yatedoGuest Post by Dean DaCosta

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:

yatedo

 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. Of course, if you can get in, 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.



By Matt Charney

Matt serves as Chief Content Officer and Global Thought Leadership Head for Allegis Global Solutions and is a partner for RecruitingDaily the industry leading online publication for Recruiting and HR Tech. With a unique background that includes HR, blogging and social media, Matt Charney is a key influencer in recruiting and a self-described “kick-butt marketing and communications professional.”