AltaVista refers to them as “fancy features,” but search limiters are plain tools. Tools that allow you to limit your searches to candidates who precisely match your requirements. Anchors: One of the search limiters available at AltaVista is the anchor. Here’s how it works: Every link on a Web page has two components: the word that appears as the link and the destination to which the link goes. The word that appears as the link is known as the anchor at AltaVista. For example, this link to Microsoft goes to www.microsoft.com, but the word Microsoft is the anchor. To look for these anchor words in AltaVista use the format: anchor:keyword This is useful for finding pages about candidates. Because not every page about a candidate is called a resume, searching for the word resume winds up bypassing many people. To get around that problem, you can look for the links that might appear on their pages. Think of the places your candidates might create links to: their alma mater, a professional organization they belong to or their employer. You don’t need to look up the Web addresses of these sites, you’re looking for their common names. If you want to find a candidate who links to her alma mater, the Sloan School of Management, use anchor:”Sloan School.” To find an engineer who links to the IEEE from his homepage, just use anchor:ieee. You can narrow down the results returned by adding more keywords. There are several more search limiters available at AltaVista. Give them a try, they might help you find some hidden.
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