THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 7, 1995 TAG: 9502070273
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
You've just gotten fired. Maybe you've quit. Or you'd rather be doing something else. In any case, you're looking for a job.
Where do you turn? The newspaper help-wanteds? The employment commission? Friends, neighbors, former bosses?
Christina Bublick is betting that not many years from now, you'll just as likely switch on your personal computer and go ``net-surfing'' for a job.
Bublick manages one of Norfolk-based Landmark Communications Inc.'s newest ventures. Called CareerWeb and scheduled for commercial launch in May, it's one of a growing number of business ventures on the Internet, the rapidly expanding global web of computer networks.
CareerWeb, developed by Landmark's The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, will basically be an on-line employment service. Internet users from around the world who turn to CareerWeb's ``home page'' will be able to respond to job listings, research employers and sign up for various career-development services.
Employers and career-services companies will pay CareerWeb to electronically post information about themselves - everything from company histories to letters from company presidents, complete with photos, maps and charts. For two pages worth of profile information and five job listings a month, Bublick said, the annual charge will be about $1,250. Ten pages and ten listings a month will run about $16,750 annually.
Landmark isn't the first to get into the business. Bernard Hodes Advertising, a New York agency, launched its CareerMosaic service on the Internet last July. Companies like Intel Corp. and US West Inc. post profiles and job listings through that service. Several other smaller services also are available on the Internet.
David C. Forman, vice president of the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management, said he thinks there will be room for many players in the on-line employment world. ``I see the electronic medium as just another step in the whole evolutionary process of matching people and jobs,'' he said.
To try to get a leg up on competitors, Bublick has recruited a who's who of employment experts to CareerWeb's advisory team, including senior human resources executives at Motorola Inc., Boeing Co. and Bechtel Corp.
Another advisor is Peter D. Weddle, chairman and chief executive of McLean-based Job Bank USA, which describes itself as the nation's largest electronic employment service. Weddle said that his company has more than 30,000 resumes on file and more than 2,000 employer clients. Job Bank plans to use CareerWeb.
``We're in an era of what I call warp-speed jobs,'' Weddle said, ``which means that probably people will go through 15 or 20 job changes in the course of their lives.''
Electronic services like his and CareerWeb's, he said, stand to prosper in this rapidly changing environment. by CNB