SOURCING TIP! How to track people through social networks

Posted by Jim Stroud

November 14, 2006

Check out this new website I found. Actually, its not a new website (to me) , but it does have a new function. So, I guess it is new in that sense. (Smile) For those who don’t know about Wink, it is a social bookmarking site. People find an interesting website, they click a link and save it to Wink. Later they can comeback and find that link in the Wink database as well as search for sites other people have bookmarked. (Very similar to Furl - another social bookmarking site I like.)

Well, Wink has this new thing on their site where you can can search not only for bookmarked websites and the web itself, but also people. Let me show you what I mean. Below is a screenshot of the Wink website in all its glory.

Click the big “People” tab and do a search for somebody. In this case “Jim Stroud.” (You know that guy?) Notice that my name is in quotes? You get better results that way. After that click the “Search people” button and before you can say Sim, sim, sala bim, Wink searches three social networks: Linked In, Bebo and MySpace and brings back results. It does a decent enough job of it from what I can tell. It brought back my Linked In profile page and some ther Jim Stroud in Texas. (And here I thought I was the only one.) It also brought up (not shown below) results of the term “Jim Stroud” as it is mentioned on the profile pages of other sites. Not bad.

Another thing that stands out to me is that Wink allows you to refine your results. You can choose a category like Male, Female, Age and Marital Status. I clicked on these links and (at this writing) it did not work well for me. (see below) It may be a glitch because the Advanced People Search option worked like a charm.

See the arrow below? It is the Advanced People Search option.

Clicking the Advanced People Search Option slides down a window where you can enter the same criteria (more or less) that the “Refine Your Results” section offered. Adding extra criteria there on my search seemed to work fine, but hey… Maybe I did something wrong before. I will probably go back and experiment some more.

Now just for giggles, I did a few more searches to see who else would turn up on a search here and this is what I found:

8 cases of Dave Mendoza

68 cases of Steve Levy

4 cases of Shally Steckerl

2 cases of Barbara Ling

207 cases of Jason Davis

and so on…

Of course, all of the above people could have been found on my beloved Linked In, but its interesting to note that if any of the above had a wilder side on Bebo or MySpace, then I would have (qite possibly) seen that too.

ThisWink tool could prove useful when trying to find that perfect candidate that is no longer at the company listed on the resume you found in your ATS. Just a thought…

Happy Hunting!

-Jim