App of the week: Charlie

Welcome back to our weekly spotlight on helpful apps. We focus on a variety of products that are useful for work, personal use, or both, providing our own thoughts on the apps and what you can do with them. This week we get briefed on our meeting attendees with Charlie.

An intro to Charlie
Your big interview is approaching, or you’ve got a huge meeting coming up with a potential new client. Experts always recommend you do some research on the people attending the appointment if you don’t know them, but it takes ages to trawl the internet looking for their LinkedIn profiles and Twitter feeds. Enter Charlie, a clever app that does all the hard work for you – like having your very own assistant.

Give Charlie access to your calendar, contacts list and social media feeds and the app takes the names and email addresses of those attending your meeting to search the internet for information on them. The system then compiles everything it finds into a detailed briefing that tells you all about the people you’ll be seeing, from their work history to their personal interests.

Our review
I found Charlie when I was doing some research for a story and signed up straight away to test it out. Granted I already know about most of the people attending my upcoming meetings, but it has still managed to impress me.

The brief that Charlie produces on each colleague is quite in-depth. One flagged up the fact that a PR I’m meeting soon had been quoted in a news article, which gave me a talking point. The app also highlights common interests and lets you know if you share any contacts on social media.

The really handy bit is the social media tabs on the mobile app. It pulls in their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages (depending on which sites you’ve given Charlie access to), as well as their company’s website. The amount of time it saved me hunting around on the internet is invaluable.

The verdict
If you meet new people on a regular basis or you’re searching for a job, I would definitely suggest downloading Charlie. Providing the attendees have any kind of digital footprint, the information supplied on the briefs is a great place to start when preparing for the meeting.

Check out Charlie and download the app at charlieapp.com