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 with 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:
PHYSICALTHERAPISTRECRUITER.COM (FREE)
NANOTECHNOLOGYRECRUITER.COM (FREE)
BIOFUELRECRUITER.COM (FREE)
FUELCELLRECRUITER.COM (TAKEN)
GREENENERGYRECRUITER.COM (FREE)
Most of them were free and only one was taken. Again, all hot, hot, hot.
Heads up. Don’t try to go register, PHYSICALTHERAPISTRECRUITER.COM or NANOTECHNOLOGYRECRUITER.COM because I just registered them. The others are free as of this writing. I may not fetch the 99K that Jason Davis is asking for CEOjobs.com, but they will sell for a hefty profit.
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.
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!
