New technology alert: the killer app in recruiting?

Check out TechCrunch's post today about Spock, a new entry in the people search space that has yet to launch. You won't be able to view the site yet - they're still in invitation-only beta mode, for which you can request an invitation - but promise to have over 100,000,000 profiles available for search when they launch.

If I'm ZoomInfo, which claims to have 35 million people, or Spoke, which claims roughly the same number (and powers Jobster and AIRS' people search engines), I'm not quite shaking in my boots yet. Both of these applications provide paths (although not always productive ones) to get the contact information on the people you do find as well as consolidated information on the companies they work in. Just getting a name isn't usually enough for recruiters that are very often afraid of picking up the phone and I don't think Spock is really too focused on solving the unique challenges of recruiters or salespeople - YET.

But with a promise of triple the profiles of any of the major recruiting database services, it isn't a stretch to think that they could think about it from a talent mining perspective and add on a couple of features here and there that position them against a ZoomInfo or Spoke, who should be thinking about erecting some serious barriers to entry beyond just company information and, perhaps, re-evaluating their revenue models before they are completely disrupted by what I assume will be an advertising-funded people search engine like Spock.

For now, Spock will likely be a service that competes for recruiters' attention with Google, and if they can provide additional utility beyond the insanely long, complicated search strings that sourcers often need to enter to dig through content sites, multiple social networks, books, lawn furniture, etc. to get to the actual people, then they'll have something potentially very special and useful for recruiters.

Comments

[Leif]

Spock sounds great! Some comments for Germans see attached:
http://identity20.wordpress.com
Best Leif from Munich

[Colin Kingsbury]

The URL gives me agita- Spock... you mean Spoke? Hard to say whether the similarity helps or hurts. I'm a bit insane when it comes to unambiguous URLs, especially when you're talking a pure-Web business.