Names Sourcing: Not Always Static, Repeatable Queries: Sometimes Sheer Elbow Grease, a Hunch, and Patience is All You Need

There’s no doubt there are proven repeatable ways to source for names or find leads – x-ray, LinkedIn, conference attendee lists,  professional association / society websites for deepor invisible web leads, simple tailored keyword searches, etc.  This blog is dedicated to that!  But, sometimes the formulas break down and you need to get creative.  At this point you’ll find out if you have what it takes. At this point, all one needs is a strong hunch that a name or lead or resume will be in a certain area of a creation resource, some “elbow grease” and a load of strong patience to find that gold.

Examples:

Everyone who uses Twitter knows that users can create lists based on a focus.  You can also find profiles of people and companies and then see who follows them or who they follow (unless the profile is locked or protected).  Of course, you can use keyword searches, twitter directories or search engines, and x-ray searches to find people by profile, but these of yet are not fully comprehensive.  So, go to where you need to be and start there. Today I found a great list created by a trusted group within our niche.  Following the hunch that many applicable people would be followed by such an entity, I decided to tackle the large list, one by one.  Yes, there was some serious “spam” or trash in there but I stuck to my hunch and kept going.  My patience was rewarded when I noticed a person that had some applicable words to describe himself – not clear or pretty, but enough.  A slight click opened up a profile brief and yep, there it was, a link to his visualcv.com resume.  Nice. By the way, you can do an x-ray or site search of VisualCV.com and find some good people.  Here's a posting on how to do this -

VisualCv.com: You Never Know – Site Search (or X-Ray Search)Just May Provide Leads

The same thing can be accomplished when using a resource like LinkedIn. Yes, you can use x-ray searches and keyword searches to findthose with contact information listed, and, sometimes, even resumes in their LinkedIn profile.  Yet, many times this is not accurate.  So, go to where you need to be, follow the leads, trust your hunches, and you’ll find gold.   For LinkedIn what does this mean?  Take the time to scroll down a profile to see if they have any contact information listed, or even a link to their website or blog, or even a link to their resume.  More times than not, you WILL find gold.

It’s not always science…sometimes it’s sleuthing, patience, and trusting your instinct!