Liquid HR

Naymz.com business model and context

So I got the latest invitation several weeks back for Naymz.com. Yet again, I'm sure this newcomer is experiencing that sudden burst of hockey stick growth. The formula goes something like this:

1: Come up with a good concept (yes, I'll give you that) for an online networking or HR firm.
2: Create a nice easy to use interface - Web 2.0. style.
3: Get some early users to bang out the bugs - hopefully.
4: Create an incentive for inviting people (some way of giving them money, either virutal or otherwise, usually).
5: Turn on the linkedin / plaxo contact books APIs to get your first burst of users. (i.e. "invite your friends from linkedin.com! click here...")
6: Enjoy the Hockey stick growth of users signing up.
7: ? I don't know what happens next. Do these companies succeed? Probably too early to tell.

So starting at point 1 above, Naymz is addressing the age-old dilemma of one's online reputation. If we do more business transactions online, trust and similar intangibles become more of an issue. This has been addressed before on other website, but perhaps not with the singular focus (and community) of Naymz. After all, Ebay has a well known rating system for buyers and sellers, but this (last I checked) is tied to Ebay transactions. Zoominfo and pipl and lots of other info aggregation websites try to bring pertinent information together from across the web to establish credibility for a person. But Naymz seems different enough to mention.

At first blush Naymz seems a bit unique in that it is a community site designed solely around people vouching for one another, while many of the others try to reach across the Internet to ascertain reputation information. But even then, you can make a comparison between Naymz and Rapleaf, which both aggregates information and allows users to rate one another. Heck, even their seals of approvals look the same. Outside of this feature, Naymz doesn't seem robust enough as a community to attract people.
Liquid CV also has a "trust rating" function, but this feature is not broadly marketed.

Now, Naymz seems to have another trick up their sleeve: for a premium, they'll make you easier to find on the Internet via a custom domain and search engine promotion,. Hmmm. On one hand, this crosses over into promotion /advertising, but on the other hand it helps pull people into the naymz site and the reputation domain. They'll also give you identity verification for this premium. However, when I looked at the Naymz identity verification service, it was Trufina -- that is, another website. Trufina sells its serve for 4.95 USD (I think a one time charge), while Naymz wants premium users to fork over 9.95 USD monthly. If you use Trufina (and, presumably, pass the verification check), it gives you Naymz reputation points. Fehh. I'd prefer monopoly money.

For the premium price, there are also some reporting features about who has visited your profile, but I felt them rather boring. Maybe just because I didn't see much of a teaser on the features.

The classic Internet questions remain: can they generate enough buzz and autonomy? As a community site, I would suggest not. As a personal service for broadcasting your Internet image...well, maybe. But here Naymz is getting into the domain of Google and nameservers. Providing a one-stop shop service for both reputation and personal advertising, particularly with a smooth Web 2.0 interface, is an interesting idea. But...I don't know...I'm not convinced. You need lots of features and reach across many Internet services, and great execution, assuming you don't have your own value to add.

On a bit of a tangent: if you want to provide an API for other sites to Mashup with you, people have to know that it's worth developing an interface for your API to pull reputation information. Naymz isn't even suggesting this as far as I can tell, but Rapleaf already has this (as does Zoominfo). I would like to integrate with Rapleaf, but thus far the reputation information just didn't seem accurate enough , and there aren't enough users, for an effective integration with Liquid CV's user base. None of my early adopters on Liquid CV could be found on Rapleaf's search. Just not enough reputation meat out there for me to dine upon.

Well, I think there is some value that Naymz could provide, and they might have some success after the early hockey stick burst (provided to them on the back of linkedin.com and others). But, I guess I'm just not that excited. It's a mashup. I hate to say it, but I'm on the verge of giving this company another lukewarm review. I'm getting bored with the site already. And of course, the perennial problem persists: facebook, linkedin, xing and others can just create a reputation feature and eat the lunch of the little guy here.

