Online Headhunters: Working to Find Work Online Headhunters: Working to Find Work Paul Jones
With job markets skyrocketing from the surge in Internet startups, plenty of dot-coms abound simply to fill positions. Anyone can hop online and scan such destinations as Monster.com, HotJobs.com or kforce.com, which exist to help clients find work.
The concept may be a watershed in terms of winning over people skeptical on the word "headhunter." People who visit brick-and-mortar headhunters quickly realize that they must first interview with the recruiter's recruiter before meeting the final recruiter. But with online staffing sites, clients can skip this circle within a circle concept. For most of these businesses, prospective clients have full autonomy. Rather than waiting for a human to match a client with a firm, clients can go online, search from a list of brick-and-click companies and submit a resumé. In due career development center fashion, these sites even explain how to build the resumé before it is sent.
Sure, all of these sites go a long way to hook people up with jobs. Titans such as Amazon.com and America Online pay fees or have signed on for special employer/employee packages to advertise their job boards and help find candidates. And there is no shortage of people looking for jobs, or even just advice. Consider what has become the leader in the field--Monster.com, and its subsidiary site Monster.ca. To date, this behemoth says it holds more than six million job seeker accounts, a resumé database with more than three million documents and job opportunities from thousands of firms. According to Media Metrix, Monster.com was the 87th most visited site on the Web in February.
