One of my favs, Guy Kawasaki, interviews Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw.  Jigsaw is a "business contact marketplace" originally intended to help salespeople with their sales prospecting … but it's heavily used by recruiters.  It works on a system of give and take.  You give names in your address book; you take names from others.  (Kinda like BitTorrent. :) 

Anyway, question number 10 was about recruiting, and I thought it was interesting:      

10.  Question: Your mission statement is to “Map every business organization on the planet.” If you can do it, what impact will this have on the future?

Answer: I predict that the biggest social impact that Jigsaw will have is to affect a major transfer of power from the employer to the employee. Jigsaw exposes people’s contact information not only to sales people but also to headhunters and competitors. Jigsaw will help employees realize all their options for employment, not just the scant few that get presented to them today.

Every recruiter with a position to fill will quickly and easily be able to get to these crown jewels. This will be scary for CEOs as it will force them to treat their employees better in order to retain them and pay them top dollar. Every Jigsaw employee is listed on Jigsaw. I think about this issue every day!

When I’d speak on corporate blogging as a Microsoft employee, I used to always hear that fear from other recruiters.  “You have over 3000 employees blogging?  Aren’t you scared they’ll be recruited away?”  Like Jim says, hey, maybe it makes you work that much harder to keep your employees happy.

What does Jigsaw say about you?  What does it say about your employees? Have recruiters contacted you after finding your name in tools like Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, and LinkedIn?  Does that help you "realize your options for employment" or annoy the crap out of you?

gretchen