Recent news reports have trumpeted the decline in classified advertising at several of the nation's leading newspapers. The Dallas Morning News, together with its brothers-in-print in San Jose, Los Angeles and Boston, have all seen ad sales drop significantly in the past year. The prevailing explanation for this situation is the rise in online recruitment advertising.

As an unabashed proponent of the online medium, I appreciate this view. But I think it requires careful parsing to provide an accurate assessment of what's actually going on. The fact that online recruitment advertising is drawing revenues from traditional classified advertising does not, as some technology seers now opine, foreshadow the demise of the print medium. Instead, it represents the segmentation of the employment information market.

Historically, print classified advertising was the only game in town. Employers had no other way to reach large numbers of prospective candidates, and job seekers had no other resource with which to connect with large numbers of employment opportunities. As a result, neither an organization's particular staffing requirements nor an individual's learning preferences had any impact on the way that employment information was disseminated.

That lack of choice is what the Internet has changed. Newspapers are no longer calling the shots, the customer is. In other words, employment information will increasingly be transmitted and accessed according to the idiosyncratic decisions of each sender and recipient. In short, the Internet has introduced the Age of Alternatives in recruitment advertising.

For organizations, this new era enables recruiters to tailor their advertising vehicle as well as their message to create a single, unified impression in the job market. They may select the online medium for certain segments of their recruitment advertising because they feel it better serves the geographic dispersion of their facilities, is more responsive to the press of their operational requirements or is more attuned to their culture. And just as likely, they may chose to rely on the newspaper for other requisitions because they're better filled locally or because their business is better served by building a familiar brand within the community. Whatever the rationale, the choice is now available, and the decision is now integral to shaping an effective advertising strategy.

Similarly, different people prefer different media for acquiring their information. There will always be a segment of the workforce which enjoys folding the paper at the kitchen table and drawing a circle around the ads of interest to them. Other people, however, are more comfortable with the online medium and prefer the rapid, worldwide access to information it provides.

There are some occupational, gender and age lines to these preferences, but they are not as deeply etched as conventional wisdom might suggest. For example, although Internet usage is traditionally viewed as an activity of young, male technical professionals, people over the age of 50 now represent one of the fastest growing cohorts of new Internet users, truck drivers are one of its most active populations and women are now at essential parity with men in terms of online participation.

So, what's a recruiter to do? How do you determine which medium makes the most sense for your organization? The following suggestions may help:

• Know yourself. Don't rely on habit -- the way things have always been done. By definition, that approach is a decision to advertise in the newspaper, whether or not it's the right medium for your organization. Instead, take advantage of the opportunity you have to pick and choose among alternatives. Conduct a bottom-up assessment of your current and future recruiting needs. Look at such factors as the number of positions by skill and skill level, their rate of introduction, location and lead time to fill, and then select the medium which best addresses each requirement.

• Know your customer. Within each of the major occupational fields you will be recruiting, set up a focus group to determine how your optimum candidates prefer to acquire employment information. Populate each group with your organization's newest employees who have backgrounds, skills and interests similar to those in your target population. Find out how they heard about your employment opportunities, brainstorm with them about how best to reach new candidates who are similar to them and use that information to chose your media mix.

• Beware of good deals. Newspapers that view online advertising as an add-on to print sales may actually deny you the ability to make a choice. Although positioned as an arrangement that gives you two media for the price of one, these deals are often designed to preserve and sell print advertising. The web sites on which they post your job do not generate much traffic and, therefore, do not deliver many eyeballs. And attracting eyeballs is what online recruiting is all about. The more eyeballs that see your ad, the higher the probability that it will connect you with the candidates you want to recruit. Some "two-fer" sites are truly good deals, but many others simply do not represent a genuine online advertising option.

Despite the brash predictions of the gizmo gang, technology is not about to eliminate the paper medium. Whatever its computational prowess, technology is and will always be no match for human predilection. Therefore, the real issue -- at least in the field of recruitment advertising -- is not what technology can or will be able to do, but what choices organizations and people can make. That's the real advance the Internet has provided: an alternative that actually works for recruiters.