I’ve seen several speakers recently comment on the fact that it is coming to a world where everyone has access to ALL the contact data. The concept was furthered in saying that since everyone will have all the data, the playing field will be leveled as everyone will have total access, ergo, it will come down to the ability to network as the sole determiner of success.
The second part of this concept, (ability to network) has always has been dead on. A poor salesperson or recruiter will not do well even if given a great list. A great networker can do wonders starting with one point of contact.
However, the idea about everyone having access to ALL the data… This is a pipe dream of the uninformed. It may be a great material to pontificate on, but it is pure fiction. The science and trends behind information and going the opposite direction. I don’t know where this concept was started, but it’s taken off with all the indications of mob mentality (great conviction, but little facts to back it up).
Some facts:
The Internet and information in general is growing faster than our ability to index it.
Corporations are starting to silo their own data, vs. use public databases. These are closed systems that are not being shared and the are diverging like mammals and marsupials.
A UC Berkeley study from 2007 details that search engines like Google index less than 1% of the Internet. (when I find this link, I’ll post it..too late right now)
Who are these people that have access to ALL the information? Methinks it’s the great Oz.
1984 is not here yet. Good networking starts with your own unique knowledge of where to start your research. Dig in and roll up the sleaves. Being given a great database does not make you a great recruiter, being able to create a great database makes you a great recruiter.
I have been ask to write more and more about the recruiting software company I founded, Broadlook Technologies in this blog. I do mention Broadlook quite often in my postings, I can’t help it, it is a big piece of my day and it’s a source of daily inspiration. However, the mission of my blog was to touch on many topics, therefore I would like to announce a place where I will be gratuitouslypromoting all things Broadlook: The Official Broadlook Blog. I, Donato will remain what it was meant to be. A safety valve for an overactive mind.
For recruiting animal, I am doing this for you…here is a repost of the first Official Broadlook Blog article. I plagiarized it from myself and I challenge you to a donut eating contest or oreo cookies or whatever you are calling me these days. Peace. Donato
March 6th, 2008, By Donato Diorio, Reprinted without permission.
The Broadlook Technologies logo has meaning. For the 5 of us that started in a single 400 sq ft office, it has a special place with us. When it was time to create the image/logo/icon that would come to be our stamp to the outside world, we stopped everything for 2 full days. No sales, no development, no marketing. It was white boards and debate; define our mark or die trying.
Here is how it came to be.
The original vision behind the company was building recruiting software products that were the right mix between automation and human interaction. We wanted to create a company logo that somehow communicated that concept. One of the ideas tossed around was 2 hands, one machine and one human…intertwined. Neither myself (Donato) Igor, Kevin or Dan (working remote from Portland) were artists of any sort, however, Andy had experience with some photoshop so he was elected to sit at the computer while the rest of us tested his design skills. The machine-human hand thing was too complicated; it did not scale down to logo size image. A bunch of ideas were tossed around when I suggested doing something with carbon, denoting human and silicon for meaning the machine. We then started working with the atomic numbers of carbon (6) and silicon (14). We tried to create a large “B” using a series of dots for our logo. 14 Dots were the background, 6 formed the B. I remember showing the first iteration to Dan, our first sales rep working remote out of Portland, OR.
“What in the hell is that?”, said Dan. “It looks like one of those darn eye tests they give blind people” (Dan’s comments are famous around Broadlook and often repeated years later, we all knew he meant color-blind).
We couldn’t find any of the “B” logos in the company archives (trust me, it was horrid).
Back to the drawing board we went.
Kevin had a brainstorm. Why not use the ratio of carbon to silicon? It was one of those ideas the didn’t need any discussion. Rare for our meetings. So we went back to the dots. here are the iterations.
Eventually a voice of reason spoke up and suggested we move away from the dots and go towards solids. I’m guessing it was Igor and the Broadlook logo was born. Here is the first iteration that we still use today.
The blue and the charcole are the proportions of 6:14; carbon to silicon. If I can find it, we even have a math equation that defines the graphic (I’ll find it and post it to this article later).
