ZoomInfo

Because I got an e-mail from him, and because he's always been a friend to the blogosphere, I want to pitch the ZoomInfo product to any local recruiters looking to improve their sourcing firepower.

ZoomInfo is a database of online information.  Basically, ZoomInfo scrapes online data to build up a list of people and companies, and then allows you to access that data for your sourcing.  Think of it as the Hoover's for people.  If you need to find twenty people in Charlotte with the title, Director of IT, ZoomInfo is the place to go to build that list.

ZoomInfo was an advertiser for This Week, the weekly recruiting newsletter I did for a year for Recruiting.com, and they also cross-promote bloggers in webinars and in their newsletter (I even had a column in there once, and may again).

Search Engine Watch has a good story on them.

"Searching for information about people you know, like friends, neighbors, ex-lovers (and admit it—yourself!) is such a common activity on Google that it has become a verb. Problem is, Googling someone who hasn't accumulated a lot of PageRank or other Google cred du jour is at best a crap shoot, with results that make it all but impossible to distinguish between John Doe and Jon Doh.

ZoomInfo was created specifically to help searchers locate accurate, reliable information about people. The service crawls the web much like others search engine, but focuses on information about people. Using a combination of artificial intelligence and natural language techniques, ZoomInfo connects information about individuals from disparate sources and gradually builds up online resumes that include employment information, educational background and other details."

If you are a recruiter and your managers keep complaining about the lack of passive talent, consider looking at ZoomInfo.  This is not a paid endorsement.

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