The Virtual Pavement: Employers and Employees Hit the Net's Job Boards

Apr 12 1999

Recruiting Web sites are aiming to keep job seekers' hands newspaper-ink free. Forrester Research estimates the market for online jobs will reach $1.7 billion and account for one-fifth of classified advertising employment budgets by 2003. "Today, there are lots of jobs that are only posted online," says Michael Niemira, an analyst at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Counting the industry's growth online is difficult. Low barriers to entry mean there are now hundreds of employment sites. Each counts jobs differently - a posting can be for more than one position and a single job can be posted to dozens of categories on multiple sites.

John Sumser, CEO of Interbiznet, estimates there were about 28 million job postings on the Net in 1998, covering "a universe of about 2 million actual jobs." Restrac, a posting service for 600 corporate employment sites, reports each job gets posted to an average of 2.3 boards. Although the number of jobs only grew 1.2 percent over the past year, data gathered by The Standard show job postings at top sites jumped 60 percent. So no matter how you add it up, the industry is booming.

Additional research by Michiyo Yamada.