Is the Job Market ready for a new kind of Job Posting Web Site?

Frustrated with their college-age kids being unable to find local jobs for summer-break, Bill Christian and Steve Sribnik got together to form AmericaJobCentral.com - a new kind of job-source web site that not only aims itself at the teen, student and graduate markets, but offers career and college prep. articles and also a way for young kids to make some money directly supporting the site.

"We knew from our kids' experience that sites like Monster and HotJobs rarely had jobs for this age group and that finding local jobs on these sites was a nightmare, so we set about creating something different". Says Steve Sribnik, founding partner of AJC. "AmericaJobCentral.com is obviously set up to help young people, but we also thought of the employers. Hiring casual labor is often costly and problematic, so we have significantly simplified the process for signing up and posting jobs as well as offering busy HR departments a personal service where they just have to pick up a phone and we do the rest. It's also useful for very small businesses who either do not possess a computer or may not possess internet skills. Our system combines the speed and ubiquity of the internet with the personal touch".

AmericaJobCentral.com provides a simple to use Job Search capability that very quickly allows young job-seekers to home-in on LOCAL jobs – so important for youngsters who need to work within a reasonable distance from home. Employers are able to post unlimited jobs for a LOW monthly fee, payable by credit card.

The AmericaJobCentral.com Job-Search Engine also boasts a “Find-my-job” feature which performs regular searches to pre-selected criteria and e-mails the Job-Seeker when a match is found. Job-Seekers can also post their resumes in the Resume Bank to be searched by employers.

Additionally, AmericaJobCentral.com hosts a ton of useful articles on such subjects as Organizing Your Job-Search, Career advice for Graduates, Self-Marketing, Skills assessment, Resume and Cover Letter Production, Compensation Packages, Interviewing Skills, Networking and Negotiating Tips. The site also provides a huge selection of related links for the job-seeker who may be looking for something more specialized.

Additional Employer Services include a “Find-my candidate” feature which searches a bank of 1,000’s of resumes by Keywords and selects those that match. Employers can also use AJC's On-Line Survey service to test market the teen and student population.

AmericaJobCentral.com launches nationally on the success of a network of small, county-based Job Sites in The Lower Hudson Valley area of New York State. The original site, WestchesterJobCentral.com – formed in 2001 - and its’ sister companies in NY built up local support among students, colleges and businesses alike for their unique approach to connecting employers with local candidates and their simple-to-use search capability.

Click here to view Press Articles about WestchesterJobCentral.com.

The Hardest Part of the Job? Finding It.

By The NEW YORK TIMES

Extract

Local teenagers can also search for jobs at AmericaJobCentral.com. Begun in 2003 and originally called WestchesterJobCentral.com, the web site was designed by Bill Christian and Steve Sribnik, who were frustrated with their own college-age children's summer job search.

"They were getting confused by some of the big job Web sites," Mr. Christian said. "The trouble with the summer job market is that kids don't want to relocate and they don't want to work 50 miles away. They don't have cars and they need to be local."

The site allows job seekers to search for local openings by ZIP code. Employers post jobs for a monthly fee. Recently, the site featured emmployers like Applebee's, Breezemont Day Camp, and UPS. It is geared for the 16- to 29- year-old age group, and focuses on temporary, seasonal and first jobs. Mr Christian also said the economy was tough for teenagers this year.

"The job market is particularly bad for young people," Mr Christian said. "You'de think it would be the other way round, because employers would be looking for cheap labor, but unfortunately everyone is cutting back, doing the things they can do with existing staff."

Online job site created

By THE JOURNAL NEWS

When their college-age children struggled to find jobs during summer vacation, Bill Christian and Steve Sribnik got an idea for an Internet job site targeted at teens, students and recent college graduates.

The result is AmericaJobCentral.com, a recently introduced Web site in Scarsdale that offers job listings, career advice and articles geared toward younger workers.

"AmericaJobCentral.com is obviously set up to help young people, but we also thought of the employers," said Sribnik, a Scarsdale resident and the founding partner. "Hiring casual labor is often costly and problematic, so we have significantly simplified the process for signing up and posting jobs as well as offering busy (human resources) departments a personal service where they just have to pick up a phone and we do the rest."

AmericaJobCentral.com's site includes a search engine that allows job-seekers to find listings for jobs in their local markets, according to the company. Employers can post unlimited jobs for a monthly fee. Job-seekers also can post resumes in a resume bank that is accessible to employers.

The site also includes articles on organizing a job search, skills assessment, resume and cover-letter production and interviewing skills.

The market for Internet job searches is dominated by such powerhouses as Monster.com and Yahoo's HotJobs. But Christian, the other partner in AmericaJobCentral.com said, "We believe that we have produced a unique concept" that better serves its target market than the competition.

Reported by Jay Loomis. He can be reached at jloomis@thejournalnews.com or 914-694-5041.