Recruiters Praise Yahoo! Classifieds For Providing Direct Access To Job Seekers

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Dec. 29, 1997 -- With the nation's unemployment rate at the lowest it has been in 24 years, companies are relying on the Internet to find skilled employees. Recruiters in industries ranging from hotels to hospitals to high-tech are using online classifieds as the first step in attracting high caliber candidates. Internet industry analyst Jerry Michalski wrote in the newsletter Release 1.0 that "perhaps no other market is as obvious a candidate for Net automation as the classifieds-ad business." Recognizing that advantage, companies such as Anaheim Hilton & Towers, @Home Networks, California Pizza Kitchen and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital use free Yahoo!® Classifieds (http://classifieds.yahoo.com) in their recruitment process.

Anaheim Hilton & Towers

One of the main challenges facing JoAnn Leith, senior recruitment manager for Anaheim Hilton & Towers, is hiring employees in a town dominated by Disneyland, which is expected to hire 14,000 employees in the coming year. Leith was looking for new ways to find employees and turned to the Web. Said Leith, "I used Yahoo! at home and thought that Yahoo! Classifieds might be a powerful tool in reaching more people. Cyberspace is growing so much that it seemed like a logical step."

"Posting jobs on Yahoo! Classifieds has definitely helped our overall recruitment strategy," Leith said. "The candidates tend to be of a higher caliber, particularly for the entry-level positions. This is clearly the way to reach college students. When you need as many people as we do (approximately 250 per year), it's important to use a few guerrilla tactics."

The fact that Yahoo! Classifieds is free is important to Leith. "Other online classifieds make you pay to post a job opening, but I'd rather use Yahoo! Classifieds for free. That way, there's nothing to lose and everything to gain." Leith also noted that using the Web to attract potential employees makes sense from a marketing standpoint. "It shows that we're on the ball and creative about the way we're trying to find people."

@Home Network

Jay Blecker, a recruiter with the technology company @Home, estimates that approximately 25 percent of @Home employees were hired after answering an online classified ad. "Yahoo! Classifieds has the kind of reach and traffic we're looking for, and posting our job listings there is an automatic for us. It's like throwing a wide net˜the first step of our search."

Blecker thinks an additional advantage is "the people that (Yahoo! Classifieds) reaches are tech savvy and savvy in general. They're smart and strategic in their job search, and we feel that will be reflected in their work. Yahoo! Classifieds almost acts like a filter."

Blecker also advertises in trade journals, but said, "In the future, online advertising may be the sole medium of how we advertise job openings. I would like to see everything go through the Internet because the benefits are huge, to both the candidate and the company; it expedites the whole process."

California Pizza Kitchen

Evan Silver, director of recruiting for California Pizza Kitchen, continually needs new employees to keep up with the popular restaurant chain's expansion. Like many of the recruiters using online classifieds, Silver sees posting jobs on Yahoo! Classifieds as a cost-effective way to reach people quickly. "Yahoo! Classifieds is fast, easy and unlike other online classifieds, free for companies to post job listings," said Silver.

Silver said that he has to hire a hundred restaurant managers per year, in addition to corporate-level staff. The fact that he can reach people all over the world through Yahoo! Classifieds has been invaluable. He noted that "in the restaurant business people are always relocating, and being able to post jobs on the Web makes it easier for us to attract the best possible candidate˜regardless of where the individual currently lives." Silver said that California Pizza Kitchen decided to use Yahoo! Classifieds "because, like our restaurants, it represents the cutting edge."

Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center

During this past summer, Gary Sebel, Web developer for Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, posted information on Yahoo! Classifieds about an internship program. Sebel said, "There was an unbelievable response to our posting for internships. We received at least one resume a day, which allowed us to fill our positions and build up a good stable of freelancers."

Finding people through Yahoo! Classifieds makes sense for Sebel. He said, "We're an Internet group, so using online classifieds shows one more level of involvement with the Web. I also recommend to my friends in other industries that they use Yahoo! Classifieds as the first place to start. Looking for a job online really saves a lot of time. If you find something you like, you can quickly get information on the company and see if they're hiring."

About Yahoo! Classifieds

Yahoo! Classifieds (http://classifieds.yahoo.com) is a free, nationwide service provided by Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com), the leading guide to the Internet. Yahoo! Classifieds encompasses more than one million listings for employment, autos, real estate, rentals, computers, personals and miscellaneous merchandise and services. Companies and individuals can submit and search listings for free. In addition to user-submitted listings, Yahoo! has partnered with leading, national companies for employment, autos and real estate listings to provide a comprehensive resource for individuals and corporations to quickly and conveniently find what they need.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is a global Internet media company that offers a network of branded Web programming that serves millions of users daily. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the single largest guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach, and is one of the most recognized brands associated with the Internet. Yahoo! Inc. provides targeted Internet resources and communications services for a broad range of audiences, based on demographic, key-subject and geographic interests. Yahoo! is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. ###

Press Contacts:

Lindsay Walsh
NRG PR
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lindsay@nrgpr.com

Jennifer Hwang
Yahoo! Inc.
408-731-3362
jenhwang@yahoo-inc.com