to know Boolean, although the app does accept Boolean search strings, because it will quickly construct a search string on your behalf and pull up resumes and profiles from across the web. From the screenshots below you can see I found an SF-based PHP Developer as my very first result and emailed it to myself without ever having to leave the app. Even the way the search results are displayed is optimized for the iPhone. It is well worth the $4.99 if you find yourself on public transport a lot and want to do a bit of extra sourcing. It is meant to be supplementary to your normal Boolean searches and not a replacement, because it isn't as robust.



The second set of screenshots is another mobile recruiting app called Search On The Go for $4.99. Frankly I'm a bit bummed that I purchased it, but I'm sucker for any new and interesting ways of finding candidates so I would have been unable to resist even had there been many bad reviews. On the positive side, you can view the actual (albeit extremely simple) boolean that goes into the search strings and even save them for later. Where the app falls short is in the way the search results are displayed. It takes you out of the app into the Google search results which has teeny tiny writing. I could just use Google on my phone to get the same results. The other issue is that if you find a good candidate in the search results, you are unable to email or save the link for later. I definitely won't be using this app again unless they do a major overhaul.



The final recruiting app that I came across was resuMe Browser a free resume database sorted by category and location. Unfortunately at this point there were no resumes uploaded, at least not in California. I would be very interested in this app if it actually gets some traffic. Given the competition on the store, I foresee gloom and doom unless the developers do some marketing to job seekers. On the other hand, the job market is tough right now, so perhaps people will come across it as they try alternative job hunting methods. I would love to see some more apps like these on the app store. Please let me know if I missed any.