I'll keep digging on the site, and put this on my list of companies and technologies to revisit (like the open social API, itzbig, and others) in a subsequent posting. For now, that's enough.

Corporate culture of Infosys

Well, it's only based on a couple of contributors, but it seems as if we have some preliminary analysis of Infosys's corporate culture on liquid-cv.com.   At a high level, the interpersonal politics culture seems to be driven, in a positive way. People apparently like working in that go-getter environment.

Infosys seems to be a relatively structured company when it comes to getting day to day work done -- not surprising given its software development certifications (CMM level 5 I once heard, though I always thought that was an ideal to which a software house strives).

What is particularly impressive, I think, is the structured approach that Infosys seems to take on project reviews and similar work (i.e. "reflecting."). Of course, you need to register and make your own CCV contribution in order to get into that level detail.

Apparently, work hours are 50 - 55 on average per week -- but that's OK; it's worth putting in extra hours for rewarding work.

The importance of corporate culture in job-hunting

A lot of candidates never get around to asking the most basic of questions: what's it like to work at this company? Candidates are too busy answering questions, asking specific questions to demonstrate industry knowledge, and in general trying to be on their toes. They don't really have opportunity to find out about the basics: how many hours do people work here? WIll my personality fit in? What's the dress code? Is it a process oriented company?

Some people will be able to dig into the company's network of employees, who may reveal impressions or stories. But even this isn't scientifically itemized account of the companies values, processes, achievements, etc.

This is the next step in online networking: introducing culture and personality to the mix. Liquid-cv has already taken a crack at it with culture assessments and Corporate CVs (a collection of information, including corporate culture, regarding a hiring company), and is promising to launch more features over time. Other companies like xing.com and linkedin.com may add similar features, but may run into some constraints in terms of focus and corporate sponsorship.

Stay tuned, this is the next stage in online recruiting.

Corporate CV: what's it like to work at a company?

Corporate Culture: Part of a Corporate CV

Online personality networking and corporate culture jobhunting website Liquid CV has elicited a few early adopters to take corporate culture assesments and generate a Corporate CV for their companies -  check out Broadbean's Corporate CV and the Ovum Corporate CV. Looks like Ovum has a relatively balanced culture while broadbean's is a bit more distinctive - flexible management vs. driven day to day culture for broadbean. Also, Broadbean looks to have slightly better morale.

It will be interesting to watch what happens over time with companies as different people make their contributions to their company's culture analysis. We might get a "mushy middle" analysis where everything is pulled to the center (balanced), or we might get some real distinct culture differences between different companies.

The culture analysis is a big part of the company's Corporate CV -- but we'll no doubt get more information over time about how people feel in terms of the hours they work, the schedules they keep, and what kind of accomplishments they (and their companies) have in their respective industries.

Liquid CV: personality and corporate culture meet networking and job hunting

A lot of people searching for jobs are looking to learn about more than just a list of responsibilities the job entails. They want to know about what it's like to work at the company. What are its values? Is it process oriented? How is morale? How do managers coach you? How does HR handle career development? How many hours do people work at this company? What's the dress code?

At the same time, recruiters and managers want to reach beyond a person's CV and learn more about that person before hiring him or her. What is this person like to work with? What kind of psychometric profile does he have? Is she team oriented? A direct communicator?

In that interest, the latest version of Liquid CV has been launched! It's an IT, Telco and professional services focused open networking platform that introduces personality and corporate culture to professional networking and job hunting.

Members are able to learn about what's it like to work at a company by browsing the company's Corporate CV. There's a bit of community spirit in Liquid CV as well: to get the full view of the Corporate CV, you have to give a bit of information about your own employer by taking an assessment. Make sure to create an account first, and take the assessment once logged in. This can be done anonymously (of course).

Furthermore, a new feature allows members to specify their personality profile -- members can use basic profiling characteristics provided by Liquid CV, and also indicate their personality profile as determined by a third party psychometric and team-role profiling system -- like Myers Briggs or Belbin.This way, members can be a bit more exacting about who they contact for a job opportunity, or who they try to establish as a new professional contact.

Current and former employees, also, can finally have an intelligent way to reflect upon their employers. By taking corporate culture assessments, they can characterize their company in terms of its values and processes, and freely comment about different aspects of working there.

Liquid CV is designed to work within the Liquid HR economy, where more of the recruiting and networking process is done online, people are matched with opportunities as quickly as possible, and information about jobs and candidates flows freely while under the control of the employers and candidates themselves.

Liquid CV Analysis:

As an Information Provider, Liquid CV elicits new information about professionals' personality, and about the corporate culture of hiring companies. This information is valuable to the online recruiting and networking arena.

Liquid CV is also designed in the long term to be a Conduit : it will eventually be a platform where candidates can distribute their CV / resume if they choose. Finally, Liquid CV is architected to facilitate smart matching between people and between jobs and people. Take a look.

Notchup.com: hockey stick or hokey shtick?

Notchup.com is a new website with a cool idea. Recruiters pay members to interview them for jobs. It targets more senior professionals and sleeper candidates who already have a job, not the desperate jobhunters who are giving their CV away. This will mean that recruiters do more groundwork and prequalification before calling upon the candidate for the interview. It will therefore also mean that a higher percentage of these "calls" will translate into job offers.

Given the business model and the target audience, discretion is pretty important. So there are some less-than-airtight features designed to protect you from over exposure: you can be invisible to recruiters who use certain domains (e.g., mycurrentcompany.com) - a way to keep your current company from seeing you. Also, you can preclude recruiters from seeing you altogether -- and be visible only to hiring companies. Furthermore, you can indicate that you are "Happy, but will listen at the right price" to a pitch - a statement that's a little less offensive should your current company's HR rep find your profile on notchup.

Well, I gather notchup.com has just begun to experience exponential growth in first time users. According to an insightful business week article, they went from 200 users to 70,000 users in a few days, who then invited 900,000 more. Having read a little bit about it in techcrunch.com, I received an invitation soon after from an old B-school classmate who works at Bain consulting. This would indicate a pretty high profile average user. Of course, when I found out that I get 10% of the interview cash generated from colleagues that I sign up, I shamelessly invited my entire linkedin.com contact portfolio. (Hopefully, my contacts that are senior have developed quick and painless methods of filtering out invitations in which they have no interest.)

My Analysis:

Hmmm. At first glance, I really like this idea. Companies pay recruiters for their services already, so simply redirecting a bit of that cash to the candidates shouldn't be too hard. Professionals who ordinarily wouldn't interview are tempted to do so - tempted by money. But I think the market is a bit smaller than one might think when you look at it. Various things chip away at the business model:

1: The cash-up-front problem. Companies generally hire recruiters on a contingency basis, which means recruiters will have to pony up the cash in order to talk with a candidate. Recruiters will do more groundwork and prequalification before calling upon the candidate for the interview - which means a higher placement rate and less candidate time wasted. But it will also shrink the candidate pool and the number of transactions.

2: The dearth of pay-me purists. People that are working but open to hearing about new jobs may not want to put up a money-barrier for potential recruiters. Really, we have to ask the fundamental question: who is the buyer and who is the seller? Who has the power -- the candidate or the hiring firm? It depends on the job market - but note, we're heading for international recession right now. Candidates who have the power are generally pretty senior, and there's a headhunting market already in place for them which offers more discretion than a Web 2.0 site like notchup.com. And a little bit of cash aint much to the most senior people - certainly not worth risking their reputation.

3: The classic network leakage problem. If I see someone on notchup.com, can't I just contact her via linkedin.com, and avoid being asked to pay her cash? It depends on how tough that professional is -- how much he or she adheres to using the notchup.com website. Interestingly, notchup.com allows you to import your profile and contacts from linkedin.com. This implies that users on notchup can often be found on linkedin - leading to network leakage.

And there's no way for notchup to really respond to this. If notchup were to launch social networking features, it would dilute the website's singular purpose and eat away at the privacy and discretion of its (already-employed) members, not to mention put notchup in the hyper-competitive social networking market. Furthermore, what's to stop Linkedin.com from adding a "pay me to interview me" feature?

Well, notchup is something of a fit for the Web 2.0 Liquid HR economy -- it is helping to standardize HR information by utilizing Linkedin profiles. But this just in: apparently there may be legal constraints put on the model as well -- apparently, linkedin is angry that their user information has been mined by notchup in violation of terms and conditions. Notchup is not providing new information to the mix -- it's just another place with regular member profiles (often imported from linkedin). Therefore, it's not an Information Provider. Nor is it a Conduit for information (linkedin is the conduit in this story). As a Matchmaker, it is providing some service by adding new incentives to bring people together, so I guess that's the notchup play. I think this company will make it, but won't have stellar growth: its market is too vulnerable.

Monster.com Spam

For your entertainment: there is a reason why monster.com is an easy target for people. It's because people like you and me receive emails like the one below, which I received today (note, the subject was "Asbestos Surveyor"):

We have found your cv at Monster and we would like to offer you a job. It is a part-time job that consists of receiving payments from customers (through bank transfers) and then making further payments to our main office or to one of our regional affiliated departments, depending on the customer's location.

 

Your commission as an agent is 6% of each transaction. For example, if you receive £2000 to your bank account, you will withdraw the money and keep £120 for yourself. The salary is commission based only and you will earn approximately £12000 per year. The hours for this work are flexible and can be combined with any permanent or other part-time job, with an average workload of up to 10 hours a week. All additional money transfer fees and money transfer-related charges are covered and paid for by our company. Therefore you will only be responsible for making the proper payments in time (within 48 hrs of successful receipt into your account). Each transaction will be transferred only after prior notification, which will sometimes be a notification by phone call. Please note that you can work from home but this job cannot be done online, you need physically withdraw/send money from nearest branches.

 

Our company's principal business is based on a peer-to-peer type payment network, this business model heavily employs all the latest internet technologies. We are one of only a few companies that use regional representatives in its business operations. This avoids high foreign taxation and cross-board acquisition fees. If you are interested in our offer, please feel free to ask for details of the general provisions of the contract.

 

Best regards,

Rita Widmer

Ha! What a job this would be! I'll be a peer to peer payment middleman taking a commission -- with a job title of Asbestos Surveyor. Sounds like a great way to launder money. I'll forward it on to abuse@monster.com . Maybe send them a link to this post.

...I did just that. Here's the response:

Thank you for taking the time to bring this to our attention. The email you are inquiring about is called an 'email spoof'. This e-mail spoof uses the Monster name to add credibility to the fraudulent offer. Please be aware that this is not a Monster authorized email. It was not sent by or through Monster.

This email is attempting to engage unsuspecting individuals in a money laundering scam. It is in your best interest to disregard the email. Do not engage with the entities! If you did begin correspondence and have started the required financial transactions, it is recommended that you contact local law enforcement immediately to request the appropriate steps to absolve yourself from any wrong doing.

Open the Data: The Impact of Social Networks on Recruitment

Not long ago I “linked” with a recruiter on Linkedin.com, only to find that he had precluded me from seeing his network contacts. I questioned him about this Internet faux pas, and, not surprisingly, he replied that, as a recruiter, he had to protect his asset: his contact list. This behavior seemed a bit ironic considering that Linkedin.com is a Web 2.0 website.

 

The idea that recruiters can maintain exclusive control over their networks is increasingly unrealistic. There are a couple of different factors behind this. First, the Intranet and Internet of the HR world are merging. This is leading to the more liquid flow of CVs between Internet sites and internal systems of recruiting companies. Second, the Internet is becoming Web 2.0. This is empowering Internet users, often job candidates, to manage and control their own professional information (i.e. CVs), and encourage the flow of this information among websites and recruiters of their choosing.

   

IDC predicted that U.S. spending on automated hiring software will rise from an estimated starting point of $750 million in 2006 to $1.7 billion by 2009. This spend will benefit vendors such as Bullhorn, an interesting case study. With Bullhorn’s software, a recruitment firm can create an open position, then use their “Dragnet” feature to pull candidate resumes (or CVs) from places like monster.com and careerbuilder. These resumes are parsed, written into the Bullhorn database, and then matched against the open job, ranked by suitability. Recruiters can then email or contact the candidates about the open position.

 

Let me summarize: Bullhorn’s software sits in the recruitment firm’s Intranet, and reaches out into the Internet for job candidates. It pulls those candidates back onto the Intranet and then turns them into a CRM (Intranet) task. It gets more interesting still: Bullhorn utilizes software from Resume Mirror, owned by Talent Technology (staffed with upbeat employees, it would seem). Resume Mirror’s software performs resume parsing – and is compliant with HR-XML. HR-XML is a standard for both Internet based HR information (jobs, resumes, and CVs) and for Intranet information regarding billing and staffing. Oh, and by the way, monster.com is one of many members of the HR-XML consortium. That is, CVs and resumes are becoming standardized data -- data that can easily flow between the Intranet and Internet world of recruiters, job boards, and companies in the liquid HR market. Reiterating Point 1: The Intranet and Internet are merging in the HR world.

   

Point 2: The Internet is becoming more open and user-controlled with Web 2.0, and social networks are driving this openness. The Web 2.0 buzzword was already getting old in San Francisco two years ago. We’re now on the second slope of the S-curve – companies are gleaning real, not imaginary, benefits from Web 2.0. Xing.com, a business networking company, has successfully gone public. Facebook is well known as an open platform with support from many application developers. A host of networking sites are standardizing to the Open Social API, and also creating additional "application programmer interfaces" (APIs) – they’re opening up access to data about their users to other websites. The benefits of this are not imaginary: Plaxo has utilized Linkedin's API to balloon its active user base, and there are recent rumors that Xing might buy them for it.

   

Can you imagine a recruiter that grew its base of contacts from 200,000 to over 1,000,000 in 1 month? I can't. Yet.

 

Where did Plaxo get this information? By getting current members to invite new members via an API from places like Linkedin and Yahoo address books. That is: by taking advantage of an open stream of data about people.  What's the impact? Plaxo can garner contacts far faster than recruiters who choose to be exclusive. More importantly, professionals know that if they create an image of themselves and their professional network on a site like linkedin, they can transport this image and network to other websites. Candidates will feel less inclined to type that information into a recruiter's website, and more inclined to tell the recruiter: "Get with the program. Integrate your website via an API like Open Social or get my details from my online profile somewhere. I don't feel like typing it into your website."

   

One issue that has long plagued candidates is that of managing their own data on a multitude of corporate websites, including websites of recruiters and hiring companies. Traditionally, every time candidates wanted to apply for a job, they would have to key in or upload their CV into a company or recruiter's website, at which point they began to lose control over that information. Social networks are member-driven websites that members often visit; members have total control over their own information, and actively maintain it. This contrasts with recruiter websites, where members create a profile once and are then inclined never to return - particularly once they find a job.

 

Interoperability among social networks via standards and APIs ultimately gives users that much more power to control and encourage the flow of their own data. If you add recruiting and job posting capabilities on these websites (as Linkedin, Xing, Jobster, Liquid-CV and many others have already done), you begin to solve the woes of the candidate who cannot or does not want to manage his or her own data on yet another recruiter's website. Furthermore, social and business networking sites integrate features such as professional references into the online job hunting arena, which are crucial for many recruiters.

   

What does this mean? It means that for job candidates, it's easier to use online social and business network websites to manage their own professional data and networks. It means that recruiters can improve their performance by using one platform for both CV browsing and reference checking.

 

Recruiters are already online, and not just entry level recruiters: executive recruiters are online as well, and beginning to adapt to the Web 2.0 social networking environment. Though there is still debate about the quality of online candidates, social dynamics (references and personal networks) are being used to pre-filter candidates, and various websites have developed that cater to niche and more senior professionals, like asmallworld.net and theladders.com. How long before these sites develop a way to maintain exclusivity and high standards while leveraging the Open Social and other API data exchanges? Not long. Consider the case of new upstart Notchup: candidate users import their profiles from linkedin to get started. Notchup's business model is built around passive, high-quality candidates who companies will actually pay for an interview.

   

The impact upon recruiters

All of this means that the traditional recruiter's world of closed databases is shrinking, and in some cases, ending. Recruiters are becoming power-users of social and business networks, rather than proprietors of their own candidate databases. Companies like theSkillsMarket have been working on the Intranet side of business to improve the flow of data among recruiters, and are discussing the launch of more Internet (Web 2.0) facing features. Recruiters are beginning to understand that tapping into this open data exchange -- the flow of CVs and resumes -- can vastly increase their pool of candidates (remember Plaxo), and that the focus will shift from the acquisition and retention of basic candidate data to acquiring deeper information about candidates, and matching candidates to jobs.

 

This is a positive development: it means finding jobs faster and making a better match with hiring companies. It means some recruiters will have the opportunity to truly add more value to the process, as people who can read deeper into CVs, understand candidates, as well as the jobs for which they are applying. But those that wish to horde a list of job-seekers will increasingly be left out in the cold.

CVs for people, CVs for companies: bi-directional flow of information

Most career consultants would tell you that it's important during an interview not only to answer the company's questions, but also to interview the interviewer. This supposedly means you're "switched on" - a "go-getter" - not some kind of jobslut that will take whatever job is offered. Interviewing the interviewer should, in theory, also improve the selection process, by helping candidates self select.

In reality, candidates sometimes ask intelligent questions, but often ask softball questions for which the interviewer has rehearsed responses, like "we work and play hard," or "If you make a contribution, your work will definitely be recognized," or "it's a friendly work environment." Oh come on. Just once I'd like to hear: "If you make a contribution, your boss will take the credit," or "a lot of people are competitive, poorly mannered jerks in the office." I remember once a large consultancy's HR representative asked me, during a 5-hour multi-stage interview, whether I had gone to their on-campus presentation weeks before. I said "no, those presentations are all the same." I digress.

The problem is that there are no official documents or processes to enforce this bi-directional flow of information between candidate and interviewer. There are no standard questions a candidate might ask an interviewer that elicit insightful answers. We have CVs and resumes for candidates, but not the equivalent for companies. We have psychometric tests for candidates, but no group-culture examinations for the hiring companies. We have references for candidates, but what of the company? What are we to read, the annual report, or the classic PR sales job? Should we listen to Jobcasts? None of this information gives us enough of what we're looking for.

My Angle

I present to you the idea of a Corporate CV. Inside the Corporate CV we have a collection of valuable information, such as:

• Corporate Culture: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the company's values and processes based on structured questionnaires deployed to employees;
• Employee List: list of people you can talk to that actually work there;
• Accomplishments: things that employees in the company have been able to achieve while at the company;
• Jobs available: simple enough, but also linked to the above.

Think of it. The process of matching candidate and company would be improved, increasing employee retention rates, as employees would self-select and know better what they were getting into. We as candidates can see how our own personality and talents might match the company in its current form, or compensate for the company's deficiencies.

Before you work at a company, wouldn't you want to know: "Who works there? What's it like to work there? What kind of things can a person get done there? What kind of culture do they have? Is my personality a match? Are they direct or indirect when they communicate? What's the management like? What's the career development process?" There's no reason we can't begin to standardize this, but it would first take a structure and a community effort on the part of a company's employees and past employees. Partners, suppliers and customers could potentially feed into this Corporate CV.

Some companies would resist this sort of thing, but I think it's inevitable. The search for talent is always a competitive one - that much more so in the era of global business. So companies are looking for ways to differentiate from one another as potential places to work. And the Internet and Web 2.0 are built for the exchange of information and building of communities.

I won't kid you: I have a project in motion to address this issue. The Bi-directional flow of information is one of three roles that a successful company can play in the new Liquid HR economy - so this is my angle on being a player.

Standardized Resumes and CVs

One of the clear pain points for all job candidates has been, and continues to be, simple data management: the data stored in a CV or resume. Every time a job candidate goes to apply for a job online, she types in information that she's already entered into a thousand other job boards and company websites. Now, many websites ask different questions, and have unique fields of data on their web forms for candidates to fill out. But a lot of these fields are the same over and over -- things like name, address, previous employers, and academic institutions.

Why not simply standardize the data, and put it in a central repository where the candidate can maintain and control its use? Wouldn't this not only save time for the candidate, but also empower candidates in a way that epitomizes the spirit of employee data protection?

The use case would go something like this: I'm a job seeker. I go to "distribute-resume.com" and see a list of 1,000 jobboards and companies. I click on the 35 job boards and companies that interest me. I click on another button, and presto - my resume is sent to them.

"But, wait," you say: "Not all of the websites want the same information." Well, I suppose that's true for the moment, but don't you think they would be happy to take a candidate's CV or resume without having to pay the marketing expense of attracting them in the first place? Surely, they'd take a free CV or resume, and THEN determine whether to keep it.

"But wait," you say, "Maybe not. They don't want just any candidate." Well, then, "distribute-resume.com" could preclude the wrong candidates from sending a resume /CV to the more exclusive websites. (OK, so I just gave away some of my old business plan. But never mind that.)

"But wait," you say: "candidates format and customize their CV or resume for specific companies or jobs." Well, a fair amount of that is because recruiters with low-attention span don't have time to read more than a page or two. If you turn the CV into structured data, software can do the first pass review instead of people, and the CV can be reformatted easily to fit the reviewer's needs. I spoke with an executive search company once about this, and estimated it cost them about 3,000 GBP (that's 6,000 of our banana-backed U.S. dollars) per year for a small recruiting agency to reformat CVs and resumes. With standardized data CVs and resumes, that all becomes automated.

Suppose you think that's too far fetched. So you do it a different way: every time a candidate visits a company website or job board that's part of "distribute-resume.com's" consortium, the candidate can click on a "distribute resume.com" icon, and her basic CV / resume information is pulled from "distribute-resume.com" into your current website's webform via XML. It would speed up a candidate's application online! A much improved experience.

My Angle

OK, I just gave away a chunk of my old business plan (just replace distribute-resume.com with Liquid CV. Note the cute little waterdrop icon on the liquid-cv website). It's a great idea, but I couldn't pull it off, so I focused on something else more oriented around the bi-directional flow of data (though you can still get your very own  XML CV on the site).

Back to the idea. How do we do this? Standardized Data to begin with. It's one of the three components of the Liquid HR economy. My thought was to use HR-XML's resume standard, but there's no reason we couldn't expand upon this. Of course, the more granular the data, the better. Right now, the idea of using standardized data is happening behind the scenes - in a more B2B context, but not with the consumer experience in mind. Check out my earlier review of iProfile to get an example.

This is a challenging proposal, because it requires the distribute-resume.com to do business development on the B2B / consortium end of the market, as well as the consumer (candidate) market. But it will eventually happen. Most of the time people spend customizing CVs and retyping them is a waste of time. Screw this. Turn the resume / CV into data, and let people manage it themselves.