Linkedin can be a great tool to find the right people for a job, a project or for one time help. In fact, it is that good that sometimes you get too many results and can’t see the forest for the trees. In this post I’m going to explain how to use Linkedin’s advanced search features in order to find people for specific tasks.
Let’s assume you’re looking for a PHP developer for your company. Here’s how you can use linked in to find people to hire:
In the search box type in PHP and hit search. The results will display people who mentioned the word PHP in their profile (note that people who are in your network show up first).
Refine the results by selecting or typing-in a location in the Location box on the left. Now, you will only see people from that location.
To further refine the results, in the groupsbox choose a group such as “Job networking” (of course you will have to be a member of that group in order to see it). That way you will get back people who are searching for a Job.
I made a video that illustrates how to do that, see it below:
Sometimes, finding the right person on Linkedin is not enough. The reason is that only paying users with premium account can send messages to people outside their network (That is, if you are not already connected to someone, you can’t message him).
Now, if it happens to you often, probably the best solution is to pay to upgrade your account. But if you don’t think it will pay off, here is a little built-in hack that can help you overcome this limitation.
The solution
In short – to send almost anyone on linkedin a message, simply join a group he or she is a member of.
Explanation
When you join a group on Linkedin, by default the members of the group can send you messages. Although you can turn this option off (see image below) people usually don’t tend to change default settings. Therefore, usually you will be able to send message to all the other members of the group.
Over the past year I’ve written several posts about different Google applications. These include Google search, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Maps, and more. In case you’ve missed some, here is your chance to catch up with some great Goolge practices and tips (note that some of them where published on MakeUseOf.com):
I’ve recently explained on MakeUseOf.com how to use Google Maps as a tool for distributed teams. In this post I am going to review other tools that support and improve the work of distributed teams. The tools will help you improve the way you share files, communicate, and work collaboratively with people not near you.
File sharing
One of the basic needs of a distributed team is the ability to share files. For ad-hoc teams, who do not work together on a regular basis, Drop.io is a great solution. Drop.io is a private sharing and collaboration web app. It lets you instantly create a mini site, called ‘a drop’, into which you can upload any type of file. You can annotate the file with comments or sections of text and use the chat feature for synchronized work sessions.
Do you ever feel that if you could only tell Google a bit more about what you’re trying to find, the search results would be much better? Well, as you probably know, Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more. Here is a quick guide to Google’s advanced search operators.
Starting with advancead operators
Double quotation marks (” “) for exact much: When you enclose a phrase in quotation marks, Google returns only pages that contain that exact phrase. The results have to contain all the words and in the exact same order as you wrote them. Search for “The first Twitter user”, for example, and you’ll only get back pages that contain exactly that phrase. This advanced search feature is one of the most useful in my opinion.
Asterisk (*) is a placeholder for one or more words: adding * replaces any number of words in your query. Example: let’s say you want to find articles that teach Google search practices, like this one. You could use the following query for that task:
“how to Search * with Google”
The quotation marks will make sure that you’ll get back pages with that sentence in them. But since there’s Asterisk in the query, you’ll find different versions of it. So, you might get back this sentence: How to Search Faces with Google, this one: How to SearchEffectively with google, or any other variation that matches the query. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.
If you’ve ever tried Twitter’s search, you’ve probably found that it’s not very good. Indeed, Other Twitter search alternatives exist, such as Trendistic, Tweefind, Tweetzi, and Twazzup. But wouldn’t you rather just use Google for the task?
To search Twitter with Google, all you need to do is add to the search query a limitation that tells it to search only within Twitter (and not the whole web). To do that, simply add the following string to the query:
site:http://twitter.com
So, for example, to find mentions of this blog, we’ll add the word ‘productivewise’ to the query, as shown below (notice that there is a space between the search term, productivewise, and the sit URL) :
Real-time search is the latest achievement of web 2.0. Never before was it so easy to speak to the whole world and to be instantly heard. This post overviews the 4 most popular search engines capable of generating fresh results.
It is hard to compare them to choose the best one: there are no winners in this game. They all have some benefits and should be used in particular cases:
Real-time search engine
Data source
How old are the results?
Most important benefit
Twitter
Twitter discussions
Instant
The huge service popularity and thus a large index of data
Facebook
Facebook discussions
Instant
The huge service popularity and thus a large index of data
Google reader is probably the best RSS reader available today. Here are some tips and practices for power users (hopefully, you) to help you better manage your RSS reading time and leverage it, tweak Google Reader to use first and second level categorization, and optimize you RSS subscription list.
Use folders to prioritize your reading
At a certain point you’ve probably realize that it is just not possible to read all of the new items you get. One possible solution is to use folders to categorize your feeds. Once you categorized all your feeds, you can read prioritize your reading by urgency level.
For example, I use a folder called ‘Immediate‘ where I put feeds that I want to read the moment they publish something new because it is important for me to know about them as soon as possible. These could be work related or new trends, usually things that if no read within day or two (sometimes less), they became irrelevant.
Other folders I use are ‘friends‘, ‘Podcasts‘, ‘Premier Blogs‘, and some more. I also use a ‘must read‘ folder for things that I want to read sometime, but it doesn’t really matter when (such as family blogs or new WordPress plugins).
At the end point (your side, as a user) all that Aardvark does is take a question you submit, find someone who can answer it and send you back the answer. It does that by searching for a user that is online and has knowledge in the field of the question you asked (and preferably, is from your network on Aardvark). Than it sends him or her question. The answer is sent right back to you, usually within few minuets. Often, you get more then one answers from several different people.
If you are not satisfied with the answer you got, you can easily resubmit it for other people to answer it or asked the ones that already did to elaborate.
Two weeks a go I gave a lecture in a social media seminar. Now I’ve translated the presentation I used into English and made it easier to understand without seeing the actual lecture.
The presentation describes 20 social media practices that will help you in your daily life. It includes tools to monitor your web presence, ways to track interesting topics and conversations, methods to find people and to get answers, and more.
It revolves around the following seven categories:
People Database
Keeping in touch and more
Conversation
Search
Collaborating
Monitoring and News
Self monitoring
I’ll be glad to get your feedback and thoughts about it.
Linkedin can be a great tool to find the right people for a job, a project or for one time help. In fact, it is that good that sometimes you get too many results and can’t see the forest for the trees. In this post I’m going to explain how to use Linkedin’s advanced search features in order to find people for specific tasks.
![3845644631_655f36e931[1]](http://www.productivewise.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/collaboration.jpg "Collaboration")
I’ve recently explained on MakeUseOf.com how to use 
Do you ever feel that if you could only tell Google a bit more about what you’re trying to find, the search results would be much better? Well, as you probably know, Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more. Here is a quick guide to Google’s advanced search operators.
I’ve recently added a new tool to my information searching arsenal – 
