Earth.org is turning into one of the first Internet projects whose team members work remotely through a "virtual office." Working remotely, at great distances from one another, our international team members experience the freedom and inspiration of collaborating across national boundaries and cultural differences. We are convinced that our fusion of cultures and mix of people brings a precious added value and vitality to our project.
This modern way of working creates a diverse team of self-motivated and balanced professionals, able to gain personal development and multicultural work experience from their preferred location.

As we are always looking for new team members, volunteers and other people who are ready and willing to work in such an independent environment, we have changed the way of recruiting new members as well. The Internet, especially the latest Web2.0 developments, has brought a whole new dimension to employment recruiting. The new tools can be used for attracting and retaining skilled staff. Human resources (HR) people should invest the valuable hiring time wisely and most productively with good candidates to achieve the most efficient and desired results.

Anne Chabot from France is responsible for HR at Earth.org and she was more than successful in finding Web2.0 programmers, a copywriter and web developers who are now working for the project, fitting well in the team and sharing our open and responsible mindset. Anne collected her favourite HR tools as she wants to give you an overview of how HR2.0 works.

As Earth.org is an open travel guide we try to share as much information as possible with you, the Earth.org travellers and everybody who is interested in remote work and human resources.

But open also means that we are open to new ideas. Your suggestions in this area are always most welcome. Give us your views, tricks and good addresses for human resources!

Read here Anne's developed strategy and "HR-rules" in these times of Web 2.0.

In general

I believe that the process to go to the candidates (and not that the candidates come to us) is promising.

This way, you get people who are not specially looking for a job but pretty busy in their lives.
Obviously this is the perfect proof for interesting profiles. From the experience we have at Earth.org , we have also noticed that posting is not time-consuming and that it can also bring some very interesting profiles in the team. So: We should post sometimes with a sharp profile search.

So both methods, passive and active, are good and must be used and combined, to get a reasonable amount of good-quality candidates.

To sum up, the ideal HR search would have this combination:

=> from us to the candidates (active) + from the candidates to us (passive)

1. Search process

1.1 (Business) Social Networks (5 stars / *****)

We had the best experiences with Xing (about 4m users, more Europe centric) and LinkedIn (16m users, more US centric).
Other social networks exist but this is the ones I used mostly, mainly because of their huge number of users.

Other business social networks are not relevant from our experience.

These networks only work nice with premium accounts, but you can also use many functions in the free version.
The job market at Xing (Marketplace) in not worth the money, but you can post for free also in the forums and groups. This is maybe a good way, but we have not enough experience.
LinkedIn job market is not yet evaluated.

1.2 Idealist.org / wiserearth.org (5 stars / *****)

Excellent source for Earth.org. Socially engaged people with the right mindset to join Earth.org. Good source for finding both volunteers as well as paid positions in marketing/management related positions.

1.3 Blog search via directories (5 stars / *****)

-> Technorati (5 stars / *****)

Maybe the best source, as they are the biggest blog directory, - and even a nice CEO helping us in our search. When you search for e.g. Lead developer you will have the choice between posts, blogs, photos and video - and the most relevant are the first two, and the most important the blog search.
The owner of a blog has to register on technorati - and this is a first indication for professionalism. OK, obviously, if you search on Technorati you do that only with registered bloggers, but -on the other hand- if you find a blog - check if he/she registered on Technorati. Ask why he/she registered, or why not.

You have authority (other blogs linking to you) and fans (active decision by registered members). A good indication.

In general we used the normal search and the gallery view to get a fast indication.

It is important to use relevant keywords for the search and also to make several searches with different keywords to find interesting profiles. It seems to be more efficient to go by a broad search term than a too narrow one, as the gallery view (with a kind of summary) allows you fast to check a blog.

We have not tried out too much the advanced search options.

-> Blogcatalog (5 stars / *****)

The owner has to register actively there.
Pretty self explanatory, but here my special tips/remarks: The country (and the language) appears on the gallery view, which enables you to go faster in the search.

1.4 Forums and Discussion Groups (3 stars / ***)

Discussion groups enable you to get very easily emails, names and contact details of the members. It is relevant to take the members, who are very active in the discussion and ideally who give recommendations, tips and answers to the others. Essential is also to have a look on the group with the most important number of users: this shows that the group activity is high and therefore that the probability to get better profiles is higher.

