Little greater than a decade ago, online job searches had been primarily the province of any tiny population of down and dirty level techies. Today, online recruiting forms one of the central pillars of a good staffing strategy for firms in every economic sector. IT Recruiter Increasingly, job seekers are looking at electronic resources such as corporate internet sites, federal, state, and municipal job listings, online job search machines and aggregators, Internet classifieds, and online versions associated with local and national newspapers to facilitate the task search process. Conversely, a growing majority associated with employers have moved a significant proportion of their recruitment attempts online. For professionals on both sides from the hiring equation, the notion of conducting a job search or candidate search offline is virtually impossible in 2007. However, while it is undeniable that the movement online of many recruitment functions and work search resources has significantly expanded the scope, accessibility, ease, and efficiency of the particular recruitment process, the long-term implications of the trend remain shrouded with ambiguity. In the interim, the ever-quickening pace IT Recruitment of technological advancement has push many HR practitioners into the awkward position of having to define some best practices for online recruitment about the fly, as it were, even as the protocols and methods which have been being used at the same time continue to evolve. As with any shifting target, the exponentially expanding tendency of online recruitment resists easy definition and description. But by relying on a number of recent analyses and indices, it is possible to patch together a clearer picture of what the trend of online recruitment is and what it is not -- and what it may well portend about the potential of HR. Tracing the Trajectory from the Online Recruitment Trend, 2000-2007 Like virtually every different Internet-facilitated service, online job search along with recruitment activity have vastly expanded since year 2000. However, unlike many other Internet-based program trends that declined inside early 2000s, some analysts contend the dot-com crash and the subsequent tightening of first the IT and then the general labor industry actually facilitated the expansion of online job looks and recruitment efforts. As the labor market was flooded having a sudden influx of laid-off staff, many of whom were refugees on the IT industry, online job search resources gradually emerged like a touchstone for millions connected with jobseekers. Although many firms were being listing open positions on their corporate websites long ahead of this, the early 2000s was the time during which a truly distinct online recruitment paradigm come forth and first attained an even of critical mass. Executive Search Market data and statistical analyses in the burgeoning online recruitment industry apparently confirm this account. In 1999, it was reported that under one-third of Fortune 500 companies were engaged in any form of online recruitment by any means, including the posting of open positions within the firm's own corporate web page. By 2003, that figure had hopped to 94today, it registers as 100 Job seekers are furthermore focusing extensively -- and perhaps, exclusively -- on online sources in the process of seeking a brand new position. In 2003, it was reported that 45f job seekers confirmed having consulted the Internet within their job search. By 2006, a survey conducted through the Society for Human Resource Management put the amount of job seekers who used online language resources in their job searches at a staggering 96It appears that for a growing number of employees on the lookout for any new position, the concepts of "job search" along with "online job search" are actually virtually synonymous. In the early nights of online recruitment, most job sites were either maintained by way of a corporate parent solely for the purpose of internal recruitment, or operated on the volunteer or donation-only basis by individuals involved with a particular field or even industry. Today, however, online recruitment is the lucrative industry in its very own right; the top job search sites now regularly draw in hefty profits. This income is produced largely from ad income generated by companies prepared pay big bucks to showcase their wares to the countless job seekers who frequently peruse sites like Monster.com and Yahoo! HotJobs. In 2003, the online recruitment market was generating slightly more than $3 billion in once-a-year revenues. In 2007, the figure now meets $16 billion, with analysts estimating the online recruitment industry could ingest more than $20 billion annually as soon as next year. Taken together, all of the statistical indicators tell a tale of exponential growth and expansion in the prevalence, popularity, importance, and profitability of the web recruitment industry. In the course of just a couple of short years, what once was a narrow sub-market has exploded into well known ubiquity. However, while there's no denying the actual skyrocketing popularity of on the net recruitment, the outcomes and implications of the trend are not while clearly defined -- or even readily definable. Once the easily quantifiable parameters of ad revenues along with user counts are found lacking, we enter the fairly murkier territory of gauging your efficacy and impact regarding online recruitment. These more subjective steps aren't as precise, but they still offer you valuable insight to firms hoping to refine and optimize his or her online recruitment strategy. In the next section, we'll take a look at a lot of the benefits and pitfalls regarding online recruiting -- and how you can impact your firm's financial well being.