A couple of week's ago I had a long chat with Mike Carow at Broadlook. He spent some time showing me their suite of products.
If you've not come across Broadlook I wouldn't be too surprised as they aren't actively promoting themselves in the UK at the moment. They have a range of products which are basically Internet research tools. The information you source can be used for business development, individual company research and/or candidate research. I can't possibly do it justice trying to explain it here - but don't worry they have a four minute demo on their website.
What I would say is that the products are amazing tools for finding "passive" candidates and new clients. However, they are "high end" cost (but no doubt give a quick return on investment for passive candidate seeking!) so may be out of research to some recruiters.
The good news is that they do a free product called Contact Capture which makes pulling contact information from lists (eg, a PDF conference attendee list), documents, and emails into a database (or excel) as easy as copy & paste. It's a pretty cool product and of course even better for being free!
I really think the products are superb and if you are serious about business development and locating candidates via the internet these are fabulous tools for you to consider.
I agree - I've looked into these products at length and they are being integrated into our system mid year because I was so impressed.
Diver is particularly exceptional.
Posted by: Aaron Neale | 15 March 2010 at 10:17 AM