-> Google Groups (3 stars / ***)

An example of the PHP GoogleGroup: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.php/topics?lnk=srg
We choose the right group (e.g. here PHP). If the number of posts is too high, we go for a search, e.g. CakePHP (more specific than PHP) Most of the discussions are about a problem. So it is important to go for a vivid Q&A session and find the one who is writing the cool answer. You have to search for the cool answer, check the profile of the poster and you will find an easy way to his eMail-ID.

Search your special community by keywords such as "PHP Community" or "CTO community".

1.5 Websearch and Alerts (depends on your quality of search)

-> Websearch (depends on your quality of search)

You can enter whatever you want (e.g. PHP blogs) - and normally it is recommendable not to use the first pages of a search, as there are many companies or "too" good profiles. Be careful here, this is the best to find new sources (e.g. a good discussion group or a nice blog).

-> Google Alerts (2 stars /**)

You can also use Google Alerts, subscribe to a topic you are interested in e.g. "Chief Technology Officer". You get mostly articles, and from that article you start the search. Thanks to that tool, you get daily emails with updated news related to that specific area.
The altert can only a start - for that you jump from page to page. The superblog will not come up this way. It might not be the best way, but just one way or another way.

1.6 Others - extra Search tools

-> Blogroll(4 stars /****)

This is one of the most useful tools to find the right people. You can easily surf from blogrolls to other blogrolls and find then an extremly huge amount of good profiles. For that, you need to start with the right blog with the right profile fiting with Earth.org requirements. From there and because same people with same interests are often connected, you will stumble on other interesting blogs.

In the same perspective, if you start with a wrong profile, you will search for hours through wrong blogrolls and waste your time. Moreover, I don't like a blog without blogrool and consider it as a promotion tool purely commercial, showing a certain fear of potential competitors from the candidate.
You will see, you finally see the same people - and than you know: You are right! Example: http://blog.psax.de/ from there to http://blog.scherbaum.info/ and so .....

-> Facebook (1 star /*)

While some other social sites allow you to search through their entire user database, Facebook only allows you to search within your network. This means that, if you want to do a worthwile search, you would have to build up a network first. Examples I've seen are companies that build a recruitment group around their "brand", saying they are looking for certain profiles and then inviting people to this group. Searching was not so easy, IE. I joined the web2.0 programmers group, but searching through it was only possible if i added the people to my personal network.

-> Go from the application to the maker of the application (3 stars /*** , very much dependent on you)

Nice video => from there we go to the producer....
Another way is to search for nice realisations and then finding their authors. For example, the website. If you search for web2.0 stuff, go to pages such as mashable.com (where you find a list of mashups) and try to find the tech people behind.

-> Read about interesting applications (e.g. on Techcrunch) (2 stars / **)

You find interesting stuff and get inspired by this. Also good to look up tech information (what is PHP?)

-> Guru (4 stars / ****)

So this is how i usually did it: I post a project. Sometimes i give a super specific description sometimes vague (depending on the current status of the project). Make sure to include price tag. Then let it run for a month. After a month or even after 2 weeks you have a whole lot of potential workers which you then can go through and sort through. I immediately sort out people that are over my price tag. Then i sort by first impression of the application email (gut feeling really). Then i send out a few test questions to those remaining and see how fast and how professional they are answered. It's really not that hard for experienced person to find someone on guru. At least it wasn't for me. Maybe it was b/c i never looked for full time. I don't know. I basically recruited all my employees (around 7 or so) via guru.

1.7 Unexplored

-> Google blog search
Not really tried - some one has infos?

-> Yahoo blog search
This is also a blog directory - not yet tried intensively.

-> Icerocket
This is also a blog directory - not yet tried intensively.

-> My Space

-> Wordpress
We have not yet really tried it.

2. Evaluation criteria

Now do it the other way around. Means - if you have found him through technorati -you go an check all other source mentioned above.

My favourite criteria to evaluate the quality of a candidate are:

• His/her presence on the business social networks Xing or LinkedIn. What we can see: From the presence there we see some seriousness, professionalism and affinity with web 2.0, essential points for us.
• Another important aspect is that the candidate has an updated and dedicated blog. These two points show that he or she has a real and personal interest in the field he or she is working in.
• Last criteria is the presence of the candidate on forums or discussion groups. You can have look then on the contributions the candidate made on this discussions groups, whether recommendations to other people or questions related for example to programming languages. Again an active role on the "scene" shows that the candidate is not only doing his job to make a living, but that he is personally interested and passionate about his job.

