The fabled race between the tortoise and the hare is as instructive for online recruiting as it is for nursery schoolers. The tortoise, a symbol of steady progress and cautious pacing, beats the fast-moving yet contemptible hare who, after a strong start, falls asleep midway through. Unfortunately, Aesop's lesson seems lost on some of today's HR executives.

These hares in recruiter's clothing approach the sourcing of candidates on the Internet as a head-long sprint to the finish line. They dash into newsgroups, corporate web sites, resume databases and telephone directories searching breathlessly for the resumes of so-called "passive job seekers." Day after day, they race into cyberspace, sending out hundreds, even thousands, of e-mail messages in an all-out effort to pass the competition.

Ironically, the prize in this race -- high-caliber candidates whose qualifications best match the requirements of an open position -- is negatively affected by it. All of this frenetic activity swamps trophy prospects with e-mail job offers that are inappropriate, misdirected or simply uninteresting. It pollutes their mailboxes with uninvited solicitations and interrupts their private communications with a brazenness that would make even Big Brother proud. Not surprisingly, they resent such impolite intrusions and, to the extent that they can, routinely ignore them.

So what, then, do these hares get from their much celebrated speed? Increasingly, nothing. Listen to them on recruiters' bulletin boards and chats, and you'll hear them lament about it. Their exchanges are full of bitter observations about the lack of good job candidates on the Internet. There's more than 100 million people online, yet they complain that there's just not enough good men and women to get the job done.

You might think these speed demons would quickly figure out that candidates aren't the problem -- they are. They've been brainwashed by the oft-repeated nonsense of the gizmo gang. They have been captivated by a group which celebrates the attributes of the medium, not the quality of the message it conveys. The technophiles think Internet recruiting is about the Internet, not recruiting. Like the hare, they believe sourcing candidates depends on search engines, Boolean logic and bytes.

Thank heaven it doesn't. Online recruiting is about your destination, not your technology. It's about style, not about speed. It's about people, not their e-mail addresses. It's about getting there, like the tortoise, not about fooling around like the hare.

Savvy online recruiters understand that the true value of the Internet is its ability to support sustained communications with working men and women all over the globe. Rather than stuffing e-mailboxes with this opening or that, these tortoise-like professionals use the medium to reach out to people in a deliberate and respectful manner. Rather than focusing on their own requirements, these recruiters concentrate on the candidates, working patiently to get involved with them and to support their aspirations.

To do that, today's best online recruiters understand and apply the very different strengths of machines and people. They build databases which analyze and communicate with thousands of qualified candidates, and they forge enduring relationships with the best people on a one-to-one basis.

Online recruiting relationships are characterized by continuous, individualized interaction over the long term. It involves months and years of dialogue between an organization and its recruiters and prospective candidates. The purpose of this exchange is to be helpful and supportive of every individual even when open positions aren't available or when they turn down a job.

There's no arguing that implementing such a strategy takes time and effort. However, that cost has been vastly reduced thanks to technology. In addition, while some say that relationship building is counterproductive in today's dog-eat-dog recruiting environment, which recruiter is a high-caliber candidate most likely to trust and whose e-mail are they likely to answer? Will it be the person they know or the speed merchant they've never met?

I think the answer is obvious. At the end of the day, it's relationships that win the race in recruiting.

I appreciate that these ideas aren't new. The champions of recruiting have always acknowledged the importance of relationships in their success. Indeed, it's one of the profession's long-standing truths, much like the story of the tortoise and the hare.