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
It was 3 year ago when I was first contacted by an offshore research firm in India.
Several of my sole-operator clients loved our software tools, but they did not have the manpower to make effective use of the powerful technology. Our clients hired the offshore firm to run the software for them. As it helped with client retention, I worked out a deal to train the offshore researchers. My relationship was still with my client and I was able to observe and learn from afar. Offshore research can pay huge dividends, but it can also cost you if you don’t what you are getting yourself into. Here are some rules of thumb that I learned from success and failures.
1. Offshore research is a service, not a technology offering. It’s not about efficiency or cost savings, it’s about relationship. The offshore firm should have service, service and service in their DNA.
2. Don’t treat people like a number. This sounds like common sense, the golden rule, etc. However, somehow the terms “offshore” or “remote” has a tendency to depersonalize the relationship. Don’t let that happen.
3. Use their real name. If one of your offshore contacts name is Rajaranan, don’t call him Joe, Bob, or Peter. Call centers started this protocol of giving foreign workers western names. This may work for a call centers, but it is a poor idea for someone you work with on a long term basis. Use their real name, insist on it, you might butcher it, but they will respect you more than if you call then Jimmy.
4. Beware of the over-emphasis on “dedicated” researcher. Want to know a dirty secret? Offshore firms are absolutely notorious for placing 2 workers on 3 accounts. When I learned about this, I was livid. Plain and simple, this is dishonest, and corrupt. If the price is too good to be true, you’ve got a 2 for 3 situation.
5. Have a plan. If you cannot articulate what your current process is. It will be hard for a researcher to achieve any level of success.
6. Make time. In the recruitment arena, an offshore researcher will take about 15 minutes per day of your time to manage them. Sometimes more and sometimes less. Be prepared.
7. Beware of metered results. If you are getting 8-10 resumes per day, every day…something is wrong. When I was a recruiter, some days I would get nothing and some days I would get a windfall of candidates. Wake up and smell the appeasement. This is usually a symptom of firms that do the 2 for 3 trick. Don’t except it, call them on it.
8. Undergo a process audit. Before connecting a new client with a remote researcher, Broadlook performs a technology and process audit. This has been critical for our clients to understand what their current processes are, and what resources they have to accomplish their goals.
9. Have defined timelines for each task and a weekly schedule outlining what they should do and when. This is more important at the beginning stages.
10. Know how to do their job. This will give you insight into how long repetitive tasks will take and will allow you should budget for them.
11. Host onsite. With todays technology there is no reason for research to be done on a terminal thousands of miles away. Set up an in-house research station and give them remote access to it. You can use logmein for free to accomplish this.
12. Watch them work. Requires in-house research station, but wow, you can really tell something about someone’s efficiency by watching them work for an hour.
13. Work with several firms. When I compared results of one firm against another, I was surprised. All firms are not equal.
14. Get a referral. If you need recruitment research done, don’t use a firm that does offshore mapping services. Most firms will take any business they can get. Make sure you are picking a firm that specialized.
15. Check certifications, training and tenure. Insist on a researcher with at least six months of experience. If you have multiple researchers, it is ok to have a new person as long as the team lead is a veteran. All researchers I work with go through Broadlook’s certification program.
Donato Diorio is a leading authority on Internet Research. Donato is the Founder & CEO with Broadlook Technologies, a firm that “Leverages the Internet” for recruitment, sales and marketing research. Thousand of companies worldwide use Broadlook’s recruiting software.
Massive online databases vs. individually siloed data…lets take a look.
There is a movement going on, right now. Companies are starting to abandon large subscription databases and building their own silos of data. Why?
Lets first examine the general trend of technology. When a new technology first gets introduced, it tends to be (1) more complex, (2) more expensive and (3) centralized. Job Boards for example. First there were the large boards like headhunder and Monster.com, next niche job boards, and then large corporate job boards. Now even small recruiting firms post their own job postings on their own web sites. The trend once a technology matures is (1) less complex (2) less expensive and (3) ubiquitous and decentralized. Less complex because the technology is streamlined and reengineered and less expensive and decentralized due to technology improvements and economies of scale.
