Overseas Adventures, International Sourcing and Search Engines

Lately, I have been working on my bucket list, which includes some overseas destinations such as Turks & Caicos Islands, as well as St. Martin. I lived overseas for three years and just love traveling. Traveling got me thinking about sourcing and what national search engines could be used for sourcing.

Recruitment efforts can include sourcing for candidates stateside and internationally. When it comes to filling a niche role or finding that purple squirrel, knowing which tools to use is the key to success. For those that need to find candidates on an international level, there are many unheard of sites that could lead you to that perfect lead.

One of the countries I lived in was Korea, and that brings me to introduce you to Daum, a web portal in South Korea, like Naver and Nate. It offers many Internet services to web users, including a popular free web-based e-mail, messaging service, forums, shopping, and news. Another site from that side of the world is Baidu, the most popular search engine in China, and one of the largest companies in the world. Baidu provides over millions of web pages, multimedia files, and images.

Yandex, a Russian Internet company, is the largest search engine in Russia. Come to think of it; they were around one year before Google and, if my calculations are correct, it is 20 years old this year. I find this search engine to be a rather impressive tool and for those adventurers wanting an alternative to Google, this one will is a must try! Yandex allows for search commands such at title:, inurl: and site:, as well as searching for specific document file types and pages written in other languages.

From Yandex

Want to trek across the world? I stumbled across this site Search Engine Colossus – talk about traveling the world…you can explore 317 countries and territories. Who knew there were so many?

Another hidden gem on our travels is Exalead, straight out of the city of lights and love, Paris, France. This search engine is one of my go-to sites and a favorite for FlipSearch, to bring back documents that are hyperlinked to specific web domains. I would use link:domain.com (keyword1 OR keyword2). One thing about Exalead is that you need to be sure to spell out the word for the type of Microsoft document rather than the extension itself, as in this example: filetype:word (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) (TX OR Texas) (214 OR 469 OR 972)

Freeality has a great, one-stop-shop for international search engines. There are Russian, Chinese, European, Indian and Brazilian sites. You can also find international directories, translation directories and lots of other tools. Additionally, IP-Centre.org has international search engines by countries including Austria, Australia, Germany and the UK.

Whether you are searching for international leads or that next travel adventure, prepare yourself just like you would to ensure smooth travels, such as a passport, traveler’s checks, and comfy shoes. You will not go wrong with these sites in your “travel bags.” Now that we have shared our world sourcing travel agenda, please document your travels and rate them according to your successful departure and return. Please share your adventures in sourcing with us and others.