Europeans are starting to catch up - 03/2001

Spurred by the arrival of the United States' most successful operators of career websites, Europe's market for online recruiting is heating up. Existing sites are being spruced up, and new career sites are springing up across the Continent.

There has long been a large number of career sites in Europe. Some of these individual sites - including Germany's Stellen Informations- Service, maintained by Germany's Federal Labor Office - are of the dimensions of Monster.com, CareerCentral.com, HotJobs.com, Careerpath.com, Career Mosaic.com and the rest of the mammoth US e-recruiters.

Germany's stellenanzeigen.de, (in German) has all the features and attractiveness of its US counterparts, including an email alert function that automatically notifies registered job seekers of new postings in their areas of expertise.

Equally attentive, attractive and well-thought-out is Britain's Top Jobs on the Net. Unlike many of the European career sites, it's a truly international one, with specific pages for a few countries (including Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and Poland in Europe).

CareerMosaic (with British and French sites), Monster.com (Britain, France the Netherlands and Germany) and other US giants have been busy setting up nationally based career sites in Europe. This stock of expertise, contacts and software would seem to give them a large edge over their European counterparts.

Jobware is one of the best of the new European sites. Started in Germany in 1996, the site went pan-European in 1999. Jobware's listings cover all of Europe and accessible through a single, multinational search engine.

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