A quick review of Zubed

Essentially, the tool allows a recruiter to have a position in Seattle to be filled, then ask recruiting services to provide you resumes with the right job skills overlayed on a map:

The results come back as points on a map! (Oh, I just love that.) Clicking on the individual points returns a tag cloud of keywords based on the corresponding resume (in the right column).

Or, look at it a different way.

Want to know where England’s Software Engineers skilled in C++ are located?

I imagine that you can see (as I do) how this type of information is invaluable when planning a workforce, job fairs and the best places to build a development center.

That was the part that was scary. You upload a resume and you show up on a map.

After some e-mail correspondence with the developers of Zubed, it turns out that there are some significant privacy protections built into the system as well. I was offered a WebEx on the features of the system which I took. I came away impressed.

Zubed features

Here are the significant take-away’s from the session:

• From a privacy perspective, the employee only becomes visible to the employer when the candidate releases the information to the company.
• The system, which is free, is currently available in England
• Currently, the system focuses on IT professionals, although adding other types of career people would be relatively straightforward.
• The system removes the Recruiting Agency from the middle of the resume to the employer.
• The system parses BOTH the resume (CV) AND the employer’s job description and assigns a percentage of compatibility between the two. This ranking gives you the top candidates with skills and the job description to look at first.
• And while employers can see the potential candidates with skills matching needs, employees can also see the skills being used by companies in a geographic area. If you have skills in C++, would your skills be needed in Manchester? Ask and you’ll get a map of employers who have requested the skills in their job descriptions.

One of my questions was this: if all of this is free, how do you make your money at Zubed since you are part of a larger corporation with resources?

And here’s where I thought these guys really get it: They sell this system to companies for their internal talent management needs.

Zubed benefits to companies and Cubicle Warriors

Think about a company like Microsoft, for instance (that does not use the system). They have thousands and thousands of resumes flowing inside the company from internal and external candidates. They have recruiters outside the company, posts on job boards, and internal candidates for needs across the planet.

And there isn’t a system to manage it. Instead, if a recruiter needs a candidate for programming C++ in Prague, the recruiter needs to filter through many different systems, both internal and external, to get to reasonable candidates.

With Zubed, both sides of the job requirements are parsed with the job descriptions compared to the resumes. Plus a geography component is added so that you can see both internal and external resources available to you in a specific geographical area.

Or, consider you are part of a project team and need a Business Analyst well versed in your application in Malaysia because that is where your developers are located. Well, using this system, you can get the job description to match up with your internal resumes to find the right resource for your project.

How would you find developers in Malaysia, operations people in India, and financial resources for your project in Denver? Right now, it’s tough. The paid portion of Zubed is right on the mark.

As globalization continues, finding the right resources for your work project will become more difficult as time zones and geography work against knowing a person by walking down the hall. Zubed is a tool that can meet that need.

Scot

Related posts:

1. A neat recruiting tool – that’s totally scary

For 15-years or so, I’ve been fascinated with combining maps with business. There are some legitimate reasons for this combination – sending technicians to the next closest trouble ticket, routing deliveries for UPS-like services, and knowing where you customers are located so you can provide the right services for them.

Jim Stroud, who’s abilities I greatly respect and is right on top of recruiting world issues, writing in The Recruiters Lounge “Cool Tool — Zubed, I think I love you“, is justifiably doing “virtual cartwheels” over a new recruiting tool called Zubed.

Essentially, the tool allows a recruiter to have a position in Seattle to be filled, then ask recruiting services to provide you resumes with the right job skills overlayed on a map:

The results come back as points on a map! (Oh, I just love that.) Clicking on the individual points returns a tag cloud of keywords based on the corresponding resume (in the right column).

Want to know where England’s Software Engineers skilled in C++ are located?

I imagine that you can see (as I do) how this type of information is invaluable when planning a workforce, job fairs and the best places to build a development center.

From a technology perspective, this is fabulous. Perhaps for recruiters it is fabulous as well.

But while I was reading all about the cool technology, that little inner voice we all hear was going….not so fast. You can see my address on recruiting sites (or is it IP addresses?) and put them on your map and decide if you are willing to call me for an interview?

You can find the largest concentrations of specific job skills on the planet and decide, or not, to locate there?

It is almost like spying on you without your knowledge in a cool Google mash-up. No court order needed. And creepy as a result.

Maybe I’m just a little nuts about the privacy aspect of all of this. What do you think?

Scot

Update: Over the weekend, I received an e-mail from one of the developers of the system. He provides some good insights that significantly reduces my concerns about personal privacy and the service. Here are some specifics:

When a candidate registers with the system the semantic piece (human-language interpretation) identifies all personal details on their CV and scrubs them off. These contact details are used to position the pin on the map but this is deliberately positioned not precisely on the candidate’s house but in the general area. (CV, for those in the United States, is your resume…Scot)

The only time a candidate’s name, address and other contact details become visible is when they, the candidate, actually physically clicks the box to send it to the employer, and then they only become available to that employer.

Notice that the information only becomes available to the single employer that you are interested in working for. One employer at a time. This type of control by the individual candidate is much better than the control offered by most job boards.

From a candidate perspective the ZubedJobs piece was built around the “worker/cube
warrior” building their own employment ecosystem.

I’ve been offered a WebEx on the system. I’m going to take it and report back on this as well.

Also, note that Joe Della Bianca left a comment as a user of the system noting the privacy aspects. Good feedback on a cool tool!

Related posts:

1. Update: Zubed isn’t scary – it rocks