What You’re About to Discover (And Why It Matters)
Before LinkedIn.
Before Indeed.
Before you could click “Apply” without faxing a resume, there was a wild digital frontier.
And standing boldly in that chaos? Barbara Ling.
If you’ve never heard of her, don’t worry – it’s not your fault. Much like how the original inventors of Pop Rocks never got credit, Barb was too busy building the system to market herself.
This piece sets the record straight. We’re talking timelines, proof, strategies, screenshots, and how she helped carve out the very term “Internet Recruiting.” Let’s rewind to the 1990s and begin the story you should’ve heard years ago.
A Timeline of Internet Recruiting Innovation (aka: Before Google Was Cool)
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1996 – Recruiting in the AOL Age
While most were yelling “You’ve Got Mail,” Barbara was quietly experimenting with FTP servers, email headers, and early job boards. Usenet groups became her first talent pool.
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1997 – Sourcing via Command Line and Lynx
Barb was helping companies find talent via online chatrooms and command-line lynx queries – skills that would make modern recruiters faint.
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1998 – Featured in Inc. Magazine
The mic drop. Barbara Ling was profiled in Inc. Magazine’s August 1998 issue: “What’s Hot: On-line Recruiting”.
She was highlighted as a pioneer in the early use of online communication tools for remote work and recruiting with the only 5 star resource mentioned – The Internet Recruiting Edge.
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1999 – Authoring Recruitment Guides
From eBooks to webinars (before they were cool), Barbara was teaching Internet sourcing to companies and consultants. Her very first infoproduct, The Internet Recruiting Edge, sold for $147:
In a nutshell, she was in the right place at the right time with the right mentor who opened the right doors for her.
That was her first 250K year.
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2000s – Mentoring the First Wave of Online Recruiters
Barb continued to run communities for recruiters, coaching newbies who’d later become thought leaders in their own right. Her work laid the framework for what sourcing became.
The growth of popularity led to Barb partnering with a colleague and create RISE: Recruiter Internet Sourcing Education. That had Barb traveling all across the country, Canada and London, providing 8 hour Internet sourcing for each class.
Ah, memories!
I might add that during this time, she wrote up Poor Richards’ Internet Recruiting in 2000. I even found copies of it on eBay!
Her Secret Sauce: What Made Barbara’s Recruiting So Revolutionary?
- Search mastery. She could wrangle AltaVista, Infoseek, Usenet and Dogpile like a rodeo queen. Boolean search wasn’t just a trick – it was her native language.
- Psychographic sleuthing. She tracked down not just who to recruit, but how to appeal to them. On message boards. In chat rooms. Across forums.
- Tool creation. From home-brewed sourcing scripts to early email scraping hacks, Barb was automating tasks before APIs were invented.
- Community first. She didn’t gatekeep. She taught. She blogged. She showed other recruiters how to use this mysterious thing called the “Internet.”
5 Wild Things You Didn’t Know About Barbara Ling
- She trained recruiters before LinkedIn even existed. Yep – Barb was showing folks how to find talent online before the most common recruiting platform today was even an idea.
- She was petrified of speaking in front of an audience. Totally, unmistakably, turned into stone at the mere suggestion. On the morning of her first seminar, Sept 18th in Toronto, she looked at herself in the mirror and told herself, “Alrighty kiddo, this is it. Sink or swim. NOBODY is going to rescue you.“And just like that >< her fear disappeared and she put on an awesome show… and never looked back.
- She wrote guides in plain English, not tech babble. That’s why her work spread. People actually understood it.
- She did all this while raising 4 kids, rescue dogs, and being a martial arts parent.
- She turned down multiple “guru” branding offers. Why? Because her mission was to teach, not posture.
Why This Matters Today
AI Internet recruiting tools are reshaping recruiting (hi there, irony!), but none of it works without understanding the fundamentals. The original digital recruiters like Barb figured out how to:
- Find candidates hiding in plain sight
- Use data creatively to map career paths
- Automate search long before bots
Everything modern recruiters do – from scraping LinkedIn to Boolean wizardry – traces back to principles Barbara Ling taught and lived.
And if AI is now the engine? Barbara was the spark plug.
Want to Dive Deeper?
Connect with her directly on LinkedIn, X.com (Twitter), or your favorite obscure tech forum from 2001. Chances are, she’s still lurking – with answers *beyond* AOL.
Because once a pioneer… always a legend.
Enjoy!