To sum up, the ideal candidate would have this perfect combination:

=> business social networks presence + updated and dedicated blog + active role on the scene

2.1 Blog

From my experience and after having reviewed a certain number of blogs, some other criteria must be take into account in the evaluation of candidates.
Indeed I believe that the blog must show a certain balance between commercial/professional dimension and dedication. Blogs are a clever way for people to promote themselves and sell their services. But on the other hand, a blog does not have to be only "commercial". It is important to have also updated posts and articles related to the candidate work, that shows that the candidate is 100% dedicated to his field.

Most of the information you get from the source, e.g. a blog:

• check the page rank
• check how old it is
• check how often it is posted
• check if the posts are related to the topic
• blogroll
• replies
• about me
• design
• everything what is against our values (e.g. especially money money money)

2.2 Google search

Google the name (put it into "quotation marks"): If his name is not Michael Jackson you should find him easily.

2.3 Business social networks

These two networks offer really good tools to evaluate candidates. For example, when reviewing a profile, Xing allows you to check the contact numbers of the person, but also the number of hits on his profile, and when he started to use Xing. All these additional elements enable us to judge the quality of the candidate, as well as his network and affinity with 2.0 technologies.

2.4 Private information

This is the non-politically correct part of the search: it is essential to find out whether the candidate personally fits with the project, apart from his tech skills. For that, you can easily check his contacts on business social networks but also his pictures on Flickr, personal blogs and opinions on forums, Facebook and Skype profiles... Every kind of information you can get from the candidate is useful to evaluate him/her. soft skills: Pictures are important etc...

2.5 Do the values fit with Earth.org

If the candidate fits with our requirements and have the perfect combinations -mentioned before- then, the best is that he also has similar values as Earth.org. This you can see on Xing where the candidate is member of environmentalist groups (e.g. WWF) or directly on his blog (Carbon neutral or Green website).

3. Contacting people

3.1 Find out about the contact details

Regarding the contact details appearing on blogs, I like when the candidate is not giving too many possibilities for contact him: the candidate must not be too easily "reachable"! An email address and a Skype ID is enough. On the other side, if no contact details are provided on a blog, you will easily find a way to contact the blog/website owner.

Just three tips:

• Use http://www.whois.org to get the website owner
• Reply to one of his posts and ask friendly if he is interested in a contact.
• Search the social networking platforms for his name

3.2 How to contact busy people?

Contacting people and especially without that they requested it is very tricky. Some of them are receiving hundreds of mails everyday and a non-personalized mail or a boring text will not encourage them to reply. This active approach also requires to be very fast, mainly because only 10% of your emails would get replies. For that reason you need to send LOTS of emails, and very fast. My suggestion for these two problems is to have a "standardized" text body and a personalized first paragraph, related to the candidate's realizations. In that way, you can get a higher number of replies and at the same time catch his attention. The candidate would appreciate if you make a compliment (who does not?) or the simply fact that you had a look on his realizations. He will most probably reply to your request. Last point, although I think you have to follow a certain structure and method in HR, you also have to be non-rational in your search and listen to your feelings. This also applies to the search, sending an email does not cost much... Even if the person you contact does not fit with our requirements, it is however possible that he/she knows someone who may be interested. For example, some marketing gurus - although with no interest or abilities in tech staff- will know lots of programmers or designers. Sending them a nice mail does not take more than 2 minutes.

To sum up, the ideal and efficient way to search and contact people is to be:

=> nice + fast + non-rational

3.3 Recommendadtions

Interesting people active in their "scene" have always a good network. If they are too busy or not interested, they would often be happy to give recommendations or to pass the job advert around.

3.4 Resume

Active Search: You will see - every search is not endless and leads to a small group of people and you will see them all again.

4. Candidates testing and interviews

We are testing our candidates with the online Google documents. This is a great chance for us to edit and share a test document online, test our candidates in real time and evaluate him or her with the other team members.
After this step, we proceed with interviewing. We have very international Skype interviews when the candidate is in Argentina, the first interviewer in India, the second one in the US...