By Shawna Armstrong

LinkedIn and Facebook… it’s where a bulk of the masses hang out, and are 2 platforms where Sourcers and Recruiters continually work to evolve their hacking abilities.  Both platforms have weak free search parameters and produce results that are limited, unrelated and/or non-specific.  LinkedIn wants you to pay for a Recruiter seat and Facebook wants you to pay for targeted ads.  On the free side, both platforms seem to try to limit reach to real life relationships… which is good.  I mean who wants to be solicited on every platform?  Ads can be annoying enough.  People want to be left alone, and the platforms have to generate revenue to invest in growth, optimization, and of course profit. 

That doesn’t stop the world of Talent Acquisition from continuing to hack and bypass the algorithms, which in turn continue to evolve and program road blocks.  It’s a never-ending battle, and my inner nerd gets so excited when another hack is released to the community!  Say you have an email address – from a resume, a contact, a distro list, a reference, an incomplete profile, whatever…  You want to find them on LinkedIn.  You can type in their name and get several possible results…  or you can try this trick by Stephen Adams.