Maybe there’s just something in the recruitment waters.
In light of Beyond changing its name to Nexxt last year, RealMatch is now PandoLogic. However, unlike Nexxt, who sold its original domain name for a bucket of cash from Bed, Bath & Beyond, RealMatch is changing its brand to reflect an expansion of tech offerings. The new name represents moving past candidate matching-only in favor of also things like big data, artificial intelligence, and proprietary campaign algorithms.
Yes, no buzzwords were left out touting the new brand.
“We are excited to be at the forefront of the programmatic recruitment revolution by offering employers superior recruiting solutions that not only deliver performance, but also simplify the processes and offer the transparency and insights needed to make sound decisions to attract the best talent” said Jonathan Bulkeley, PandoLogic’s CEO. “And, we are equally excited about our new brand which embodies the company’s passion and ability to adapt and grow in the rapidly evolving recruitment market.”
The name is inspired by Pando, some sort of ancient tree root system that’s survived through a myriad of evolutionary forces. Wikipedia says, “The root system of Pando, at an estimated 80,000 years old, is among the oldest known living organisms.” Of course, Wikipedia also says Pando is currently thought to be dying, but I doubt that came into play when the brainstorming at RealMatch happened.
A bit of foreshadowing, the company launched pandoIQ last month to take on other programmatic advertising players in the market like Recruitics, AppCast, and JobAdX. Based on recent comments by Terry Baker, a company president, PandoLogic will serve as the mothership for any tech products underneath the Pando brand. And maybe that’s why pandoIQ get a little “p” but PandoLogic gets a big “P.”
“We decided it was time for a new name to coincide with the launch of the pandoIQ product that Terry [Baker] presented a few weeks ago,” said Chris Atkins, chief marketing officer at PandoLogic. “The market has evolved and so has our technology and solutions which now encompasses much more than just matching, as we deploy new algorithms in addition to job matching that automate the entire recruitment advertising process.
“That said, our matching technology remains a vital component in our platform and a key differentiator as allows us to automatically classify jobs based on the descriptions so we can predict, campaign, track, and optimize at the job level.”
I can appreciate the emotion that goes into a company evolving and feeling like a new brand is in order. In Nexxt’s case, there was significant financial upside. However, it’s usually a pretty bad idea, confusing customers and prospects while also making life tougher on an already challenged sales team.
If you want to launch a startup, do yourself a favor and just name it something human beings can remember, spell, and ends in .com. Ideally, it also shouldn’t autocorrect to something else. I doubt I’m the only one who initially tapped out panda instead of pand-o. Think Amazon, Indeed, Monster, Slack, and such. That way, you won’t get pigeonholed into doing something so specific till the end of time and be forced to change your name.