Advanced sourcing: diversity recruiting (tip #2)

Search engines are not very intelligent and therefore it is often difficult to find what you are looking for. Every Recruiter is by now familiar with boolean search commands but another tactic or approach can yield dramatic results.

In this series of advanced sourcing tips for Recruiters, I show some well-known and lesser-known search techniques and strategies.

Tip 2: (Gender) Diversity Recruiting

On LinkedIn there is no possibility to search for men or women. In fact on LinkedIn.com, it is not even possible to record as an user this information. This makes it difficult for a Sourcer / Recruiter from an organisation to fulfill a certain percentage with diverse talent, for example female candidates,  and meet recruitment objectives.

With the recent introduction of Facebook Social Graph those opportunities increased considerably because you can easily search for men or women. That means direct access to 1 billion profiles!

How does Facebook Social Graph work?
That is really simple. You just enhance your search by telling Facebook your looking for women i.e. “Females who…“.

Example of Gender Diversity Recruiting in Facebook
In Facebook you can search for job titles combined with the gender, like you would do on LinkedIn, but this will often yield little results because members put almost no work information on their profiles. However they are more likely to mention their employer so its better to look for women who work at a certain company e.g. your competitor.

Here’s the result of a search in Social Graph using 3 filters:

Females who work at Cisco Systems in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Facebook Social Graph Search

You can even search for Women who used to work at Cisco Systems in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Whatever you do, realise that Facebook is organized around interests (Likes) of people. So try to figure out who your target audience is and focus your search on this group. Next step is to refine this search on gender.

Bonus tip: set your Facebook language settings in English U.S. in order to get the latest functionality first, such as Social Graph.

Do you have any questions or suggestions for a search? Or do you want to share a handy sourcing tip? Let us know and we will include them in this series about advanced sourcing techniques!

About Jacco Valkenburg

Jacco Valkenburg is an international recruitment expert, trainer and author (5 books). He has more than 20 years experience in global recruitment strategies and execution spanning numerous countries for leading companies. As founder of Recruiter University and Recruit2 he provides companies with recruitment training and consultancy. His mission is helping companies ‘from good to great staffing’.

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