Now We're Using The Net Also To Help Find Jobs

Reversing the brain drain is a challenge. It's also one of the aims of Pacific Recruit, a web-based recruitment business, targeting the South Pacific. The website, a product of demand, widely advertises Pacific-based jobs targeting largely the Asia-Pacific region.

"There are people out there who are working in companies offshore that are interested in coming back if they can get the right position," said Anna Underhill, director of Maxumise the holding company of Pacific Recruit. "These are the local people who know the work environment, who know the people and culture, that we want to capture back into the region."

Pacific Recruit is the result of growing interest for a recruitment network sparked by interest from job seekers and employers. A mere four months in operation, the Pacific Recruit site is already registering over 18,000 hits per month and growing.

Anna said: "We've had a company who put in an ad with Pacific Recruit at midday and had a response two hours later. We've had applications come through and the applicant was responding to the ad on Pacific Recruit so they hadn't seen the paper-based one. Someone else had applied for a contract job and was working two days later."

Maxumise co-director, Max Underhill says "part of improving efficiency lies with human resources and being able to select and recruit the right people for the right job, which is what Maxumise is about."

While Pacific Recruit is the recruitment arm, the parent company with offices in Fiji and Australia, Maxumise is a business advisory organisation assisting businesses in the Asia-Pacific region improve their performance. Recruitment advertising on www.pacificrecruit.com is basically unlimited allowing extensive compilation of information about the job including job description and competency requirements. Because it's global, available 24 hours and contains comprehensive job descriptions, the benefits extend to both employers advertising vacancies online and job seekers searching for positions and submitting their curriculum vitae into the database.

"What it's doing is more than doubling the applications coming in for some jobs It has also lifted the standards of people we're getting and these are some highly professional people that we're attracting out of big companies overseas," Max said.