Have you ever seen a wrestling match where the fighters are in a cage? Two men enter, but only one can leave? And the crowd goes wild! Well, I am doing something like that with this post. I am pitting Falcon, a product I have used often against a new product that has caught my eye – the Entelo Button. Both of them are Google Chrome extensions and my goal in reviewing each one is to remove one from my Google Chrome bar and use the other exclusively.
Okay, so its not a bloodsport, but I do hope you can find it useful. Here goes…
Falcon
I already had Falcon installed on my Google Chrome bar and my initial experience with it was good. However, it seems a bit buggy now. When I turned it on and moused over my name on Twitter, I saw a Klout score and nothing else. Where were the other networks I am a member of? Was it just me?
I moused over someone else’s name and get what I was expecting. Hmm… Maybe it was a glitch?
I tried searching my email address on Falcon and I saw that my other profiles were being tracked. Okay, that’s cool. Reminds me of another tool I use for that very thing – Knowem. Knowem searches 500+ websites, but I’m not knockin’ Falcon for that. Just sayin’…
I noticed there was a link for viewing emails. When I clicked it, it sent me to my Gmail account and did a default search for emails I had sent to and from the email I was searching. Cute. But how useful is that? I mean, I like the functionality of that for the sake of convenience, but I prefer tools like Rapportive or Smartr for things like that. (I give them both a thumbs up, by the way.)
I didn’t see anything else I could do with Falcon which would be considered a plus in my book. Sometimes I think people put too much into their tools and I am a big believer in “less is more.”
Entelo
I was looking for a java candidate and one of my first stops was GitHub (a cool site for finding techies by the way). I came across a Mr. Crockford. He could be a friendly guy, but based on the expression on his profile picture, I assume that he is annoyed by recruiters quite often. Hmm… How can I get on his good side? Fortunately, I noticed a light on my latest fascination – a chrome extension called “The Entelo Button.” (insert dramatic music here).
When I clicked on the Entelo button (that’s what the arrow is pointing to) I saw other profiles that Mr. Crockford is attached to.
So, I did a bit of friendly “stalking” and discovered places where he hangs out (various technical meetups). Then, from his Google+ page, I noticed that he has an interest in Star Wars and a somewhat brilliant idea concerning the NSA privacy scandal (as shown below).
Armed with this knowledge, I could happen to bump into him at a meetup and buy him a beer, or, send him an email that says something like:
ATTN: NSA and Mr. Crockford
Mr. Crockford, There is a disturbance in the force that requires your skill as an engineer to remedy. Please reply as (like Obi Wan Kenobi) you may be our only hope.
NSA, please disregard this email.
Sincerely,
Jim
If nothing else, I will stand out from all of the other recruiters who have sent him an impersonal email. Because of this, I have increased my chances of hearing back from him.
After searching the web for a while I noticed that the Entelo button didn’t light up on every page I visited. So, I was curious which sites triggered the button to change and thus signify that there is more data that Entelo could offer. I did a search for “Java” to see which profiles returned and I noticed that I could refine my search by social profiles (as shown below). Voila! A list of sites that this Entelo button monitors. (19 in all
So, this had me wondering, how many places does Falcon cover when it searches? According to their website, 14 social platforms to date. Hmm…
Finally, I visited their blog and noticed that they had a function I had not noticed (or was buggy at the time of this writing) – Feeds. Falcon gives you the ability to see the latest posts from a user’s feeds including Github repos and Soundcloud tracks. I think that is cool and something that would be very helpful in getting to know more about what a certain passive candidate may like. However, something else caught my eye that concerned me: the blog post I was looking at was its most recent post and it was dated April 5, 2013.
I could be wrong, but this suggests to me that not much development is going on with this product. I tried looking up the company on LinkedIn to see how many employees it has and could not find it. I did the same for Entelo and saw that they had several employees, 100+ followers and were active on social networks. At the very least, this tells me that Entelo is more ambitious than Falcon.
VERDICT: I will be dropping Falcon in favor of Entelo. Why? Unless I am wrong (leave a comment if so), Falcon is not being supported or developed further? If they have future plans to develop the tool and take over the world, I’m not seeing it (I could be wrong). Entelo offers more functionality with their tool but have managed to not make it feel bloated. Since my sourcing focus (today) is on software engineers, Entelo is a better use of my time.
But that’s just one guy’s opinion (and I can be fickle). I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment below!
Editor’s Note: Talentbin has a similar tool you may want to try that was not included in this comparison. Read more about it in this post. You may also be interested in Shane Bowen’s tool that helps you cross-reference candidates on LinkedIn.