The most important thing that I learned when looking back at the experience is the team effort required. My contribution was the spark, but without the operational know-how, the out-of the box thinking, the strong logic and the feedback from the outside, we wouldn’t have our logo. To the outsider, it is a box with a slash through it. To us, it was the genesis that grew into the company we are today. The world leader in Internet research technology.
What is a good vertical market to recruit in? I get asked this question every week.
However, most often the question is more a question of what I “feel” would be a good market to start a new desk specialty in.
“Donato, what do you feel a good new desk specialty would be?”
I say. “I feel like a great market would be placing sales reps in recruiting software companies that do real time data mining of contact information.”
They respond, “but Donato, Broadlook is the only company I know that does this kind of thing.”
“That’s right”, I say. “..and I don’t pay fees” <grin>
About this time they realize I am having fun at their expense and I chime in. “You asked me what I feel, not what I think.”
Most recruiters don’t think it through thoroughly when starting a new desk. Lets face it, thinking is hard. A day of designing software wipes me out more than a triathlon (ok I’ve only done one). It’s not their fault. This is how they were taught. Or I should say, this is how they learned. They watch someone who was a big biller and tried to do what they heard.
When discussing the creation of a new desk, I hear a good deal about reading everything from an industry, articles, journals, etc. Wake up, this type of activity is about learning about the industry, not if the niche will support a desk. If I am going to trust my livelihood to one vertical or another, forget the gut, give me data.
“Hey Donato, are you telling me to ignore my gut instinct?”
NO
The role of the “gut instinct” in this whole process should precede the data gathering. The gut should lead you to the top several candidates and then you then expose to the scientific method. The gut gets excited while reading and learning. Don’t let it get carried away.
The gut is the emotion, the wind. Let the data be the rudder and the sail.
To start a new desk, I would prefer solid facts about a potential specialty, such as:
How many open jobs, by state and nationally? (size of universe)
How many recruiters specialize in the niche? (competition)
What are the average fees paid to recruiters? (compensation)
What resources can I use to build a candidate pool? (sourcing)
What resources can I use to win business? (marketing)
Will I enjoy working this desk specialty? (mental health)
Can I own the space, can I brand this space as mine? (branding)
Once you do decide on a new desk specialty, based on the data, the first thing to do is think about branding yourself. I’ll focus on the other questions in my next few blogs. A great example of branding is Harry Joiner and his site MarketingHeadhunter.com
How easy is it to brand yourself? Two areas that I know are hot are Physical Therapists and Nanotechnology. Very different, but both very hot. So I went out to GoDaddy.com and checked the following web sites:
The first Physical Therapist Recruiter to purchase the Broadlook Suite, you can have that site for free. (I have no passion for that desk). New clients only.
Don’t ask for nanotechnologyrecruiter.com. Nanotech excites me. It’s mine.
I am behind the times. Kicking back tonight I caught the Apple TV commercial that you can now access facebook with the iPhone. My facebook profile needs updating. I do love my iPhone, so I jumped on and learned that AmyBeth Hale was having coffee with her bro and that her space heater was on the blink. Not the information I was looking for, but, the ease of accessing it made me think (I am a fan of AmyBeth, so don’t say any different).
The biggest explosion of the social networks will be when voice recognition nears 100%. Yes, everyone types, but we are just putting up with it because we don’t have something better. Think. Microsoft software is now in cars. It does voice recognition. Microsoft invested in facebook. Soon we will be seeing in AmyBeth’s profile that she just took a left turn on the drive over to the next SourceCon event. AmyBeth won’t have to type it in. It will all be controlled by a set of preferences. If she does not want the world to know her whereabouts, that option gets turned off. Technology converges and then excelerates. The key elements are (1) Superior/intelligent input devices and (2) rules to determine what to do with the input. We will see it.
