How Google Can Help Pinpoint Job Recruiters and Hiring Managers
Software technology impersonally rejects most job seekers today, creating one of the most frustrating problems job hunters everywhere face: the challenge of uncovering the names of human job deciders to whom they can present their qualifications.
With a job and an employer in mind, calling on Google’s long research arms shifts the odds in your favor of finding the names of the relevant recruiting and hiring managers.
Recruiters may be internal employees who work in a company’s human resources department or external professionals who work in independent third-party firms. To find recruiters no matter where they office, tap into the following search suggestions:
LinkedIn single-site search. Using Google to search LinkedIn is often useful to identify recruiters for large employers. Suppose you want to spot the recruiter(s) at Amazon. Write it like this:
recruiter amazon site:linkedin.com
Look for a search result titled Amazon Recruiter profiles| LinkedIn (or something similar).
The more LinkedIn connections you have, the more details you see about the recruiters Google finds when you click the LinkedIn results page.
Company (employer) single-site search. Hunt for recruiters on the target company’s website using the Google single-site search method. In the following search query, example is the name of the company you’re targeting. Write it like this:
human resources site:example.com
~staff directory site:example.com
Be sure there’s no space between site: and the domain name, which, in this case, is example.com.
Attaching the tilde to the front of the word recruiter tells Google to look for all variations of the word. Be sure to substitute the correct domain name for example.com, or use the appropriate domain name category, like .gov or .edu, for a search across all government agencies, or colleges and universities.
General search. Perform a standard Google search on the employer’s name plus the word recruiter so that Google will look over every digital hill and dale as it searches the entire web.
For example, if you want to spot the recruiter(s) at Amazon, write it like this:
recruiter at amazon.com
Double-check the age of the results you find, to be sure you aren’t pulling up obsolete data.
Reminder: Attaching the tilde to the front of the word recruiter gives Google free rein to find variations on the word recruiter, like head hunter and staffing manager.
Hiring manager search
Spot hiring managers based on their job title or department. Start with the information provided on a recent job description for important details, such as the hiring manager’s job title (job reporting to . . .).
For this illustration, assume that the position you seek is in the marketing department. You can employ the following queries:
LinkedIn single-site search. Because job titles vary, using a multipronged search strategy is wise. Consider six examples. Write it like this:
(vp OR vice president OR director) marketing employer name site:linkedin.com
[probable hiring manager title, like engineering director or customer service manager] employer name site:linkedin.com
marketing manager employer name site:linkedin.com
marketing * manager employer name site:linkedin.com
marketing * employer name site:linkedin.com
manager -project employer name site:linkedin.com
Company (employer) single-site search. Also search the employer website using the Google single-site search option for the same search queries as the LinkedIn searches, plus these six additional queries:
[probable hiring manager title] site:example.com
marketing contacts site:example.com
General Google search. Set Google loose on the whole web to find the names you need. You can ask Google to find the answers to these six queries:
(vp OR vice president OR director) marketing employer name
[probable hiring manager title] employer name
marketing manager employer name
marketing * manager employer name
marketing * employer name
~staff directory employer name marketing
Check the date on your results to be sure the information isn’t several years old. You don’t want to be sending a letter to the person who left the job in disgrace five years ago. As a double-check, consider calling the employer’s general number and asking, Is So-and-So still working there as the [whatever job title you have]?
If the person is still there, you’re good to go. If not, ask for the name of the new person in that job. You may or may not get the new name, but it’s worth a try.
In the previous examples, replace marketing with the department the job description indicates: accounting, administration, purchasing, customer service, engineering, production, and so on.