Digital Recruiting and the Growing Internet Social Network

As I was sitting at Starbucks in the heart of the San Francisco's Marina district, I was reading the latest addition of Business Week. I was intrigued by the cover story, which claimed: "Learn how this kid made $60M in 18 months." Like a lot of media publications, there has been a re-focus on Web 2.0 companies in Silcon Valley that are being run by 20 or 30-something dot.com'ers who have used the profound leap in technology during the last few years to breakthrough and start companies focused on making life easier and more mobile.

At the heart of this revolution has been the Myspace.com and Facebook websites which have trailblazed the new era of social networking on the internet. As I read the article, I started to get really interested in some of the sites, but more importantly the people behind the ideas. Some of the individuals they spoke about were the founders of such companies like PayPal, Digg.com, and Yelp.com, as well as others. The more I read, the more I wanted to learn.

I jumped on my iTunes and tuned into the Business Week podcast that just happened to have the writers of the story discussing this topic with the help of their editor. The more I heard, the more I wanted to keep learning.

During the course of the day, I couldn't help but think about how the things I was reading about related to The ESM Group and our goal of helping kids achieve amazing things.

Our website SoccerProfiles.org, which we started two years ago, was an effort, and still is, on our behalf to help streamline the recruiting process for student-athletes who need assistance in building, updating and distributing their player resumes. What we found out when we launched the site is that there is an amazing connection in the soccer community between kids and parents. We saw that our traffic went higher and higher each day, as word slowly crawled across the country. Now in our 3rd year, we have registered users from 44 States, as well as India, Canada and Australia.

I guess the most profound lesson our team has learned is the that the barrier to entry is very little nowadays. Soccerprofiles.org was an idea of ours, and with a little consulting, a dash of web design and an internet connection we were able to grow our presence with little or no advertising. Now, as we enter a critical year for our growth, we plan to spend a substantial amount of money to grow our brand and take control of a very fragmented market.

The next wave of digital recruiting is going to come from a person or group who can find a way, like the founders of Web 2.0 companies, to make the process more enjoyable, mobile and connected.