A just released 1997 Electronic Recruiting Index (ERI), authored by John Sumser of Internet Business Network (IBN), has updated our knowledge of the Internet recruiting scene with a second annual look at how third party recruiters, HR departments, and recruitment advertisers are using the World Wide Web to post jobs, recruit for positions, and match jobs and candidates. According to IBN, by 12/96 the Web sported:

• 1 million current resumes
• 1.2 million job listings
• 3,512 recruiting sites, and
• 5,800 firms recruiting on-line.

Even more impressive, 1997 growth rates are expected to be on the order of 150%, according to IBN which could result in 2.5 million resumes and about 3 million job listings available on-line by the end of this year. If that doesn't panic at least some in our business, it should! "In 1997, it is readily acknowledged that simply having an on-line presence is really only useful as an ply internal training mechanism. Real success in the [Web recruiting] market depends on executing additional value-added strategies," Sumser cautions recruiters.

IBN catalogued 3,512 Web sites at the end of 1996, a 600% increase over the 500 listed in the 1996 ERI. "Individual recruiters with a verifiable Net presence" tripled from 1,767 to 5,307 and the number of employment news groups increased by 150%, from 72 to 179. Nevertheless, IBN is less than enamored with the industry's Net contribution. "For the most part, the sites reviewed were embarrassments to the companies that invested in their development," Sumser reports.

Incredibly, the total number of news group job postings on the Internet soared more than ten-fold, from 342,759 to 3,615,395. Sumser attributes this phenomenal increase in Usenet activity to a new dynamic of Web recruitment: "The bulk of posting traffic ... is now the product of automated systems." 1997's ERI continues Sumser's earlier analysis of on-line jobs Usenets, which, he believes, have just about outgrown their original function as direct job leads and have come to serve as "some sort of news-wire that feeds and drives the content of many commercial job listing providers."

IBN's two volume effort, priced this year at a steeper $997, offers 600 pages of current "Web stuff" specifically for recruiters. About half of that consists of an annotated site directory and recruiter index, but a good chunk of the remaining content represents actual

This report should be near the top of the 1997 reading list of any staffing executive who is truly serious about finding or maintaining a significant place in the Web recruiting infrastructure. (emphasis added) But, as Sumser points out, building (and, particularly, maintaining) a Web presence may not be the right strategy for every firm. First, doing it right isn't cheap. And second, it's not at all clear how this will all shake out.

Sumser's work continues to offer an important conceptual framework for helping staffing firms understand the many directions and implications of all that is happening on the Web and, clearly, there is a lot going on. The author carves out the "Employment Advertising Marketplace" as a subset of the "Electronic Recruiting Marketplace," and explains the motivations, strengths, and strategies of the many players who inhabit one or both of these segments - newspapers, professional associations, staffing firms, networks, career ad sites, resumes banks, government agencies, and lifestyle Web sites, for example.

Sumser chronicles surprising new players (such as Chivas Regal's Career Toolbox at [www.chivas.com] and interesting new strategies (such as using job listings as the free content to "wrap around" other paid or self advertising). Other Web trends affecting the recruiting business this year, says IBN, will include regionalization (groupings around shared interests) and "placing" (exemplified by the Chivas site mentioned above).

Sumser is particularly pessimistic about newspaper classified help wanted sections being able to maintain their current 15% profit margins going forward, as a much richer and speedier Web ad process, complete with personal agents, begins to take hold this year. He also believes that the executive recruitment sector is already beginning to feel the Net's impact. And to the majority of staffing firms out there who have yet to tackle the Net, he sends this warning: Plan on the cost of serious Web site development equaling the cost of opening a branch office - not to mention ongoing maintenance.

- Editor