As part of our aim to help you find anyone for free, here’s a helping hand to maximise results from Google+.

In spite of some perceptions, Google+ has considerably more candidates than you might imagine. Some candidates even publish their Email address and / or Phone number.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but if there was a quick and easy way to search for them, then it must be worth a look, right? Low hanging fruit and all that.

You can probably guess what’s coming next…

That’s right! We have a free tool for you to use that allows you to quickly and accurately search Google+, and we’ve even included tabs that show you which candidates have a publicly available email and/or phone number.

How to search effectively

Google+ is not a professional network, meaning employment data is often (not always) limited to their job title and maybe an area or two they specialise in – sometimes one or the other rather than both.

So the key is to keep the search broad and use it as a net to expand your candidate pool, rather than expecting big results from a highly specific search for multiple skills. As you can see from our example, we’ve kept it to Java and then a handful of Developer related terms.

To search for people who live in a specific location such as Lodnon, you need to put “lives * London”.

As with many social networks, there’s a greater proportion of tech talent on here than other sectors, but at the cost of a quick search that could even return you a phone number, we reckon it’s worth a go whatever your sector.

For the candidates that don’t list contact details, you can add them to your circles, at which point you can send them a direct message.

More info on sourcing Google+

For a more detailed walk through on how to source on Google+, check out Shane McCusker’s video here.

If you’re not familiar with Shane’s work then I definitely suggest you start following him. He’s an encyclopaedia of sourcing knowledge and on top of that creates free recruiting tools that add massive value to your sourcing efforts.

We hope you enjoy our Google+ tool and as ever, don’t be shy with feedback!