Google, Staroffice and what it means for Internet Sourcers
Google Pack, the collection of applications recommended by Google, includes a new software: StarOffice, an office suite developed by Sun. (See below)
StarOffice 8 is a full-featured office suite that contains a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, applications for presentations, databases, math formulas and drawing. It has support for most Microsoft Office formats (except for the formats introduced in Office 2007), but it can also export documents as PDF out of the box. The software normally costs $70, but it’s available for free in Google Pack.
Here are the icons featured in the StarOffice set:
As soon as I read about this new development, I immediately thought that it represented a new source of resumes for Sourcers to exploit; albeit, not right away. Let me how you what I mean…
StarOffice is (in my opinion) Sun’s answer to Microsoft’s Office Suite and to that I say.. whatever. StarOffice has been around since 2000, but I RARELY… no… I have never received a resume from a candidate in Staroffice format. For that matter, neither do I see resumes or CVs published online in that format either. Case in point, here is a string I used to find resumes with the term “java” on it, but in StarOffice format.
As you can see, not much goodness there.
So do I write off searching for resumes with this technique? NO! Since Google is giving away StarOffice, its only a matter of time before people begin toying with the software. Will it replace Microsoft Office Suite? Not in a million years (IMHO), but I think in the future a search like the one above will yield more that 2 results. That being said, you may want to jot this down.
If you want to experiment more with your searches, substitute StarOffice extensions for Microsoft Office extensions. At present, you won’t find much, but in the future… who knows?
Here are a few examples to get your creative sourcing wheels turning…
STAR WRITER vs MICROSOFT WORD
filetype:sxw java inurl:resume
filetype:sxw inurl:resume education
filetype:sxw inurl:cv C++
STAR OFFICE CALC vs MICROSOFT EXCEL
filetype:sxc business
filetype:sxc “@sun.com”
filetype:sxc contact email
See you at SourceCon2007!
-Jim Stroud
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