Back to the stream of thought: Ease of access to information. Back on facebook. Political commercial on TV. Check out how the candidates are doing. Search on each candidate. Stats found:
In race John McCain 59,902 facebook supporters Hillary Clinton 113,248 facebook supporters Barack Obama 515,332 facebook supporters
Mike Huckabee - not on first page of results for “Mike Huckabee”
Not in race, but worth mentioning Ron Paul 84,145 facebook supporters John Edwards 32,630 facebook supporters
Wow. The Internet cannot, will not be ignored in this election. Ignore it or don’t leverage it is political death. It will be interesting how the numbers affect momentum and final results. Businesses and consultancies will be built on the analysis of this information and how it affects the real world. Keep in mind that this is the presidential election and we are seeing it many months in advance. Closer to election day we will start to see the congressional candidates more visible as well. They are there now, we just don’t see “facebook groups” for state and local elections popping up. We will.
On the other hand Ron Paul is doing better on facebook than John McCain, but he is out of the race. Interesting variables. Where is the buzz to influence ratio? Ron Paul, buzz, McCain has the support of the voters. I take no sides here, I just find it interesting. I’m curious.
This data can and will be data mined. What will be done with this information once it is stored? What information do you add to the social network? Who will cross reference this data with national cell phone databases? Who will I be getting calls from on my cell phone come November?
Has anyone thought of a version of the do-not-call-list for data stored on social networks? One repository with permissions for usage of data. Google has their Open Social system for working with many social networks. Maybe someone can leverage it.
Never know where a blog is going until I’m done. Meeting with my adopt-a-blogger Dan Hughes in the early am. Should I spend time posting my appt on facebook or find a facebook appointment interceptor widget? I vote widget.
For those expecting a technology blog today, you can skip this posting.
The most common comment I get from people reading my blog is “thanks for the original content”. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Many of us are tired of “me too” postings. Reposting Youtube, reposting of this, reposting of that. Why is this? Why is there essentially a culture of copy out there? What can we do to fix it? Many of my readers are recruiters. Well, if you are a recruiter then you must recruit or better yet, adopt a blogger.
What stops someone who has much to say… from saying it? As easy as setting up a Wordpress blog is, it will stop most non-technical people in their tracks.
I was having a discussion with Dan Hughes, one of the people who helped build and grow Broadlook Technologies with me. Dan wants to blog. Dan did not know where to start. We even thought of a name for his site (The Sales Trench). Weeks later, no blog. So I’m adopting Dan. I registered SalesTrench.com, installed Wordpress for him and configured it.
Adoption is not a one time event.
I will be pestering the heck out of Dan to get some of his great ideas down. Right now, the site is empty, so, Dan, you are out there, the world is waiting, now you have to write.
Dan and I talk almost every day, he can’t escape. I’ll be a blog-parent until he flies from the nest. Dan, happy birthday. Have fun with the site!
Call to bloggers
Who will you adopt? Can you think of someone with great ideas that really should be writing them down? Adopt them, help them, encourage them, pester them if you must. More unique content will lift us all. Send me a note about your adoption.
I am in Disney World. My 4 year old daughter crashed in the hotel room after a non-stop day of fun. It’s a happy place. I’m happy. I quickly check my email and what do I get? Blog spam. Lots of it. Ok, good, I’m happy I’ve got a bunch of readers now. For those of you who leave comments email me directly, thank you. I enjoy the feedback, positive and otherwise, as long as it is thought out.
But 50 blog spams? Ouch, I didn’t sign up to be an administrator and a human spam filter. (please oh experienced bloggers out there, tell me what you do to avoid this.)
The blog spam gave me an idea. It is a cool one. I have often received spam at my private email address even though it is one I never have given anyone. This private email I use to register for sites that I never intend on using again. (newspapers, register for white papers, etc). The strange thing is that the spam I get in this email account has nothing to do with sites I registered for. Someone is selling my information. Are they breaking the terms of service for their site? I don’t know.
A discovery process. Here is what I am going to do:
Step 1: Setup
-create a fictitious company
-register a new domain.
