I’ve been asked for a real-world example of what can be done with data mining.

Here it is.

Here is the ROI:

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 gratuitously promoting 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

This is my first and hopefully only repost.   

The history behind the Broadlook logo

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.

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.

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.

           DqmbUqhc

Alpha front/end + keyboard replacement.    Combining schemas

          yaDqmbUqhc          

Vowel replacement:  replace  O with 0, replace A with @, replace E with &

         C@pJ@n&

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.

       yuiopqwe    (yahoo)
       ghjklasd       (google)
       hjklasdf        (hotmail)

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. 

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.

Ignoring this trend is eqivilant to putting your head in the sand regarding Moore’s law, Kryder’s law, or Nielsen’s law.

What are the variables that will cause data siloing to follow END?

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cisco has a cool new system for teleconferencing.  It’s called telepresence.  This is the next evolution in web conferencing with the idea to make you feel like you are really in the room with multiple people from remote locations.  Cameras are lined up in such a way that it appears as you’ve got eye contact with the person in the remote location.

I was curious about the topic so I did a few search engine queries.  Almost everything was about Cisco, I had to dive deep to find some variety.  Google was only giving me the popular side of the story.  I needed to dig deeper. 

Using Broadlook’s Market Mapper tool. I was able to find several vendors that have telepresence offerings.  Time to do search: 5 minutes.  Pages I would have had to weed through on Google: over 3000 (would need 3 separate queries). 

Here is a partial list. 

 What I learned in 5 minutes is that Cisco is NOT the inventor of the technology and a closer look should be given to companies that were the poineers like Telnetix.  Good research yields results that the popularity ranking algorythms of the search engines pass over.  Cisco is big and popular.  So mob mentality rules with all the blogs and posts about Cisco’s offering.  If you want the mob version of a topic, use Google. If you want something that people, not algorthms control, try wikipedia.  If you want to take research into your hands based on your decisions, check out Broadlook.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepresence