The Entelo Button

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Entelo is one of the top, established Dream Software players, aggregating profiles from all over the social web and allowing us to search across the database of the aggregated profiles. As the rest of the current players, TalentBinDice Open Web (formerly theSocialCV), Gild, RemarkableHire, and Swooptalent, to name a few, Entelo is solving the challenging task of combining the data for the same person into one profile.

Entelo has just released the Entelo Button, a Chrome add-on to look up the Entelo data from all of its many supported sites. Why is this cool? Because it allows any Entelo user to dig into social platforms and search on those platforms, still keeping track of the rest of the data that Entelo may have about the person. Here’s what this looks like:

Here’s more on that (if you don’t know Dutch, use the Google translator to read through the post).

For the “dream” systems that aggregate profiles, it’s never easy to decide how to rank the search results and what to show first. If you are an Entelo user, you can now search or browse the social web, having the Entelo-collected data available at a mouse-click. This can be easier to navigate in terms of avoiding the ranking challenges altogether. Here’s just one quick example: you can stay on LinkedIn and explore the profiles that “People Also Viewed” while keeping an eye on the Button. Of course, you will have much better luck with the Button if you stay within the crowd of people who have presence in the Entelo database, which is mostly “techies” in the US.

While the Button seems similar to other Chrome “Social Lookup” add-ons, I think, comparing the Entelo button with Falcon.io or with Rapportive would be a bit of an apples vs. oranges comparison. For starters, you need to be a paid account holder to use the Entelo button, while the other two add-ons are free.

There are other serious differences. Rapportive (the company has been acquired by LinkedIn) is similar to Entelo in that it keeps its database of contacts. It aggregates the social profiles based on a 100% solid way to identify people: the person’s email address. Compared to Entelo’s add-on, Rapportive has covered a much larger territory; but all it shows is links to public profiles. Entelo shows some skills in addition to profile links, but, most importantly, it gives us a quick way back into the Entelo system, to add notes and maintain lists in a CRM-like way.

Falcon.io does a different thing altogether; it looks up the relevant social profiles “on the fly”, when you mouse over a name on one of its supported sites. This means that it is able to look up anyone, not just the people whose info has been collected. Great stuff! I have heard some complaints about their functionality recently. I hope they are doing well. (If I were a venture capitalist, I would throw money at them!)

Bottom line, it’s good to have all of these add-ons!

What has been special (for me) about Entelo, among the dream software companies, and is also true about its new Button: they have excellent, well designed, easy to navigate User Interface. I like it quite a bit. Recruiters are very deprived of clear User Interface in the software we use, and this is one of the nicest exceptions. Kudos to Entelo Engineers and its Founder, also a friend of mine, Jon Bischke. Best of luck to them expanding their product in the current, very competitive, market.

Oh, and as always, I am not affiliated with any vendors.

 

 

 

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