7 Tips For Effective Facebook People Search

Original Post Here [make use of]
The best part about Facebook is getting back in touch with old friends. There’s no better place to reconnect with your college buddies or past coworkers than Facebook – the largest social network on the planet, with 400 million members.

Even if Facebook’s Friend Suggestions does a wonderful job of helping you discover new friends, there are better ways to conduct a Facebook people search for those you are interested in.

In this article, let us look at tips for doing a Facebook people search more effectively. We will cover both Facebook’s inbuilt FriendFinder as well as a third-party application for advanced people search. Note that these searches find people based on the information they have entered in their Facebook profile.

Facebook People Search with FriendFinder

Facebook Friend Finder is a collection of search tools to help you find people you know on Facebook. You can access the Friend Finder page from the Connect With Friends widget on the right sidebar on the Facebook homepage.

Let’s see the different ways you can conduct a Facebook people search using Friend Finder.

#1: Find People From Your Email Address Book

Facebook can find people for you from your email address book. All major webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail are supported.

If you use desktop email apps like MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, click the Upload Contact File link from where you can download an app for Outlook or upload contact lists from other apps.

#2: Find Classmates

Based on information in the Education and Work section of their profiles, Facebook helps you find former or current high school or university classmates.

#3: Find Coworkers

Similar to the Classmates search, you can also search for Coworkers in your past or current organizations by entering the name of the Company.

#4: Find People From Instant Messaging (IM) Networks

You can simply enter your AOL, ICQ, or Windows Live Messenger credentials to let Facebook find your IM buddies.

Advanced Search Application

Advanced Search 2.0 is a better tool to search for friends on Facebook. Visit this link to access and install the application.

If prompted to share your email address, click No, and click Click here to add the “Advanced Search” application link at the bottom. Click Allow in the Allow Access? prompt to proceed. Advanced Search first prompts you to fill out your profile and contact information to help others find you. You can choose to enter additional information about yourself if you like or leave it blank and click Save and Continue. You can optionally invite your friends to try the app or Skip that step. Finally, click Add Bookmark to access Advanced Search quickly from your profile.

After you complete these steps, you can access Advanced Search at any time by clicking the Applications link in your Facebook sidebar.

#5: Find People by Age/Gender/Relationship Status/Star Sign

On the Find People tab, you can search for people of a specific Gender and within a certain Age group. You can search by specific Relationship Status, or by their Star Sign. You can even search for people who have the same Birthday as you.

#6: Find People by Location (Country/Region)

You can combine the above search restricting to a specific Country, Region, and City. For example, you can search for single people in your area according to their Star Sign and who they are interested in meeting.

#7: Find People with Similar Interests

For each of the above searches, you can further refine them to find people who share your interests. You can find people according to their Political preferences, or their Religious beliefs. You can restrict searches to people who are members of a Facebook Group.

Best of all, you can use this to find people who are fans of a specific Artist, Celebrity, Politician, Author, or Product/Company Facebook Fan Page.

Using Advanced Search 2.0, you can mix and match these search criteria to your hearts content. This app currently indexes profiles of about 240 million people in its database. The lesser criteria you use, the more people you will find.

What do hiring managers want?

Original Post Here

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As a recruiter, I was just talking to a client, a Director at a mid-size company, about a couple of positions he’s trying to fill and specifics of what he wants to see in a good candidate.

I wish many of the people in my job search classes could have listened in on the conversation because he clearly answered what many job seekers want to know… “What do hiring managers really want?”

Certainly, in both of the open positions he has, he needs specific skills for those roles. However, more important to him than having all the technical/functional skills were characteristics that were critical for him to find.

Those characteristics could be summarized by…

Positive Attitude, Communication Skills, and Professionalism!

He related to me how he believed those traits were the most important, and somehow the most difficult to find. He recently had to let someone on his team go because although the person had strong technical skills for the job, they did a poor job of communicating with others in their job, and their professionalism (i.e. appropriateness, and attitude) was lacking. They did a good job of executing the technical aspects of their job, but did more harm than good when it came to working with others and helping them understand the requirements and process.

He told me about multiple candidates they’ve talked to that also had the technical skills, however, fell short when it came to projecting those other qualities. He expressed concern that he couldn’t afford, in this economy, to hire average employees. He needs people that can not only do the job, but represent his department effectively and positively to the rest of the company.

People come in to interview often express sour grapes rather than optimism. They dress inappropriately or sloppily making a poor first impression. They ramble on or give one word answers to questions, or generally don’t articulate ideas well. They are unprepared and don’t know basic information about the company or position. They can’t ‘think on their feet’ well. They act intimidated when talking to superiors. They are not very self-aware about their own strengths, weaknesses, or abilities. They try too hard to impress instead of showing sincere interest in others. They come across as overly concerned with what’s in it for them.

So often I hear from job seekers something like:

“I don’t understand why I didn’t get that job! I was a perfect fit. My skills and experience matched up exactly with what they said they were looking for. They don’t know what they want!”

Actually they do know exactly what they want, and usually within a couple of minutes of talking to the job seeker it becomes clear to me why they didn’t get hired.

This market is very competitive. Hiring managers often have a number of people to choose from that have the technical or functional skills required for the position. The differentiators are the soft skills that sway them from one person to another. Don’t take those factors too lightly!

Examine yourself critically. What kind of attitude do you exude? What kind of first impression do you make? Are you well prepared? Do you articulate your answers well? Do you show sincere interest in them and the company? Do you exude professionalism?

THAT’s what managers want!

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Network With Past Clients And Vendors

Original Post Here

image by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

Network With Past Clients And Vendors

Carl H., a reader of my columns from Winnipeg, Manitoba shares his success story here.

“I just accepted a new position which I obtained with the assistance of the resumes, cover letters and advice gained from your ebook. I am happy to say that at the age of 46, I was only actually out of work for 11 days. (Carl is talking about my resume how-to guide, available at this Web page: http://www.gresumes.com/book.htm )

How did he do it? Actually, he lucked out!

“The position I landed was advertised in the Career Section of the local newspaper. It turned out to be a supplier to my previous employer, one that I had had some dealings with in the past. There was good synergy between their needs and my experience and background. I was able to convince them through letters and the resume that I developed following that they would realize an immediate impact on their bottom line if they were to hire me for the position,” says Carl.

Action Step: If you search for a job in the want ads of your local paper, you are competing with hundreds -- sometimes thousands -- of other applicants. Luckily, Carl’s resume was good enough to get him an interview this way.

But Carl would have had no competition at all if he had first networked with that supplier (and every other vendor!) from his past employer before ever turning to the newspaper.

The choice is simple.

You can compete with the herd of other job seekers for a very limited number of positions advertised in the newspaper. Or you can leverage the good relations you’ve built over the years and network with past vendors and clients for job leads … with no competition, since they already know you and trust you.

Compliments of David Perry and Kevin Donlin