Watching this trend has been one of my hobbies, it’s universal like the 80-20 rule. It’s time to give it a name. Expensive-Niche-Decentralized or E-N-D.
An entire series of technologies that follow the END trend. Web based CRM is also starting to follow this curve. Salesforce.com = the early days of monster.com. In the last few years, many new CRM’s specific to vertical markets have sprung up. Recently there is a movement to self-hosted web based CRM. SugarCRM is open source and Microsoft CRM can be hosted in-house. CRM, even web-based, is decentralizing.
Quick post today. We recently completed testing on Broadlook DIVER with support for Google Desktop Search. You can now use Diver to search the web for contacts AND, leveraging Google Desktop Search, you can now search files, emails, and documents on your computer and network.
The Diver integration allows you to actually do something with the information found by Google. Most recruiters have 1000’s of resumes sitting around on their hard drive. Let Google Desktop Search index them, and Diver extract them. I’m looking for final phase testers. First 5 Diver users to call me, get a week headstart on the rest. Press release will be later in the week. Search gurus…start your engines.
Most lists are just plain dead. I waited until December before posting this blog. Back in Jan 2007, I went to inc.com to review the INC 500 list from 2006. What I found astonished me. About 25% of the companies listed did not have a website. I fired up one of Broadlook’s skunk works tools (Grinder) and quickly found out …that out of 500 companies, I could find a website for 496 of them. This was right after the list went online. Keep in mind that the INC list is high-touch. Each company gets interviewed..the works. Yet at the time of publication, the most important piece of information to learn about a company, the website URL was missing.
Fast forward to Dec 2007: I just checked: The list has not been updated. The list is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
This is why real-time data is soooo important. If you work with data from online directories, expect it to be dead too.
Breathelife into a dead list. Using Broadlook tools Eclipse to pull the list in seconds and Grinder to fill in the missing URL’s, I now have a living, breathing list. I can run this list through Profiler and get 5, 10, 50 or 100’s of contacts per company. These names are not going to be found in online databases. Strategic advantage, all from a dead list.
For those of you who have Broadlook’s Eclipse, I’ve included the “enhanced” INC 500 list at the end of the post, with the missing URL’s filled in. You can capture it with the “Get table” command in about 5 seconds.
I was going to avoid the Black Friday lines and go online to do some shopping at sears.com. When my browser reported a “404″ error (page not found), I assumed my home Internet connection was down. How could Sears.com be offline on one of the busiest shopping days of the year? Quickly checking Google.com, Yahoo.com, Broadlook.com…all online, I ruled out me having a bad Internet connection. So I tried Sears.com again and got this page:
For those IT recruiters out there: someone could use a new webmaster.
Now I am forgiving, I tried every 15 minutes and I got into the site 2 hours later. I was catching up on emails so I had time. I am curious how many sales they lost? I was looking for replacement parts for my grill, so I was locked to sears. Those people who might have been comparison shopping, I can’t see them waiting around.
This made me think about a webmasters role. What should it be? Should the person that let this happen be fire? Did they get hacked? I’ve seen cases and experienced it personally when a webmaster is a hindrance to getting things done. A webmasters role should be to execute the vision and orders of executive management. In the case of Sears.com, I would think a good shopping experience would be paramount. Oh, and no down time. Period. “Look kid, we go down and your fired. This is Chicago kid-o, lose me a million and it’s cement shoes for you.”
Downtime for a retail organization is equated to loss of business and perhaps death of business.
The role of a webmaster at a company like sears is not all that different from a small company like Broadlook. However the “webmaster” at sears is most likely an entire team of people. I’ve noticed some trends. The single and small operators maintain tight controls over their websites. The messaging is usually concise and it reflects the founding philosophy of the company. As a company grows to the size where a second level of management is introduced, I’ve noticed those companies move away in their core messaging. This is to be expected, that first level of management is removing some workload from the founding executives. There are many areas that would be better served for middle management. Messaging is not one of them. Later, as a company grows to have an experience executive in charge of messaging, the web messaging moves reflects the original vision or even improves on it.
