Online employment

Right now, the World Wide Web is the hottest place to look for a job-or a job candidate

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By Eric R. Chabrow
Issue: Jan. 23, 1995

A fresh-faced young man stares into a camera and says: "Hi, I'm a co-op student at National." On TV, the job-recruiting video from chip maker National Semiconductor Corp. wouldn't be too impressive. But this one is: It's playing on the Internet's World Wide Web.

The Nat Semi video clip runs on Career Mosaic, one of several online job-hunting services that have sprung up on the Web. "We're doing it for effect," says Eric Lane, Nat Semi's director of human performance. "We hope pe ople find it engaging." They do. The Web is the place to be if you're looking for work or offering a job, especially one that involves information technology (IT). Since the debut of the Mosaic multimedia browser in mid-1993, navigating the Web has attracted literally millions of new users to the Internet each month, for a total of as many as 50 million people. "The Internet is going through a growth spurt," says Bruce Moore, VP of systems and planning at Bernard Hodes Advertising in Palo Alto, Calif., which operates Career Mosaic.

Popular Services
These stratospheric numbers have attracted thousands of entrepreneurs to set up shop on the Internet, including headhunters, human resources (HR) executives, and others offering what are known in the business as "career services." Popular job-listing services on the Web include the Monster Board, E-Span, and Career Mosaic. Most of the services provide classified job listings and advice on how to land a jo b. In general, they differ in how they present the information and which software job-searching tools they offer. One service, Career Connections, leases its Internet site to companies that want to hold online job fairs using the same technology found in the "chat" areas on commercial online services.

Web employment agencies are a natural place for technology managers to discover new talent. It's no surprise that many Internet users have computer-related backgrounds. One job-listing service, Online Career Center in Indianapolis, says more than 40% of its postings advertise computer and engineering-related jobs. On another service, Help-Wanted USA, the recent postings for computer programmers outnumbered those for nurses by nearly three to one.

Thumbs Up From Recruiters
Recruiters who use the Net generally give it high grades. They say it's effective and, when compared with other means of recruiting, inexpensive. Bob Krutak, resource manager for consultants Cap Gemini America Inc. i n Tampa, Fla., is impressed with the half-dozen employees his company hired in the last year through postings on the Online Career Center. The service charges a one-time membership fee of $3,500 and a subsequent annual fee of $60 for unlimited job postings. For related side bar on resume databases click here

By comparison, Krutak points out, the $2,000 to $2,500 Cap America spends for a booth at a local job fair may yield 300 to 400 resumes, but "we're lucky if out of that we get one or two hot prospects." Likewise, he notes, a $1,500 classified ad in the Sunday Tampa Tribune may bring in 100 resumes, resulting in only one or two hires.

Similarly, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology Inc. in Scotts Valley, Calif., spent $18,000--the same price charged by its local newspaper for a full-page Sunday ad-to establish a 22-page Web site on Career Mosaic. The pages include a description of Seagate's goals and culture. "I don't have to sell the company to applicants beca use they already read about it with Mosaic," says Robert Morquecho, Seagate's corporate employment manager. "I can spend most of my time selling the position and getting to know more about the individual who's applying."

Online postings also have a longer shelf life than ads appearing in newspapers. "If you run an ad in a newspaper, you get the bulk of your responses in the first three days after it appears," explains Clay Bedian, a senior HR representative in the Cleveland office of Keane Inc., an IT consultancy. "When you put something online, you get responses for three or four weeks."

Also, once a job seeker responds to an online posting, the employer can act quickly. The speed of the electronic job search surprised Larry Luba, 24, who has been hopscotching from one job to another over the past year-and-a-half as a contract manufacturing engineer. He found his latest assignment, a five-month stint at FMC BioProducts Inc. in Rockland, Maine, through a posting on the E-Span online job-search service. A day after Luba sent his resume, he got a phone call from Global Engineers, the Bailey Island, Maine, recruitment agency that placed the ad. "I was shocked," recalls Luba. "They called me at seven the next morning. I had an interview over the phone and got the job."

The Good Life
A jaunt down the information highway also led to a successful cross-country job search for Munish Jain, a Unix applications designer. Dreading another frigid winter traversing the icy seven hills that make up Cincinnati, Jain began cruising the Career Connection online service. The result: a new job at Camstar Systems Inc., a developer of manufacturing software in the milder climate of Silicon Valley. "It's a culture that I found very easy to adapt to," says Jain about his cyberspace job hunt. "It's a good medium to use if you're looking for a job."

But perfect matching between job and job-seeker on the Net is no sure thing. For one, the needs of job seekers and job providers often seem out of sync. Whi le the overwhelming number of job seekers accessing the Internet are college students hunting for their first jobs, most of the jobs posted demand previous work experience. In fact, a study conducted last summer by Andrew Barbour, an Ottawa-based research analyst with consultants Price Waterhouse, revealed that half the job seekers accessing postings on Internet news groups were no more than 25 years old and had no meaningful work experience.

Further, E-Span marketing director Mike Rowe in Indianapolis cites a Georgia Institute of Technology study showing that nearly 60% of Web cruisers are 21 to 30 years old, and that 94% are male. Complains Carol Yellen, a recruiter seeking experienced information systems professionals on the Internet for Harvard Community Health Plan in Boston: "There are zillions of college kids who think the Internet is terrific."

Brand Loyalty
Most of the major online career services know this, and they all devote at least part of their space to the univer sity crowd. Richard Levitt, creative director at TMP Worldwide Interactive Group, an employment ad agency in Santa Clara, Calif., wants to tailor his company's Web employment service, Career Taxi, to the college crowd. As students move into the work-a-day world, Levitt reasons, they'll develop a brand loyalty to the service that helped them find that crucial first job. For related sidebar on campus recruiting click here

That mix could shift even farther away from the Net surfer population as the three big commercial online services--Prodigy, CompuServe, and American Online--rush to add Web access for their 6 million subscribers. Similarly, some newspapers, including The New York Times, are adding Web versions of their classifieds sections. "That will change the composition of people who access the Web," says Jeff Taylor, president of Adion Inc., the Natick, Mass., creator of the Monster Board.

A growing number of online job services create Web home pages, a series of linked hypertext screens, for their corporate clients. It begins with a sort of table of contents that uses hyperlinks that let readers jump to other information screens by clicking on highlighted words or icons. An ideal home page for a company looking to fill job openings, says TMP's Levitt, would include an overview of the company, a description of its corporate culture, an outline of employee benefits, and a listing of job opportunities.

Affordable Home Page
Creating a home page doesn't have to be expensive. One service, Cookware in Indianapolis, will develop an all-text page for as little as $50. If you want simple graphics, budget an extra $50. Add a handful of hyperlinks, and the total bill is still less than $200. But for a Rolls Royce of a home page-replete with a multitude of hyperlink connections, flashy color graphics, and full-motion video and hi-fi sound--expect to pay a developer as much as $25,000.

Cost isn't the only barrier for audio-video clips; they also require a great deal of bandwidth. Granted, users hot- wired into the Web through uncrowded T1 or T3 lines can view jazzy home pages almost instantly. But for those accessing the Web through PC modems at speeds under 28.8 Kbps, patience is required.

But Nat Semi's Lane isn't apologizing about slow access times. He thinks the Web is great: "Right now, it's early technology, but we think it's exciting. The Mosaic is a great first start."

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