Ask veteran online recruiters what frustrates them most about their work, and they'll probably tell you it's the traffic. Too much of it on the way to work and not enough of it on the Information Superhighway.

According to industry analysts, there are around 5 million resumes now posted on the Internet, representing something less than three percent of the American workforce. That's the equivalent of about two cars and a moped cruising around the national highway system.

Further, while many of those 5 million resumes describe bona fide employment candidates, a significant percentage do not. They have been posted by workers living overseas who do not want or cannot qualify for employment in the United States. Or they are road debris, resumes left behind by job seekers who have already found a job or moved on to some other activity or made peace with their maker. Whatever the circumstances, the genuine candidate pool -- when measured by up-to-date and truly accessible credential sets posted online -- may actually be less than one percent of the total workforce in the United States.

Certainly, the healthy economy is partly to blame for this situation. There just aren't that many people actively seeking jobs when business is good. But a far larger issue has been the inability of commercial recruitment web sites to protect the confidentiality of passive job seekers. These individuals are already gainfully employed but might consider another position that would advance their career or meet an important personal objective, if they could do so without risk. In other words, they would be willing to head out on the Web-- to explore what opportunities it might offer -- provided they could do so incognito and without having to worry about their resume landing on their boss's desk.

The very public resume databases of traditional commercial recruitment web sites, however, simply haven't offered that kind of protection. At least before now. Over the past eleven months, a significant number of sites have launched new initiatives to address this problem. These programs have ranged from software applications which enable the job seeker to block certain organizations from seeing their resume or to be notified privately when a job posting matches their specifications to off-line databases which can only be accessed by the recruitment web site's staff. Although these options provide differing levels of security, all of them upgrade the privacy available to the passive job seeker.

For example:

• CareerPath has launched Resume Connection, a private off-line database of resumes that only the site's employees can access. Employers place their job requisitions with a staffing specialist who searches the database, contacts qualified candidates, and only with their permission, releases their resume to the employer.
• JobOptions has begun a private resume program which, it claims, has the technological capability to automate the employer-candidate connection. Job seekers fill out a profile which omits their name and contact information. Employers can search the database of profiles and e-mail selected candidates with an invitation to apply for their job opportunity. Interested candidates reply by sending the employer their resume online.
• Career Central, formerly MBA Central, has extended its e-mail based recruitment service to software developers and marketing professionals. This service is designed "to exclusively target passive job seekers" by providing them with a private announcement of job openings for which they are qualified. Employers hear only from those candidates who choose to respond and are interested in their position.
• And for more senior level job seekers, there's , a new venture by Korn/Ferry International, an executive search firm, and The Wall Street Journal (careers.wsj.com and The Wall Street Journal are published by Dow Jones & Co. Inc.). Job seekers fill out an extensive assessment instrument online which then creates a private, off-line profile for the candidate. Employers place search assignments with Korn/Ferry and wherever possible, the firm sources its candidates from the profile database.

Collectively, these and other initiatives have transformed 1998 into the Year of Confidentiality in the online recruitment industry. That's good news for passive job seekers and even better news for the recruiters who are trying to meet them on the Internet. Providing adequate safeguards for individual privacy is probably the most important precondition to attracting a critical mass of job seekers onto the Information Superhighway. However, the jury is still out on whether any of these efforts will work. In many cases, the technology is new and untested. In others, the cost of delivering privacy online may prove to be prohibitive or more costly than in other venues.

Further, passive job seekers have to know about these new services and trust them. They have to believe that they can cruise the Internet like rock stars and professional athletes -- safe and unknown, until they choose to roll down the tinted glass windows. Commercial recruitment web-sites have taken the first step by developing such services, but the second and more difficult step will be proving that they work, and the third and most important step will be building their acceptance and use among the superstars in the workforce.