Online recruiting takes off

Brand-new techniques to find the talent you're looking for, online

Here is a sampling of the innovative ways recruiters can surf for new employees.

Niche sites
The URLs for industry-specific job boards are listed in Canadian HR Reporter's September 25 Guide to Recruitment and Staffing. The list will also be available in the ,HR Guide 2001, which will be distributed free in the December 4 issue of Canadian HR Reporter.

Job board metacrawlers
A metacrawler searches more than one job board. For instance, Canada's www.actualjobs.com searches 378 sites, and more than 24,000 jobs. A good U.S. metacrawler is www.careerbuilder.com, which searches 25 career sites and accesses more than three million jobs.

Flipping
Flipping is a new technique being used by some online recruiters to search other companies' Web sites for talent for their own firm. It''s often been done by phone; now it can be performed by conducting an advanced search using a Web browser.
HR practitioners can ensure their company Web site isn't "flipped" by putting all employee-specific information behind the site's firewall, in other words password-protecting the names, phone numbers, addresses and resumes of employees.
Whether or not flipping is an ethical practice can be debated, but it's not illegal (i.e., it's not hacking) when the information isn't behind the firm's firewall.
A tutorial on flipping is available at www.riseway.com (click on FlipItDeeDooDah! — Demystifying the hype.)

Reach out through the computer and touch someone
New technology, developed by NetPCS (www.netpcs.com) and implemented by recruiting software firm e-cruiter.com allows the recruiter to "see" who's on his site and what jobs the person is looking at. Then, he can e-mail the person through a chat window to discuss the position.
To reach out and touch this new technology visit www.netpcs.com and click on Careers. Fill out a request for a "console" (the software tool which holds candidates' profiles.)

Virtual job fairs
A virtual job fair is a collection of companies, grouped according to industry. It's a great way to find a job because all of a company's information — products, services, history, mission, values — is available in one place. For a good (albeit very American) example, visit www.careerpath.com. Click on the "JobRushAmerica" box on the right-hand side.

Job board on corporate Web site
Relatively new technology lets companies add a feature to their Web site to allow candidates to submit their resumes without going through a third-party job board. For a good example of this technology, visit www.4adream.com, a financing firm. Click on "Apply Online" and be prepared to give them some information in order to proceed to the next step.

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