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While Chrome extensions are great, sometimes it's nice to have a JavaScript bookmarklet to execute one simple function. One such function is to quickly cross-reference a highlighted name or id on various social media sites. Perhaps you have a cloud-based ATS or see a name on a profile or online resume and want to quickly check to see if they have an account on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Xing. My JavaScript bookmarklets will help you quickly check.

However, be warned that for some websites, such as Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter, bookmarklets may not function. Thankfully, the bookmarklets still work on Facebook and most other sites. So, if you see a Facebook profile, you can quickly search the other social media sites for accounts that a person may have. I also include a similar bookmarklet to cross-reference a highlighted technology to tags on StackOverflow.

First, let me share the bookmarklets. The link will open to w-shadow.com's Bookmarklet Combiner. You will see the bookmarklets listed: name on LinkedIn, name on Facebook, name or id on Twitter, name on Xing, tag on StackOverflow, and Edit Bookmarklets. The last (Edit Bookmarklets) is a link and not a bookmarklet. I have learned to always include this so that I can not only share the bookmarklets but also can edit them later (or add new ones). To the right of each is the JavaScript code that makes each bookmarklet work. At the bottom in "Result" you see a box that says "Cross-reference". Click and drag this to your bookmarks bar. You will see a new bookmark on your bar called "Cross-reference". When you click this you will see the mini-window below:

Clicking on this list will execute the selected bookmarklet. Clicking the bookmark again or anywhere else on the page will close this window. I will make up an example, say I was reading an article on ERE.net and I wanted to connect with or follow the author. I would highlight the name and click the Cross-reference bookmarklet and click "name on LinkedIn" and a new window going to a "People" search on LinkedIn would open. For this example, he was the second result in the list of results on LinkedIn.

It is as simple as that. You could also click Facebook or Twitter for a similar "People" search. On Xing, it is a "Members" search. Even if the search does not bring you straight to the right profile (especially for common names), you can refine your search with the information you have to find the person you are looking for. What usually works is to add the terms after the name and search again. With a quick couple of clicks, you can now cross-reference any name on the biggest social media sites. On Twitter, you can also search people by id. Sometimes the ids people use on sites like Reddit might have the same nickname/id on Twitter. People often use the same nickname or id across platforms.

The last bookmarklet is "tag on StackOverflow". This would be used with technical positions. Say you are looking at your company's job description online for a Front End Developer and you wanted to search the term "React". Highlight the term and select the bookmarklet as before and a new window going to open with the results of StackOverflow's tag search.

You will see a short description or definition of the technology - in this instance, React. This will also give you synonyms or other terms this technology is known as. For example, "reactjs" is one synonym as that is the tag. If you click "Synonyms (4)", you will see that it says the following will be remapped to the tag "reactjs": react, react-jsx, react.js, react-component. So, when you are searching for "react", you know that it might also show up in the resume or LinkedIn profile as "reactjs" or "react.js". A little more research on Google about "react jsx" shows that "jsx" might be another good related keyword (which you could check with the hiring manager). In technical recruiting, it's important to know the other names the same technology is known as and this bookmarklet will help.

For potential sourcing efforts, you might want to check out the "Top users" of the tag as well. Any full names can be cross-referenced back to LinkedIn with the bookmarklet, and then just add "react" after the name in LinkedIn to refine the search. Of course, without locations, this may be more useful for recruiters working on filling remote roles.

Lastly, I suggest checking out the "Learn more..." link as well. There is lots of potentially useful information here. "Synonyms" and "Top Answerers" are listed again, but there might be advantages of using this technology listed, more related tags (not synonyms, but related), version history, etc. For example, React's current version of 18.0.0 was released on March 29, 2022, and React was initially released on May 29, 2013. So, React has been around for almost 10 years. This will all help you learn about and understand the technology better that you are recruiting for.

For the JavaScript code of all these bookmarklets and others that I have written (in their current versions), you can check out my GitHub repository 'Bookmarklets'.

I would love to know what you think of my cross-referencing bookmarklets, so please leave a comment. If you'd like to see more of my posts and articles, follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.