When
Detroit’s Executive Recruiters International Inc. put its home page on the World Wide
Web last fall, it was a "throw the noodles on the wall and see if they stick"
experiment, said ERI President Kathleen Sinclair.
Considering the page (http://www.execrecruiters.com) had more than 3,400 visitors last
month and brings an average of 25 new candidates to the company each day, you could say
the pasta was perfection.
"The variety of candidates and employers we receive is much wider now," Sinclair
said. "It used to be local and automotive, now it’s global. I have resumes in
front of me from Switzerland, Italy, Thailand, the Ukraine, France, Columbia and Kuwait.
"We specialize in the technical positions related to the automotive industry, and the
variety of talent we see now is extraordinary."
She said that while some companies now are putting job postings on their own home pages,
the sheer size of the Internet can lead to a company’s being inundated with
electronic responses or telephone calls.
"Companies are getting lean and picky." Sinclair said. "If they’re
going to invest in someone today, they want someone who can hit the ground running. A lot
of companies don’t advertise but do blind candidate reviews with firms like
ours."
She pointed out that while ERI hasn’t received requests for CEOs, it has had requests
from CEOs asking her company to find new jobs for them.
The first stop for most job seekers starting on an Internet
Recognizing that plowing through
thousands of job descriptions or resumes isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time,
Virtual Resources Inc. developed CareerSite, with its own search engine to do
concept-based searches.
search is CareerMosaic (http://www.careermosaic.com), mainly because
it’s free. Sponsor companies foot the bill. But almost any exploration of the Net
using the most popular search engines, such as Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com),
and typing in "jobs" or "employment" will turn up thousands of
locations with positions in just about any field. They range from the formal, professional
career-development sites to Harry’s Job Search Bulletin Board. |
There’s even a place for
executive recruiters to line up - for a small fee. One hundred dollars gets you a 12-month listing on the Directory of Executive
Recruiters (http://www.careermag.com/classifieds/recruiters).
The categories run from accounting, construction, food, retail and insurance all the way
through the legal, medical, manufacturing and publishing fields.
Recognizing that plowing through thousands of job descriptions or resumes isn’t
everyone’s idea of a good time. Virtual Resources Inc., an Ann Arbor developer of
interactive services on-line, developed CareerSite (http://www.careersite.com).
It has its own search engine, a software program developed by Virtual to do concept-based
searches for job seekers and employers, said Donald Dornbush, president.
"This is the future," Dornbush said. "There’s too much of a snowstorm
out there on the Internet. For the candidate, we call it the ‘virtual agent,’
and for the employer, it’s the ‘virtual recruiter.’
"If a company and a candidate use different terminology for the same activity, a
typical keyword-only search may mean no connection. With our service, both the candidate
and the employer can create a rich profile based on concepts - skills, responsibilities,
educational background and rewards. It will analyze and weigh the information and pop out
the job or job candidate that best fits from the haystack."
He said CareerSite has been on the Internet only since late last fall, but it already is
getting 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a day. More than 100 companies have signed up to use the
service, including Ford Motor Co., Electronic Data Systems, Corp., Fidelity Investments,
American Express, Proctor and Gamble and Merrill Lynch. Employers pay a fee, while job
seekers can sign up for free.
He said he thinks the technology is extensible into other arenas, such as real estate and
automobiles, still with the basic idea of bringing the right product and customer together
in a much more interactive fashion.
Beyond that, he said, the systematic processes developed for using the Internet, such as
the CareerSite search program will be the ultimate winners, as what he calls the
"Model T" Internet of today continues its rapid evolution. |
