Yatedo: Personal Search Goes Global

While free profile aggregation tools such as Pipl or Spokeo, have been established recruiting resources for years, this suddenly hot category has seen an explosion of emerging (premium) platforms looking to improve – and monetize – the personal search arena.

Yatedo, however, represents a dramatic improvement on many emerging and established entries in this category, but unlike many similar tools, remains free for public use. And when used for sourcing and recruiting, Yatedo proves that the old maxim that “you get what you pay for” isn’t always entirely true.

Yatedo, based in Paris, was established in 2009, but despite their origins in the social media arena as a site dedicated to helping users manage and control their online presence and digital footprints, have only recently added a people search capability.

This search offering leverages the profile and personal information collected from their social media product to return some fairly impressive results, although these results are often inconsistent or incomplete, depending on the person queried.

Given the company’s European roots and customer base, it’s no surprise that unlike many US-centric tools like Spokeo, Yatedo stands out for its ability to find information on candidates throughout the UK and EU – no small task, given their much more restrictive data privacy and safe harbor laws regarding personal data.  And, of course, it is also capable of finding candidates here in the US, too – although getting the most out of Yatedo might require using your browser’s translation capabilities, as the native language for the software is French, not English (although this often is irrelevant).

Here’s what Yatedo returns after entering a query for people at Google:

 As you can see, the results are fairly accurate and complete – and comprehensive enough to make Yatedo’s easy filtering features come in handy, allowing users to sort results by fields like title, location, education, etc.

The only major issue with the site’s capabilities seem to be its tendency to go over capacity during times of peak demands, and the site is often impossible to access due to too many users trying to access Yatedo simultaneously.

Which, of course, also serves as an implicit endorsement about Yatedo’s utility and applicability. If you can get in (which happens too rarely, unfortunately), Yatedo is a good tool, particularly when recruiting for global talent in general, European talent in particular.

The only thing that seems to stand in the way of Yatedo’s ability to grow and scale are the frequent outages and errors resulting from its overburdened network – resulting in a similar frustration early Twitter users often experienced when seeing the all-too-common “Fail Whale.”

Of course, Twitter was able to resolve those issues and thrive – and once Yatedo can figure out a similar fix, it should emerge as a major player within the people search and sourcing arena.

To try Yatedo, click here.

About the Author: Dean Da Costa is a highly experienced and decorated recruiter, sourcer and manager with deep skills and experience in HR, project management, training & process improvement.

Dean is best known for his work in the highly specialized secured clearance and mobile arenas, where he has been a top performing recruiter and sourcer.  Dean’s keen insight and creation of innovative tools and processes for enhancing and changing staffing has established Dean as one of the top authorities in sourcing and recruiting.

Connect with Dean at LinkedIn or follow @DeanDaCosta on Twitter.

By Dean Da Costa

Dean Da Costa is a highly experienced and decorated staffing professional, recruiter, sourcer and manager, who also boasts outstanding experience and skills in Human Resources, Project Management, Training, and Process Improvement. He is best known for his work in the highly difficult security and mobile arena's, and the gold star winning numbers he produced. His keen insight and creation of ground breaking tools and processes, to enhance and change staffing as we know it, have proven he is a true "Staffing Thought Leader". Despite all this he remains first and foremost one of the top sourcers, staffing managers and full cycle recruiters in the industry and a true "Search Authority"