A detour around the job boards

Workforce, May, 2002 by Todd Raphael

You may have bought airline tickets at Orbitz, a Web site where several airlines have gotten together to market their tickets. Now, a group of companies are trying a similar concept with HR.

Several large corporations, including Intel, Mutual of Omaha, and Lockheed Martin, have formed the nonprofit E-Recruiting Association. The organization created a search engine, at DirectEmployers.com, that enables job candidates to search for jobs that are listed on corporate Web sites. If a job comes up that looks interesting, the candidate clicks on it and is sent straight to the employer's Web site.

It's a different approach than most job boards, in which companies buy ads and the job listings reside on the job board. Bill Warren, who runs the operation out of Indianapolis, says the idea started two years ago. Some corporations had been making large investments in the "careers" sections of their Web sites, and wanted to bring traffic there instead of buying ads on job boards. These companies had found that job boards were getting more expensive, and that extra fees were sometimes charged to link candidates directly to corporate Web sites.

Warren says the association is charging $6,000 to $60,000 annually for companies to join, depending on their size. Firms that aren't members of the association can still be listed, but they don't receive many of the benefits, such as detailed reports of results. Warren's own resume reads like a history of online recruiting. He founded the Online Career Center, which was one of the first online-recruiting sites. He's also been president of Monster.com.