I was made aware of Zoom Info the other day. It’s “the search engine for discovering people, companies and relationships.”
According to their site, “ZoomInfo continually scans millions of corporate Web sites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings and other public online sources. From these Websites ZoomInfo automatically compiles a person’s Web Summary, which focuses on their professional achievements and background – the stuff they are proud of…”
No doubt some, at first, will be creeped out by finding cached web pages with details of their lives so readily displayed without their prior input or knowledge.
Money puts a more positive spin on it:
If you recoil from networking events, never get around to putting out feelers and have no clue how to “work a room,” congratulations! You’re the ideal candidate for a terrific new job.
In human-resources lingo, you’re a “passive” prospect — and a hot commodity these days because employers know that top workers are often treated well and thus may not be looking around.
So-called passive recruiting isn’t new, of course. It’s what executive recruiters have always done.
But the tactic is increasingly being used for positions lower down the corporate ladder, and that trend is being facilitated by giant databases of employment data gleaned from publicly available sources like press releases, SEC filings and articles in trade publications.
The industry leader, ZoomInfo in Waltham, Mass., has 27 million profiles in its database, while lesser-known competitor Ziggs.com has about 3 million.
Upon finding that Zoom Info had data on me, I joined so I’d be in a better position to shape “the report.” Thus far, Ziggs has nothing on me.
I’d like to hear what others think about these services. They are clearly different from social networking sites like LinkedIn, where one’s info is volunteered, not mined. Perhaps, the mined data is more accurate, if not as up to date.
