Recruiting on the Internet is in -- big time. There are now tens of thousands of employment related destinations on the Internet. They range from commercial recruitment web sites and corporate home pages, to sites operated by professional societies, trade associations, alumni organizations and other affinity groups.

The underlying assumption behind each and every one of these operations is that there is a real and sufficient demand for their recruiting resources. Their sponsors believe -- or at least hope -- that they've thrown a party that will draw a large crowd.

Whether the sites are run by for-profit companies or not-for-profit groups, their economic model is almost always based on foot-traffic. And while job seekers provide the bulk of that population, it is the recruiters who are the primary attraction. In short, sites must pull in a lot of recruiters with great jobs in order to attract many job seekers who will, in turn, justify all those job posting and banner ad fees.

The key to success, therefore, is timely and accurate user information. The sites must have a deep understanding of the background and expectations of cyber-ready recruiters. And that's the rub. There's been plenty of market research aimed at job seekers on the Internet, but precious little done to develop data on the staffing professionals who work the same space.

However, recent results from a poll of recruiters on my web site may begin to shed some light. While the survey is clearly less than scientific -- anyone who happens by the site can participate in the poll -- it has generated a large enough response to provide some revealing insights about today's online recruiters.

Respondents to the poll say they were Internet users before they were Internet recruiters. While many recruit in the IT field, just as many do not. Indeed, most do not live or work in the country's best known high-tech meccas. And perhaps most important for the online recruiting industry, these online recruiters don't believe in getting something for nothing when it comes to recruiting.

Here's the data to date:

• About 60% of the respondents have been using the Internet for two or more years. Only 10% just got started. Typically, these individuals use the Net at both home and work. Over 60% spend 6 or more hours per week online, and an astonishing 35% spend 21 or more hours, although not all of that time is devoted to recruiting.
  
• Exactly half of the respondents were third party recruiters. The other 50% was composed of in-house recruiters, employment managers and HR practitioners. Almost half (45%) had 0-2 years of experience in the workforce, 30% had 3-5 years of experience and 10% had over 15 years in the trenches. Most lived on the East Coast or in the Midwest.
  
• Of the poll respondents, 88% said they used the Internet to recruit. Not surprisingly, the most prevalent activity among this group was searching a free resume database. The least prevalent was developing and maintaining a specialized corporate web site for recruitment.
  
• Exactly 50% said they found the Internet to be "very helpful" in their recruiting efforts, while 40% described online recruiting as "moderately helpful." However, over 90% said the Internet was more helpful in some fields than others, at least at the moment.
  
• In rank order, the respondents said the Internet was most helpful when they were recruiting for:
  
  1. IT positions (cited by 50%)
  2. computer-related positions (cited by 45%)
  3. engineering positions (cited by 30%)
  4. finance and accounting positions (cited by 20%)
  5. management positions (cited by 20%)

  Interestingly, more recruiters cited the Internet as a helpful resource for recruiting engineers than they did for recruiting data processing or programming professionals.

• And here's the kicker: the two most helpful activities the respondents identified were:
  
1. searching fee-based resume databases
2. posting jobs on fee-based job sites

In other words, whether they were third-party recruiters working on commission or in-house recruiters working with ever-tighter budgets, they recognized the value proposition of online employment-related web sites -- and they were willing to pay for it.