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We've given the Bernard Hodes Advertising / Career Mosaic Complex our best in class award for pushing the industry to new heights. Focused on the job board business, the firm has stuck to its knitting while expanding the broad understanding of the business. They don't appear to be competing with their customers. From the vision that produced CareerMosaic to the continuing commitment to excellence that produced a number of our Top 100, Hodes and Mosaic enable the industry by setting the standards.

By now, everyone with even a modest amount of experience in the business, realizes that the largest costs in online recruiting are internal. Processing incoming resumes, posting jobs, measuring and controlling traffic, quantifying results and objectives and the constant training required to make the tools work eat huge amounts of overhead. Most of the members of our Industry Enablers list help fight the creeping growth of these costs.

A great deal of very interesting experimentation is going on in the Resume / Applicant Tracking arena. Both Hot Jobs and Career Builder enter the playing field with products that include a management back end. HireSystems and Personic are building fully featured tools (the Personic offering includes a limited spider as a part of the core kit).

Automating the pickup and delivery of job postings is simply going to be the way things are done in the future. Junglee, recently acquired by Amazon, defined and developed this segment of the business. Smaller and scrappier CareerCast demonstrates that a small site can include these "big player" features.

Somehow, I-Search has managed to land several interesting site development projects. The idea that a single entity can deliver solid database integration and web design has been a part of the ad agency business. They're setting a breakout model (even if customer satisfaction remains on the low side.)

The recent marriage of Excite and Classifieds2000 has produced an awe inspiring product. Classifieds2000 invented the job broadcasting business and has converted it into a serious advertising franchise. With supplemental packages, the service looks to become a serious competitor for customer dollars. The award is for the development and perfection of advertising distribution.

If you want to see the best written, most effective job postings in the business, visit DreamJobs. This Hotwired product chugs along, quietly setting the standards for excellence in copy, targeting and community development.

Finally, a number of Recruiting resources have appeared online during the past year or so. We're pleased to have spawned, sponsored and facilitated our blossoming competition. We take this "Industry Enabling" stuff very seriously. The best of the new breed is a site called the Recruiter's Network.

We'll be in New York City for the next several days. As we walk the 1999 Electronic Recruiting Index around the halls on Madison Avenue, we'll be telling the story of an industry that is rapidly coming of age. These industry enablers are a critical part of the process.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Top 100: Industry Niches

The awards for industry niches are very specific. If you want to hire Truck Drivers, go to truckdriver.com. For Pharmacists, Pharmacy Week is your best bet. Seasonal Workers? Use Cool Jobs. As a result, we've decided not to identify a "best on class" for the overall category. They are, uniformly, the best places to find specific types of candidates.

This year's best Niche Recruiting Sites are:

The accomplishments, trends and positions of the other entrants are covered in detail in the 1999 Electronic Recruiting Index. We're particularly excited about our quantitative evaluations of over 50 Job Boards. The Industry out briefings, scheduled for the second full week of October, are turning out to be exciting gatherings of the key players. Ordering information for either or both is on the last page of the Executive Summary.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Recruiting Online:
Fall 1998 Seminar Series