-not use my real name & make whois information private
-add phony names, titles & emails to the site. VP of sales, Director of Marketing, etc
-add some basic content to the site and make sure the search engines can find it.
Step 2: Seeding
-Register for as many sites as I can. For each site, I will use a unique email and name that is not printed or listed anywhere for the fictitious company domain. In addition, I am going to save the privacy terms of each site in a database.
-Save every email for each unique email address. Each email should only be getting email from one source.
-Let the experiment run for a period, it might be 6 months to a year.
-I will make sure to include all the major email services (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) and I will always select “NO” to share my information with partner companies (when that option is available)
Step 3: Publish
-all sites registered for
-dates & sources which each unique email received email from
Who is breaking terms of service? What is the implication of registering on various dot com sites? It should be an interesting experiment. If something like this has been done already. I would like to see the research.
hmm, on second thought, this seems like a darn good deal of work.
Now I think I’m looking for an intern who wants to do a research project. Anybody have a referral? I’ll give them full access to the Broadlook set of Internet research tools.
To many ideas, too little time. Daughters awake, back to the magic kingdom. Time for fireworks!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asking every new prospect and client, how many Internet passwords they have to remember. The question has several levels.
“How many places on the Internet do you log into on a regular basis”, I ask
Usually the answer is 4-8.
“What about associations, alumni sites, facebook, myspace, LinkedIN…sites that you may not access every day?”
Usually the answer is “another 10 sites”
“Ok, what about sites that you have signed up for, but may only need to log into once in a blue moon. Examples, account management for your cell phone provider, your 401K account, sites like classmates.com, etc”?
Usually the answer is “10 or more”
“Lastly, what about sites you signed up for and you do not expect to return to in the next year. Althought you still may need to access the it in the future to update account, billing or contact information?”
Typically I get 20, 50, no idea, or “lost count”
This is when the average sales rep or recruiter realizes they have anywhere from 25-100 (or more) places they have have passwords to. (Personally, I have well over 200 and I’ve lost count).
Then it gets fun.
“Do you use the same password?” I ask
95% of the time I get a …….YES.
This is a security nightmare. What happens if facebook or myspace or one of these well trafficed sites gets comprised? Then someone has YOUR password to all the other sites you use.
Yes, there are password managers. I am not a fan of them. You can’t take them everywhere and computers do crash. Today, I present a humanistic solution to password management.
It’s a simple concept I call password schemas. It starts with picking a core password and then modifying it based on the attibutes of the place you are using. I am going to use my dog’s name as an example of a core password. Her name is Captain Janeway, so the core password is CaptJane (for those of you thinking it…no, I don’t use my dog’s name).
Password schemas, used badly, can be dangerous. You could expose all your passwords should someone figure it out. However, using a schema is far superior to using the same password everywhere. The more creative you get with the schemas, the better your protection is.
Here are some schemas: (I just made up names for these). For each schema I am going to use mail.yahoo.com as the site example
Alpha front/end: using the first letters of a site in front or end of your core
yaCaptJane CaptJaneya ( “ya” comes from first letters in “yahoo”)
Syllable front/end: use syllables of the site in front or end of your core
yhCaptJane CaptJaneyh (”yh” from first two syllables in “yahoo”)
Keyboard replacement: In the password below, I used the key above each of the letters “CaptJane” on the keyboard. Example: the “D” key is above the “C” and the “q” key is above the “a”, etc. Downfall here is that may need the keyboard in front of you to remember your password.
Keyboard wrap: if the site name starts with a “y”, start with y and use the next 7 additional characters to the right. If you hit the last letter, wrap around to the other side of the keyboard.
These are just a few ideas of password schemas. One of my favorites is to replace vowels with full words: example A=Alpha, B=Bravo, C=Charley. The key thing is to sit down with a paper and pen and create your own. Be creative, have fun and come up with something that you will remember. Make sure it would be hard for someone to guess your password by looking at a few examples. The combinations are endless.
