This is an abbreviated version of the corresponding content from our popular Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques course, explaining methods and resources applicable to recruiting in any industry, function, geography or level. Learn more about or register for our live seminar or online course! Or return to free sample content.
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Bookmarklets from Glenn Gutmacher
If you have seen my presentations and wonder how I keep track of all the various search methods and associated boolean syntax, and how you can boost your productivity in order to do many types of recurring searches faster, then here's one of my secrets: Bookmarklets.
Bookmarklets are like web browser favorites/bookmarks on steroids. For more background, visit Bookmarklets.com (not geared to recruiting, but a good start to help you understand and apply them).
Bookmarklets don't just simply take you to a website -- they DO something beyond that, such that when you "arrive", search results have already been generated, information has been parsed, etc. It's because they have JavaScript code embedded in them. But they're safe to use on any computer (at least ours are; however, we cannot be held responsible, or provide support, for any installation difficulties or other issues that arise.). For example, drag this FindAllEmailsOnPage link into your web browser's bookmarks/favorites bar. From now on, when you visit any webpage that contains hyperlinked email addresses, click FindAllEmailsOnPage and it will automatically pull the list of email addresses for you.
Often, selecting a bookmarklet brings up a small prompt window asking you for certain information (e.g., search keywords, target domains or company names), and then runs everything else needed to display the results!
Bookmarklets are vital to sourcing productivity, and a key component to my "Internet Sourcing at Lightspeed" mini-seminars, and so I had to include some in my Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques course. But I've made them available free here as well.
How to install my free sets of bookmarklets
- In whatever browser you use, make sure your bookmarks/favorites bar is displaying (if not, press Ctrl+Shift+B in Chrome browser or you can find it under Settings in Edge browser)
- Click the link to bookmarket set 1 ("BATSA bookmarklets") which will launch in a new browser tab.
- Scroll to the bottom of that page.
- Click, hold and drag the button there (called "BATSA Bookmarklets") up into your top bookmarks/favorites bar where you want these to be accessible and release your mouse.
- From now on, you just click "BATSA Bookmarklets" in your bookmarks/favorites bar to temporarily display all the bookmarklets in a vertical list along the left side of your browser, and then click the single bookmarklet in the list that you want to run.
- Repeat above steps for each additional set of free bookmarklets you want, and then you can click the name of whichever set you want in your top bar.
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Set 1: BATSA bookmarklets (contact info finders)
Set 2: SOSU searchers (other search examples)
Set 3: Functional bookmarklets (productivity, not related to search)
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- The bookmarklets above are not edited frequently, so some may no longer work. If you notice such an instance, let Glenn know which and he'll update it.
- However, the following ones definitely work (click+hold and drag these links up into your bookmarks/favorites bar):
- Same search but run on Google Faces - use immediately after you run a Google, Bing or other search, and now you only want to see the subset of those results with pictures of faces (great for diversity search!)
- find icon related to this keyword - use when you seek a .png icon image related to a concept
- Share this on LinkedIn - when you're on a URL that you want to share on LinkedIn, it generates a post window (if you're not logged into LI already, it prompts you to do so) with prompt to optionally add context info about it
- Share this on Twitter - when you're on a URL that you want to tweet, it generates a tweet window (if you're not logged in already, it prompts you to do so)
- Share this on Facebook - when you're on a URL that you want to share on FB, it generates a post window (if you're not logged in already, it prompts you to do so)
- Get email of this Github user - when viewing someone's Github page, select this to reveal their email address
- Contributors to this GitHub repo - downloads basic details about this repo's first 100 code contributors
- Contributors to this Gitlab repo - Similar to previous bookmarklet, but it pulls basics about the code contributors for a Gitlab repo (competitor to Github)
- Find Gitlab user by name - if you know the username or real full name of a Gitlab user (e.g., after using previous bookmarklet), this should find their Gitlab profile URL
- multi-tab images search - use to launch multiple windows each finding image results on various sites related to the keywords you just entered (try it with a combination of job title and skill - e.g., ASIC hardware engineer)
- remove unnecessary FB/Goog parameters from this URL - do you get annoyed when you want to share URLs and they're unnecessarily long because they contain some giant alphanumeric string after ?fbclid= or it's a Google search result with a bunch of parameters separated by &whatever=something? None of that's needed - unless you're Facebook or Google trying to track your traffic. This shortens those URLs significantly and only preserves what's useful. (The main web address without parameters remains unchanged - this is not one of those bitly/tinyurl-type of URL shorteners.)
