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Web of connections

Employers are turning to the Internet to fill jobs, putting them in touch with applicants 24 hours a day.

Using the Internet for a job search has become as routine as a morning cup of coffee.

So say the results of a study conducted by Direct Employers Association. The nonprofit group of more than 200 employers and operator of JobCentral.com found that the Internet produced 51 percent of all new hires in 2005.

That included 21 percent who found their jobs through employers’ own career sites on the Web. The other sources included general Web job boards, specialty online job sites and social networking sites.

“It is very apparent to me that the corporate Web sites are the primary source of hires for corporations now,” said Chad Sowash, vice president, business development at DirectEmployers Association.

Applying directly to postings on a company’s Web site shows the person went the extra mile and is interested in that particular corporation, said Laure Paul, director of career services at Drew University in Madison.

For a generation born with a mouse in its hand, neophyte job seekers often depend too much on the Internet. But it takes much more than posting a resume on a job search engine and waiting. It takes research, especially to gain an edge, Paul said.

“We tell our students to use the Web to target specific employers,” she said.

Drew University and the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station both partner with MonsterTrak.com, a student-focused subsidiary of Monster.com.

The colleges offer workshops on how to use the Internet to find specific jobs via keywords, sprucing up resume presentation and formatting. Flora Stower, director of career services at the College of St. Elizabeth, instills a back-to-basics policy, often bypassed as job seekers give in to the Web’s sense of urgency.

“Sometimes the Internet poses a challenge in a job search because students will send out their materials quickly without looking them over,” she said.

The owner of FSA Career Search, John Hadley of Somerville, actually suggests his clients limit their Internet job search to 30 minutes a day.

“I see a lot of people sucked in to computer sites, spending four or five hours a day promoting themselves through the Web,” said Hadley, a career coach. “In the meantime they don’t know where they’re posting too. It could just be recruiters trying to connect to them vs. the company directly.”

Instead he recommends supplementing Web searches with old-fashioned, face-to-face networking, what he calls developing a “spider web of contacts.”

“Sometimes you can get in through the back door or talk to the right person who can get your resume on top of the pile,” he said.

Establishing contact with business networking groups such as Letip or Gateway Regional Chamber of Commerce in Northern New Jersey, is a good start he said.

Sitting at home one night, Berkeley resident Bill Goldstein took the next step in his career in the home-building industry with a click of his computer’s mouse.

Within a week, he had two interviews with Toll Bros., which offered him a job.

To get there, he had checked out Web sites that post job listings, such as CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com. He also surfed over to the sites of major home builders, including Toll Bros., where he applied online.

“It is convenient because you are at home,” said Goldstein, who works as assistant project manager at Riviera at Freehold, an adult community. “It makes it easy because it is at the tip of your fingertips.”

Goldstein is not alone. Toll Bros. said 30 percent to 35 percent of its new hires come via the Internet, a percentage that has risen gradually in past years. “At a dramatic rate, people have been moving to applying for jobs on the Internet,”said Jon Downs, senior vice president, human resources at Toll Bros.

Companies are spending money on their own Web sites, adding applicant tracking systems and allowing prospective employees to apply directly, said Chad Sowash, vice president, business development at DirectEmployers Association.

Economics also plays a part in it. Typically companies can afford to post 30 percent of their available jobs on online boards, Sowash said. “How are the candidates finding that hidden 70 percent?” Last year, 461 out of the Fortune 500 companies had job sections on corporate Web sites, said Long Branch native Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads, a South Brunswick recruiting consulting firm. “It is a home run,” he said.

Lucent Technologies no longer accepts paper resumes and applications for jobs. Every applicant for a job, from mid-level managers on down, has to go through Lucent’s Web site, lucent.com, said Karen Saunders, director of global talent acquisitions.

Resumes — about 40,000 of them — flood in every year.

“It is a way of being able to track the data,” Saunders said. “You have to be able to keep track of who is applying for what.” Recruiters are then assigned to review the resumes.

The result is about half of the jobs filled are from people who have gone directly to the Web site, she said. The company also uses job boards, as well as Web sites belonging to professional organizations, Saunders said.

“Especially in the U.S., our brand is huge,” Saunders said. “It is still very, very big, especially Bell Laboratories.”

For job hunters, the Internet has opened up the world of job searching, turning it into a 24-hour-a-day marketplace.

It’s convenient, said Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com, a Web site co-owned by three newspaper companies, including Gannett Co. Inc., parent company of the Daily Record.

“You are seeing these positions that companies posted minutes ago that are coming online,” Sullivan said. “You can apply for those jobs in real time.”

The Internet also allows job hunters to search for jobs that meet their qualifications and goals, said Dan Miller, vice president of learning development at Monster.com. “What really makes the Internet a valuable tool is the matching capability,”Miller said.

Online tools, such as how to write a resume to get you noticed, also are helpful for job seekers, Sullivan said.

About six months ago, Alexis St. Juliana, 22, Long Branch, got a job with New Jersey Community Water Watch as a campus organizer at Brookdale Community College by applying on the Web.

She checked out job boards, newspaper Web sites, and a Web site for nonprofit groups called idealist.org.

She applied for jobs, got four or five interviews and two job offers, she said.

But searching for jobs online took some time. “Sorting through everything and finding a position that fits what you want to do is really hard,” said St. Juliana. “There are a lot of positions out there that are not good fits for what I wanted to do.”

Point Pleasant Beach resident Donna Richardson, 43, said there are a lot of job postings on the Web. A student at The Stuart School in Wall, she hopes to find a job as a medical administrative assistant.

“You never know what else you are going to find,” she said. “Sometimes there are things that may pique my curiosity.”

Eatontown resident Kristin Dutch, 23, found her job as an admissions representative at Brookdale through the college’s Web site. She searched online job boards for positions as well.

She was looking for a public relations job but had a hard time filtering out jobs she wasn’t interested in. “I had a lot of things to sift through,” Dutch said. “In the same respect, it can be frustrating as well.”

Suzanne Bowes, director of education at The Stuart School, encourages students to look at different sites online for jobs. But still other job search basics, such as personal referrals and following through with prospective employers, are important, she said.

“The world is not what you know. It is who you know,” Bowes said. Personal contact can bring a resume to the top of the pile, she added.

CareerXroads’s Mehler said the Internet is a great source for information about jobs. But it’s not enough to just search the Web, he added.

“The job seeker doesn’t want to get what we call web-itis,” Mehler said. “If you sit behind the PC all day, the months are going to fly by before you get a job.

“You need to be proactive. Get out and meet people, find that friend within the company to get your resume in front of the hiring managers,” Mehler said.