New Internet job site focuses on PR recruitment
Michael Hill, Contributing Writer

These are trying times for public relations firms.

Thanks to the technology explosion and increased competition for corporate brand awareness, the demand for qualified PR professionals is at an all-time high. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that PR jobs are expected to increase faster than the average for all other occupations through the year 2008.

In order to try and fill all those new positions, companies are intensifying their recruiting, stepping up traditional efforts like print ads and search firms and, more and more, using the Internet and job boards like Monster.com to attract qualified candidates.

Now comes a job site specifically for public-relations professionals.

Futureworkplace Inc., a Seattle-based company formed last February, recently launched workinpr.com, a field-specific job site offering PR professionals and employers highly sophisticated search capabilities, as well as up-to-date industry research and career information.

"I definitely think that PR folks need their own place to go on the Internet," said Katie Goodman, human resources manager for Imagio, a Seattle-based agency that handles PR, advertising, marketing and interactive communications. "They need a place where they can post their resumes and communicate with other PR professionals.

"Monster.com really is kind of a monster and it's easy to get lost in there. I would love to be able to go to one place on the Web and find qualified candidates for all the PR jobs I have to fill."

Renee Dunn, president of Futureworkplace Inc., said she hopes the site is part of a new trend in matching employers with prospective employees.

"Within the next four years, it's estimated that 60 percent of the $22 billion spent online will be spent on more vertical, in-depth, industry-specific sites," said Dunn, whose company created workinpr.com in partnership with the two leading U.S. PR associations -- the Public Relations Society of America and the Council of Public Relations Firms.

Dunn said the advantages include more visibility for job candidates and less cost for companies. Her firm recently did a study with Thomas Weisel Partners that showed it costs a firm about $152 to fill a job using the Web, compared to $1,383 through more traditional standards, such as newspaper ads and search firms.

Forrester Research in Framingham, Mass., reports that 32 percent of all recruitment advertising budgets will be spent on the Internet, and predicts that $4 billion will be spent advertising jobs online by 2005.

With today's tight labor market, finding the right people for the jobs has become increasingly difficult, said Jeff Hasen, president of the Seattle office of Publicis Dialog, a national communications firm offering direct marketing, sales promotion and interactive marketing services.

"Some of these big Internet job sites are so general that you wind up going through e-mail all day long."

While across-the-board job sites like Monster.com have provided some local firms with hiring success stories, Hasen believes a more focused, more streamlined, PR-specific job site would make the search a whole lot easier.

"The jury is still out, but I think a tool like this would really make things easier on everyone, in terms of both time and money spent," he said.

A survey by workinpr.com of 30 global PR agencies and corporations that hire PR professionals found that 69 percent of such firms devote less than 10 percent of their human resources budgets to recruiting.

Imagio's Goodman said she's surprised it took this long for such a job-specific site.

"I would be a big advocate of a PR-specific jobs board or career center because I would know where to find my people," she said. "To be honest, with the industry being what it is and all these career sites popping up, I think something like this has been a little slow in coming."