Since the new year, the definition of "large" in the online recruiting industry has changed dramatically. Indeed, in just 60 days, recruitment web sites have morphed into a whole new scale of operation.

The Monster Board and Online Career Center merged into Monster.com, a site which now routinely attracts more than five million unique visitors each month. EarthWeb Inc. acquired dice.com for more than $35 million to build the largest IT community online. And The ComputerJobs Store raised $10 million in venture capital to expand its local stores into a dozen new metropolitan areas around the country.

What's going on here? Is Internet recruiting becoming an industry of giants? Probably not. These sites don't even come close to the traffic at the top 25 sites on the Internet. Nevertheless, they foreshadow a movement toward greater mass and wider visibility than has historically been the case in online recruiting.

And with good reason. According to some estimates, there are 100,000 or more employment-related sites on the Internet. They range from so called "mega-sites, such as CareerMosaic and CareerPath.com, to small, niche operations like JobCircle.com, a technical recruiting site focused on the Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City markets.

The array of options confuses and sometimes discourages recruiters. In addition, some of these sites provide high quality services, but others do not. Some operate ethically, posting accurate traffic figures and descriptions of their true reach into candidate populations, while others exaggerate or even fabricate their capability. Some have strong financial resources and the staying power to provide a genuine return on investment, but others are struggling and may not even be around next week.

The gold rush days of online recruiting -- from 1995 to 1998 -- were exciting and fun. Nobody made much gold, but the rush of contributing to a whole new industry kept many people and organizations in the chase. Now, however, the industry is maturing. More and more recruiters are accepting the Internet as a legitimate recruiting medium and integrating it into their way of doing business. According to Forrester Research, 100% of large companies, 60% of medium-sized firms and 20% of small organizations will be recruiting online by 2003. With 20 million companies in the United States, those projections represent a lot of new customers for recruitment web sites.

And it's that momentum of acceptance that is transforming 1999 into a time of consolidation in the online recruitment industry. Sites need the financial resources and the presence online to compete for these new customers. The challenge for each site is to build brand recognition among soon-to-be online recruiters and to capture their loyalty.

Ironically, the battlefield for this new customer base is the real world. And the weapons of choice are print publications and television. That's why Monster.com and HotJobs.com advertised during the Super Bowl, and why other sites place full-page ads in major magazines and newspapers. These media are still the best way to reach the recruiting community, and they cost big bucks. To raise that kind of money, you'll see even more sites turn to mergers, acquisitions and venture capital in the months ahead.

But does consolidation signify less choice? Does it mean that the days are numbered for the galaxy of smaller sites now operating in cyberspace? Probably not if smaller means niched or focused. To prevail with less mass, however, sites must provide an online recruiting experience that customers value and cannot find elsewhere. It's a challenge similar to that faced by leading boutique clothing shops. These businesses succeed because they find a formula -- customer service, the availability of certain "elite" brands, better tailoring -- that customers appreciate.

In other words, small must be transformed into specialty, and specialty must mean higher performance. In other words, specialty sites must provide a better return on recruitment investment in their niche than do the larger sites. That involves delivering additional value in three key areas:

1. Access to higher concentrations of candidates in their specialty. Through a combination of savvy marketing and brand development, specialty sites must attract and retain the loyalty of more individuals with a specific employment profile that recruiters value than do the larger, general purpose sites. Whether it's candidates with senior-level financial expertise or sales experience in the telecommunications industry or residency in a metropolitain area, specialty sites must sustain a large enough critical mass of candidates to warrant recruiters making a special trip to their address on the Information Superhighway.

2. Access to elites. By using the power of the Internet to support mass communications, specialty sites must nurture long term relationships with the most capable members of their target population. They must earn the loyalty and trust of the candidates employers most covet so that even in today's seller's market where the best and brightest are bombarded with competing offers, these very special individuals will pay attention to and consider the employment opportunities presented by the site.

3. Resource savings. Specialty sites must move beyond the standard fare at most of the larger sites -- job posting, banner ads, a resume database and maybe, automated notification of candidate-job match -- and provide an array of value-added services that help recruiters get their job done in less time and at lower cost. These services might include reference checking, salary history confirmation and preliminary screening. Whatever the mix, they must recast the transaction orientation of the larger sites into a premium, service-based relationship between the specialty site and its recruiter-customers.

Fifty years ago, with the rise of the great department stores, pundits predicted the demise of small shops. Though many of them languished and failed, some survived and even prospered. The difference turned on one simple truth: Customers value service as well as convenience.

Rather than trying to be miniature and less-efficient versions of the larger stores, the successful enterprises understood they were in a different business and needed a different operating model. They stopped asking the customer to pay for ease-of-use and focused on delivering a customer-centered approach that is the hallmark of great enterprises.

As the online industry matures, the successful ones will find that customers will flock to the sites that help them solve their problems.