Indianapolis, IN – Monday, February 6, 2006 – DirectEmployers Association, a non-profit consortium of over 200 leading U.S. employers, is taking the lead in helping employers comply with new Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) regulations for Internet recruiting. The Association’s member employers will join a teleconference, Wednesday February 22nd, to review the regulations and develop OFCCP compliance best practices. DirectEmployers’ member companies previously met with representatives of The Department of Labor’s Employment Standards Administration’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs via teleconference to review and discuss the new regulations. The session was led by David Frank, Deputy Director, and Jim Pierce, Director of Policy, for OFCCP.

“An important part of what we do is assisting federal contractors understand and comply with the law and I am happy for the opportunity that DirectEmployers Association provided me to do that,” said Mr. Frank. “The new Internet Applicant rule provides clear guidance to allow OFCCP to better enforce the law and helps contractors by clarifying an ambiguity that, until now, left contractors guessing at what information they needed to collect from internet applicants.”

“Employers must take the lead in understanding the spirit and intention of the new regulation and develop best practices for OFCCP compliance. It is essential we use this guidance and create processes to better manage our information for compliance. DirectEmployers gives us the opportunity to collaborate with other leading companies and officials from OFCCP to create these very important standards”, says Jay Schedler, Director of Human Resources for ACNielsen.

DirectEmployers Association, which operates the JobCentral employment search engine, has alliances with America’s Job Bank, The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation & Employment Service (VR&E), The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), DiversityWorking, IMDiversity, OCCMundial and other premier diversity Web sites on the Internet.

DirectEmployers Association is a nonprofit consortium of leading U.S. employers dedicated to developing and implementing Internet recruiting solutions which acknowledges, values, and respects diversity and reflects the rich array of cultures represented in our nation’s workforce. The Association is managed by Bill Warren, widely recognized as the founder of online recruiting and a former president of Monster.com.

Steven Style
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It isn’t clear whether the board’s plan to give job seekers access to more listings will be a big help to corporate recruiters.

February 3, 2006 – Online job board JobCentral is trying to become more central to both employers and job seekers. But it’s not clear whether moves announced in mid-January–which include increasing the number of job postings accessible through the site from 340,000 to nearly 4.5 million –will be a big help to corporate recruiters or threaten the biggest job boards.

It’s more important for employers to get their job listings in front of the right niche audience and get help with services such as candidate screening than it is to gather a mountain of résumés, says Kevin Wheeler, president of consulting firm Global Learning Resources, which focuses on recruiting and employee development. “It’s not a volume game anymore,” he says. “Success is going to come from targeted marketing.”

The site, officially called JobCentral National Employment Network, is a service of the DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit group made up of major U.S. companies. The association’s executive director, Bill Warren, was the first president of Monster.com.

The association said this month that it teamed up with job search engine Simply Hired to let users of JobCentral access more than 4 million job listings indexed by SimplyHired.com. Clicking on the “Search the Web” tab on the search results page at JobCentral provides additional listings from the SimplyHired.com database.

The association also introduced the National Labor Exchange, a résumé database at JobCentral that is free to Direct­Employers members. Nonmember em- ployers are charged an annual $25 registration fee. The association also planned to announce that member company jobs from JobCentral will appear on the Google Base site and on the sites of job search engines Indeed and Simply Hired.

Steven Style, a spokesman for JobCentral, says the site should become more appealing to job seekers and, therefore, companies. “If you have the jobs searchers, you have the employers wanting to list,” he says.

Mark Mehler, a founder of consulting firm CareerXroads, suggests JobCentral could disrupt the online recruiting arena partly through its low cost. A job listing at JobCentral costs $25. A single posting at Monster.com costs $395, though volume discounts can bring the price down to $145. “Major companies are spending six figures every year on the major job boards,” Mehler says. But he warns it remains to be seen whether JobCentral will become a hub for job seekers.

JobCentral has yet to scare Monster. Danielle Perry, spokeswoman for Monster, says the deal with Simply Hired makes JobCentral another job posting aggregator. Aggregators can frustrate users, in part by delivering dead links, she says. Monster, meanwhile, aims to give employers a range of services, such as help complying with a new rule for federal contractors.

“We are not about job listings,” Perry says. “We are about helping employers find quality candidates.”