When your Linkedin InMails run out, your inbound applicants just are not cutting it, and you need some additional resources to try an find candidates here are a few ideas to try that just might help you find some great people.

About.me

AOL’s About.me is a free service that lets people create eye pleasing, single page web bios about themselves.  This is also a great site to find people that are easily contactable for recruiting purposes.  If you are using a tool like TalentBin or Remarkablehire they are probably already scouring About.me for results, but here is how to do it manually.

Or you can do a quick Google site search like this:  site:about.me “ruby on rails”

Behance.net

Behance.net is a great site for creative people.  From graphic designers to UI developers, you can sometimes find great candidates here.

Twitter

I do not understand why more recruiters and sourcers are not spending more time where their candidate eyeballs are every single day.  Most recruiting efforts on Twitter is about pushing job posts hoping for interest.  For sourcing, Twitter is more of  a listening tool.  Using search.twitter.com you can find people talking about topics you are recruiting for.  Sure you have to filter through job posts but there are some great candidates there.

Also, Twitter response rate from candidates are akin to Linkedin back in 2006 when everyone replied to an inmail.  A couple quick tips on locating candidates quickly on Twitter:

• Search profile data via Google or twitter application tools such as TweetAdder.

• Search within conferences.  Most conferences will have an associated hashtag with it, such as #sxsw.  Especially when you look at more focused conferences the people referencing these hashtags are probably within the industry and at least have networks worth of looking through.

• Run Twitter & Linkedin parallel.  Lots of Linkedin profiles have their twitter accounts listed.  I recommend following them and waiting for a follow back so you can direct message them versus publicly reaching out to candidates.

1/2: LinkedinLabs.com site search.

Linkedin Labs is where Linkedin tests some of their new applications that eventually wind up one way or the other within Linkedin’s core products.  A year or so ago, Linkedin launched Resume Builder.  With a quick google X-ray you can find people who have done this and quickly grab some great resumes.