What is ‘Google Profiles’?

According to Google it's the way that people can control how they appear in Google by creating personal profiles. When people search for a name on Google, it will show a list of the Google Profiles that users have setup under that name. This is a great feature for people who want to control what will appear when others search for their names on Google.

Recently, Google introduced a new feature to give greater control over what people find when they search for names, they’ve begun to show Google profiles results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. They've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.

What does all that mean to recruiters and sourcers?

Profiles are multiplying every day and Google profiles are becoming a great source to find people. The quality of information in the profiles are reasonable, and most profiles include a brief about the candidate, job title, location, a link to send a message, name of the companies that the candidate have worked for, and links to the candidate’s website, blog, and other social media accounts. Unlike the quality of the information you can find on Twitter, the ROI for sourcing people on Google Profiles is high and will increase more as people are creating more profiles.


How can I source candidates on Google Profiles?

Either you can go directly to http://www.google.com/profiles and use their search box, but this works fine if you know the name of the candidate. The other way to do this is to use the Google search to set your criteria and X-ray the profiles. For example, if you are looking for a Project Manager or a Product Manger that have worked for Microsoft use the following search string:

site:google.com/profiles (project manager | product manager) (”Companies I've worked for * microsoft” | ”Companies I've worked for ** microsoft”)

If you are not familiar with Boolean and X-ray search strings, you can use ReferYes Sourcer which automates Boolean search strings. Recently, ReferYes added Google Profiles to their list of websites, which includes top social networks and search engines, to give it a try go to: http://www.ReferYes.com