Job seekers, corporate recruiters, and executive search consultants are treated equally by the barrage of resume and job posting sites on the Internet. They are all pieces of the employment puzzle, linked together in the interest of saving valuable time and money in the search process. There is no doubt that the number of online resumes and job postings has significantly increased in the last few years and will continue to do so well into the next millennium. But do these increases really mean qualified candidates and successfully filled positions?

There have been several success stories of people posting their resume on Friday afternoon and receiving a job offer the following Monday. Many corporations have also reported less need to go to outside consultants to fill jobs. But, in looking more closely, it is revealed that most people finding positions through the Internet, are primarily in jobs earning under $100,000 per year and are within a select group of functions. Information Technology and Sales roles lead the pack. This is understandable since hi-tech individuals were exposed to the technology first and are accustomed to high turnover, especially at the low and mid-range levels where temporary and contract employees have been the norm; and sales people seem born with the knowledge to always keep their options open. Other functions are now beginning to take notice and show more presence.

But do these resume sites have the right people? Sample queries on a number of subscription resume databases (including monster.com) and through the use of resume search agent software packages (including PCResume) yielded a tremendous number of listings. After careful review of the queried resumes' demographics, finding qualified candidates at the senior executive level was harder than "finding a needle in the haystack." This is not surprising, however, when a major subscription site proudly broadcast this e-mail: "The majority of our users have average household incomes of $70,000."

So where are the senior level executives? There is at least one site (6FigureJobs.com) that only posts jobs and resumes at the $100,000+ level, but sample queries on it proved that the site needs to mature a bit to be truly useful over a variety of functions. Within the next five years, this site, and others like it, will probably prove a useful research tool for senior executive level search. For now, there is no substitute for traditional executive search.