Until now, I had no idea where this sears post was going. I do now. It is sort of a self autopsy on working with my own webmaster, past and present. For me, each of my blogs is a personal journey of discovery. If they were not, then I am writing for everyone else and not myself. I am not that giving. This blog is for me and my discovery process, first and foremost. If others read and get something out of it, great. If they don’t, that’s ok because I’m learning here.
Regarding my working with a webmaster, in the past, I failed. My autopsy tells me that it is management’s role to convey with clarity what is expected of the webmaster and the website. I did not do this. That was my mistake. The same mistake that I see happening at many growing companies. Time to change.
Google is fast. It fits pop culture. Sit down, brainstorm on a topic. Type some keywords and get results. You’ve all done it 100’s, and maybe 1000’s of times.
Here is a secret. Slow down cowboy. Plan your search. Use a low tech solution…it’s called paper. Plan, get your ideas down on paper, then search.
Occasionally, I drop into a client training session when a new client is getting their one on one training on Broadlook’s tools. In this case, the client was looking to use our Diver software to find a Benefits Administrator from a local company. They were not out trolling resume boards, they were targeting a specific company.
For those who have forgotten, it’s called direct recruitment.
This is my 2nd posting today. Why? I crashed my computer after completing my last blog. Gone, lost, bye bye. So I had to rewrite the entire posting. I’ve been working with computers since I was 15 years old, so with nearly 30 years of writing with computers, I am no stranger to crashes and loss. One of my first jobs as a software engineer was working for a company that did real time backups.
What made this blog, this writing, stick in my mind more than others in the past? The packers were winning, the baby was crying and my two older children were louder than the loudest sales rep at Broadlook (that is loud). The fact that I could get anything done today was an accomplishment. So I was proud to get anything done at all. When I lost it, I had to do a rewrite.
The rewrite took 1/4 the time that the original post took. The writing wasn’t as good.
This made me think of how important backups are. As I think back over the years, when I lost something in a crash, the rewrites were never as good. I’m not talking about revisions. Revisions can be much much better. A true rewrite is starting from scratch; you don’t have your orginal thoughts and inspiration, it tends to lack something. In addition, rewriting, after you lost your original, seems more like work than inspiration. Maybe that is why I am writing this post. I can’t end the evening with a rewrite.
I’d love to hear the experiences of others. Orginal inspiration vs. rewrites..what are the attributes of each?
After reading about the new Google Android cell phone platform (the Gphone), it rekindled an idea that I had at a conference some time ago. Turns out there is no “phone” behind the gPhone. Instead it is an open source platform for cell phones.
About 2 years ago, I was a member of a technology panel at a recruiting conference. While one of my fellow panelist was finishing answering a question, a cell phone started ringing in the audience.
On most panels, audience questions naturally get directed to the right person; the panel learns quicky how to use each others expertise and take or defer questions as needed.
I got a question right after the cell phone rang. The specifics of the question, I do not remember. It was something about how to apply the right mix of technology in a recruitment process (right up my alley). A cell phone ringing 10 minutes after the event MC asked everyone to turn their phones off perturbed me.
With microphone in hand, I addressed the crowd. ”I’m wondering if the people in the audience today heard the announcement about turning off cell phones. It is quite disturbing for the people on stage. I guess I don’t understand it. In the last 30 minutes, I’ve heard 4 cell phones.” Several people noticibly slinked down in their seats…most likely the offenders. The crowd was expecting that I was going to chastise them all.
In reality, I had an idea that I wanted to share with the audience: The no ring zone. The topic of the panel was technology in recruitment.
Here is a general idea of what I said
“We’ve been talking about the right application of technology and when to apply it. Here is a perfect example. What if there was a device set at the door of this conference, that when passed by, set cell phones to vibrate only? Call it a no ring zone. In high schools around the country, cell phones are being banned. As a parent, I want my children to be able to reach me and I want to be able to reach them. What if this same device could set high schools to parent only ring zones?”
I got a good deal of nodding heads, and a few emails from people over the last year about this idea. I’ve had good conversations about it and it always ends up with our agreement that unless there was some unifying standard behind the cell phones, we wouldn’t be seeing this feature any time soon.
Now that Google has the Android platform, we just need some developer to create a single application, make it free, and market it to speakers, conferences, high schools and parents. Not a bad little market.
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