Since I first discovered what RSS is and began using it I’ve thought it was one of the most essential technologies for anyone trying to stay informed on news from the web. Since that time a few years ago I’ve become even more convinced that if you aren’t using RSS you’re either wasting a lot of time bouncing around the web, or you’ve chosen to remain less informed about your industry than you could be with RSS. The best basic explanation of what RSS is comes from Common Craft:

Subscribing to blogs and news sites is only the very beginning. Here’s a sample of what else is possible using RSS:

1. Get candidates delivered to you daily

2. Promote your company’s jobs

3. Share your personal content anywhere that accepts a feed.

4. Competitive intelligence

5. Be notified of layoffs, or plant closings in relevant industries.

6. Create a scrolling email signature that rolls through the content of your choice (jobs perhaps?)

7. Take advantage of time stuck in traffic, lines for Apple Products or waiting to vote.

There’s a whole lot more, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

I realize the difficulty for some folks is maybe fear of technology, change, quixotic acronyms, or simply taking the time to learn something new. I’m here to help. To this end I’ll be posting a series here on how to use RSS if you’re a recruiter or sourcer specifically. I won’t explain the basics since common craft has done it as good as it can be done already. I’ll be focusing on intermediate RSS ninja and higher uses of RSS.

The first step for you is to go get an RSS reader. Don’t pay for one, there are many that are free and do all that you’ll need them to do. Basically an RSS reader is where you’ll plug in your feeds once you figure out how to find them or create them. Its also where you’ll read, save, browse, share, categorize, the content you plug in there.

Just go get a Google Reader by the time you get your Google phone you’ll have RSS licked and can get your feeds on the run. The Common Craft folks have a video about the Google Reader- yay! So if you were digging the ‘plain english’ vibe from the video above, check this video on the basics of the Google Reader.

Thats your homework for now.

Extra credit: take your favorite resume search string from Google and go to Feedmysearch to create an RSS feed from your resume search. More on this later.