- This one is a little different: textarea strings editor and JS converter (do regular left mouse click on this to view instructions)
- Some bookmarklets (particularly ones that launch multiple browser tabs like the one immediately above) may trigger your browser's popup blocker. If you get an alert (usually a small red icon at the right edge of the browser's URL address bar) that your popup blocker prevented it from running OR you simply do not see multiple browser windows automatically opening, do the following:
- Click Chrome's vertical triple-dot icon (at top right corner of browser) and select Settings.
- Type redirect in the top search field; now it says "2 results" in yellow below.
- Click the yellow part next to Site Settings then scroll to bottom where it says "Pop-ups and redirects" and click that.
- In the "Allowed to send pop-ups and use redirects" section at bottom of page, click the lower Add button.
- In the popup, type [*.]google.com and press Enter key (there are no spaces in that string).
- Repeat previous step but type [*.]linkedin.com instead, then close Settings tab.
- What you just did determines what web domain you must be currently on at the moment you click the Multi-window bookmarklet -- it has nothing to do with which websites are embedded in the bookmarklet. So, for example, a multiwindow bookmarklet that includes Google and LinkedIn among the windows that are spawned won't work if your browser's address bar currently shows something starting https://www.github.com. The solution is either:
(a) you change your location from github to a location starting with http(s) followed by google.com or linkedin.com (www's and whatever the rest of URL following .com don't matter) or
(b) you add the other web domain you find yourself going to a lot (e.g., your company's website) to the list of popup and redirect exceptions by repeating step 5 above with that web domain.
- I recommend you create subfolders within your Bookmarks/Favorites bar named Resume Search, Blog Search, etc., and you can drag relevant bookmarklets and other bookmarks/favorites into the appropriate folders (yes, you can mix bookmarklets with regular bookmarks). This becomes increasingly valuable as your bookmarklets collection increases over time.
- To obtain new bookmarklets, ask your tech-savvy recruiting peers, or query a search engine for bookmarklet list (or substitute a specific keyword for list like LinkedIn if you want a bookmarklet related to a particular website) and you will find many more! Usually, you add new bookmarklets one of a few ways:
- if the bookmarklet is available over the web, you can simply right-mouse click on the link and select Add Bookmark or Add to Favorites. Make sure to navigate to your desired folder before clicking OK.
- some sites (like Bookmarklets.com) have bookmarklet generators and you can just drag it into your bookmarks/favorites bar (like the GetAllEmails one on this page)
- if someone sends you a bookmarklet, it's best to be contained within a text or zip file, because loose bookmarklets are otherwise favorites with a .url extension and tend to get corrupted/unusable when emailed. Then you can extract the contents appropriately.
- Or the method if you want to edit or create new bookmarklets based on existing ones, some JavaScript knowledge is recommended. You can learn this well with my intro PowerPoint presentation and related how-to content, including sample scripts.
- Last but not least, if you like learning via videos, the Facebook group Sourcers Who Code ran a series of webinars (recordings on YouTube here) which included one by me on bookmarklets.
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This is an abbreviated version of the corresponding content from our popular Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques course, explaining methods and resources applicable to recruiting in any industry, function, geography or level. Learn more about or register for our live seminar or online course! Or return to free sample content.
Copyright 1997-1998 Glenn Gutmacher. Copyright 1999 -
Recruiting-Online.com. All rights reserved. No copying or redistribution without written permission. Email
to request.
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