Captain Janeway & Donato
(she thinks she is a lap dog)
I’m taking a redeye back from San Francisco after attending Salesforce.com’s tour de Force and the rollout of force.com. We are all familiar with the Software as a service model (SaaS). Many of the successful ATS vendors in the recruting market have grown their businesses with the SaaS model. Salesforce.com is now taking SaaS to a new level. They call it Platform as a service or PaaS. Salesforce.com has a new development environment that allows developers and companies to base applications on the same infrastructure that salesforce.com is built from. This is significant event, here is why.
With the Force.com framework, you can build applications that look nothing like salesforce.com or you can create “mashups” that combine salesforce.com, Gmail, Yahoo Maps, etc. I have seen many email systems from ATS vendors, some are very very good. But none of them come remotely close to Google’s Gmail.
Ok, what am I getting at? Imagine this: An army of developers writing bolt on applications. Job posting mashups, resume parsing mashups, search engine aggregator mashups, objection-response mashups, etc, etc. Basically, an entrereneur can now create a complete ATS system and not have to worry about core software, hardware and datacenters. Most of the basics are covered by salesforce.com and Google applications. Yes, the workflow and business logic will have to developed, but taking a job order is not that complicated. I should mention that there is even an open source ATS system right now, CatsOne, see it here: CATS.
The playing field has been leveled. APEX, the salesforce programming language is similar to JAVA. Salesforce has over a million users.
Why was I at tour de force? Broadlook is salesforce.com’s latest partner. We just launched our Contact Capture for salesforce.com on the salesforce appExchange. We use our Broadlook Universal Exporter (BLUE) to send data to Salesforce.com. What that means is that ALL Broadlook applications, now work with salesforce.com. So if any company or entrepreneur want to create their own ATS system, it will be 100% compatible with all Broadlook applications day 1.
This is a trend we will continue to see over the next decade. Barriors of entry being continually reduced. Exciting stuff.
If is also amazing that this idea of mashups came up recently on the recruiting animal show. Someone said that the company that creates it will make a zillion. Well the platform is here, salesforce is the first mover in the space, but I predict that we will see additional offerings from other vendors, google, microsoft, etc. The end result is that everyone wins.
While salesforce is the first mover, they will not be the only mover. The real message here is
1. PaaS will distrupt Saas, due to ease of entry
2. The barrier of entry for someone to create a SaaS model has been significantly reduced and it will continue to become easier.
3. Look for PaaS from multiple vendors. (ie Recruitingblogs.com is based on Ning.com) another example of PaaS. This was not available 2 years ago.
For the past month I’ve been immersing myself in comparing and contrasting different search engines. If you work in the search space like I do, and you have a pulse, it is hard to stop yourself from being exposed to articles about this sort of thing…but I’ve been trying. Why? I’ll detail that in another post, but basically, I’m working on a search engine concept. …So I’ve purposely avoided these articles, as I have a theory.
It’s about the creative process. Most people who have worked with me at Broadlook over the last few years understand my theory and bias, whether they agree with it or not, they know how I feel and they give me the space to follow my method as it works for me.
The basic concept is that you should avoid reviewing others work in a field before you think up your original concept for a project. I actually got the idea from a short story I read in high school by Orson Scott Card called Unaccompanied Sonata. Story in short: A young boy, a musical genius, is removed from society so his musical creations are original. At the end of the story he sneaks away from his encampment and hears the music of Mozart. Upon his return, he is cast out as his music was forever influenced by Mozart and no longer original.
Before I sit down with our team to create a new recruiting software product, I put myself through a black out period. Whatever I am working on, I avoid the concept from outside sources at all costs. This allows my creative side to be creative. The copy factor reduces. It’s like when you find yourself in a totally dark room and your eyes start seeing things. Your brain is trying to stay busy & stimulated. The same thing will happen if you deprive yourself of input stimuli on the topic you are interested in…you will start to think.
Once you have your ideas worked out, then and only then review outside content. Not reviewing external “art” after you’ve gone through your initial creative process is foolhardy.
The “me to” creations coming from most dot com’s are a sign that they start by copying first, not creating.
