a cool new sourcing tool

March 10, 2009

Today I heard about another potentially powerful sourcing tool for recruiters called TheOfficialBoard.com, a database of org charts from 20,000 companies.

The site operates on a give-and-take premise. While some of the accessible information is free, more in-depth contact info requires an exchange system between the database and its members.

To earn ‘talers,’ a virtual currency, users must either add a contact (10 talers), add a phone line (5 talers), add a company (10 talers), or fix contact information (5 talers). Talers can also be purchased (0 for 250).

With the talers a user can access information about a certain executive (1 taler), view all the names of an org chart and its evolution (5 talers), email a contact (10 talers), or pay a penalty for providing erroneous information (5 talers).

So far about 200,000 executives are listed in the system. These contacts are encouraged to verify their information. Company and individual alerts can be set up each time someone moves up or out of an org chart. Here’s an example of an org chart for 51Job.com:

51job

TheOfficialBoard is based in France and was founded by Thomas Lot, the former general manager of Apple France and VP Europe of Amazon.