This is job recruiting?

0 Comments | USA TODAY, March, 2007 | by Stephanie Armour

With the competition for talented workers increasingly fierce, businesses across the nation are becoming ever more creative in their efforts to impress prospects.

The escalating talent war has led Ernst & Young, the accounting giant, to recruit soon-to-be graduates by taking them rafting down a snow-covered mountain in Utah. In Washington, D.C., technology company Blackboard is wooing job candidates with wine-tastings and baseball games. And Esurance, an online provider of insurance products, is taking on the competition by erecting recruiting billboards right next to rival call-center companies in areas such as Sioux Falls, S.D.

"I remember the '90s hiring boom, and I thought that was the peak. I would say this time hiring is even more aggressive," says...