Sourcing Twitter Candidates with Summize

The recruitment domain has a significant stake in the rise of social networking tools. These tools have added a new dimension to sourcing and networking with potential candidates. The major players include Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and Twitter. What most lack is a great search function, Linkedin being the notable exception.

A new tool by a tiny startup Summize is making waves for its excellent search functionality for Twitter. Today we will take a look at Summize and see how to use it for sourcing candidates.

The Tool | The Search

The Summize user interface is simple like Google. It does what it says, searches conversations (twits) on Twitter.

The advanced search option helps refine our searches further.


Advanced search can be done quickly using operators directly in our search strings. Some key operators which will help us in our search are described below.

near is a location operator to fix the target search location.

examples
near:atlanta
near:boston,lincolnshire,uk
near:10001 (post/zip code worked fine for the US though not for the UK)

within restricts the distance from a target location to search for posts.

examples
within:15mi
within:25km

The date operators since and until help restrict results based on their date of posting.

examples
since:2007-10-01 (This gives twits posted from this day onwards)
until:2008-07-01 (This gives twits posted before this day)

Summize auto updates the search results as new twits come in after your search.

Note: Exception when we use the until operator

The Search | The Tool

Our goal is to find PHP Developers based within 100 miles of Boston in Lincolnshire, UK. To avoid Boston in the US, we need to enter the county and country details.

Step 1: Our initial string is for the target location.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk

Step 2: The next step is to refine results for users based within 100 miles.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi

Step 3: Here we further refine results to restricts posts to the last 6 months.

near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi since:2008-01-15

Step 4: Next we add our target keywords, in this case php.

php near:boston,lincolnshire,uk within:100mi since:2008-01-15

This gives 6 results overall. Of these, the 5th result looks promising. Here one user is discussing php code with another.


Once we are convinced this is a good candidate to target, we can open their twitter details.

matt5409 has a link to http://www.space-clothing.co.uk which is based in Hull 68.5 miles away on google maps. Now you can twit directly using @username or call using the phone no.

geekant has his web address and iphone no. on twitter. His details are at http://www.geekant.co.uk/geek/ Andy Whitlock, a php, mysql web developer based in Lincolnshire.