I was on the Recruiting Animal Show today and one of the comments was about creating original content vs. reposting information. For those people who want to start blogging original content, avoid reading blogs at all costs. Shally Steckerl talked about the “Signal to noise ratio” on the show today. It’s all about eliminating the noise. Eliminate the noise and the creativity will come.
Having your own custom search engine (CSE) via a Google coop can be a competitive differentiator. This is a free service that you can access by navigating to www.google.com/coop. Why would you want to create a CSE? What is the value?
How about stomping your competition? Is that enough? If so, read on…
At the basic level think of it this way: The World Wide Web is very large, too large for you to type in a term like “medical devices” into Google and get a manageable set of results.
What if you wanted to only look for “medical devices” inside university research departments? You could try and use Boolean expressions (university and “medical device”). Right? Wrong…This is pedestrian. Yes someday when search engines can guess what you want, maybe this will be possible. Semantic search is not there yet. We’re at the pre-cock roach stage in artificial intelligence.
So what is wrong with searching for University and “medical device”?
(1) search engines are keyword-based
(2) therefore they are limited to the keywords you type in so
(3) the word “university” may not be on every page of a university where medical devices is mentioned
(4) your search will have partial results from the good potential results
(5) you will get millions (2.49 million…I checked it) of web pages across the Internet that happen to have University and “medical Device” on the page.
(6) you will think Google sucks and get frustrated
CSE to the rescue! A simple solution.
Google is searching everything. Why not limit it to a smaller set of websites? That is what a custom search engine is all about. ** Limiting **
“Custom Search Engine” sounds complex, but it is actually easier to work with a CSE than it is too work with massive one-size-fits-all engine.
With a Google Coop I can create a search engine that only searches Universities. Therefore I can search for “medical devices” and I know that the results are coming exclusively from University sites. Easy.
Take-aways:
Using a custom search engine is easier to use than a monolithic search engine (MSE) because you are dealing with a known universe of possibilities
You get results faster with a CSE
It is less expensive to train users to work with a CSE than a MSE
You will get faster user adoption with a CSE
Your competitors don’t have your CSE
Final Thoughts:
The big movement on the CSE front is one of open collaboration. Create a cool new engine and let everyone use it. Since everyone else is writing about this, it’s covered, so I’ll opt out. What about the dark underbelly? What are people not talking openly about? How about creating your own search engine for your exclusive use, a competitive differentiator, a category killer for the sake of sheer profit? I have mine and I’m not talking, but here are some ideas. Practical capitalism.
List of ideas for Google Coop’s
1. Create a CSE that inlcudes every one of your clients. Include the CSE search box at the top of your Web based CRM or ATS system. (google makes this easy to do…review the video in this post). You now have a search box in your CRM that searches only your clients. Possibilities …wow! Broadlook is creating a service that will do this for you. Look for it soon at http://www.broadlook.com/products/engineme
2. Do the same as #1, but for your prospects
3. Compile a CSE consisting of all free resume sites.
4. Create a CSE for all job boards in a specific niche.
Here are some examples of google coop’s already built
5. Green Maven http://www.greenmaven.com
Green Maven is the most comprehensive Green Search Engine. This search engine emphases websites with Green and Social Values, as approved by a team of Green MBA editors. Try these queries: shoes, solar panels
7.Global Voices Weblog Search Custom Search Engine homepage
Search the global weblogs featured on the Global Voices website. Try these queries: Ghana, Sudan
8. Intuit Small Business Site http://www.jumpup.com
Intuit has used their 20 years of small business experience to evaluate and select the most useful small business resources on the web and provide them to JumpUp. Try these queries: taxes, marketing
10. Real Climate http://www.realclimate.org
RealClimate.org provides expert opinions on the science of climate change. Since this subject has become rather politicized, the quality of information available on the web varies. Using Google Custom Search Engine, they have created a searchable subset of the web that they believe provides the most reliable information. Try these queries: Greenhouse gases, CO2
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