Online recruitment sites abound, but sources of free resumes have dried up recently. For years, there were many sites that would allow you to search their database for free... but this is usually a part of their strategy to build up mass by giving away the store, but then charging people for using the service they have become accustomed to using for free.

Recruiters have seen dozens of these sites come and go, and some of them still charge reasonable rates - such as DevBistro (for techies). Others have been bought by mega-sites such as Monster or Dice and now charge a king's ransom to search their databases.

Monster can charge as much as $30,000.00 for three month's access to their global CV (resume) database. So it's no wonder that people are out there looking for ways to find CVs online for free, especially smaller companies with correspondingly smaller budgets for recruitment.

There are basically three types of searches that you can do for free using Google or any other search engine.

1. X-Ray Search - this involves searching a single site or group of sites where you may access CVs online for free.
2. Title Search - This search involves searching through online documents for documents which have the words "CV, Resume, Curriculum Vitae" or other such title words in the title of the document.
3. Body Search - This search scans through the body text of documents for words that are commonly found in resumes, including the terms listed above.
4. Directory Search (not included in the count as it hardly returns any results!) This would search for directories of resumes.

In the old days, we had to develop our own clever boolean scripts to do this. Some of the best ones were beyond the humble programming abilities of the average recruiter - but this problem has now been rectified.

There is a new search engine that recruiters may use - it's still a bit of an unknown secret - that will find CVs (resumes) from all over the internet for free. It uses the three methods listed above and all one needs to do is enter the job description.

You can test this resume search engine at cvfox.com.

The first search you do with the site is a simple x-ray search. The results page then has two refinement 'tabs' that you may use to do a title search and body search for the same term you originally searched for.

The application is very easy to use, and is a valuable tool in the arsenal of the recruiter - it is one that should be tried before digging into your pocket and paying the high rates charged by the professional sites.