JUST ABOUT EVERY business is scrambling to take advantage of the Internet -- and finding that many of the "advantages" of cyberspace don’t live up to the hype. For example, using the Internet to find job applicants can seem very promising. But have employers truly benefited from what appears to be a lower cost alternative to recruitment or employment services?

THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS and quotes, derived from a survey of Dunhill Search and Staffing Presidents throughout the U.S. and Canada, put the process in perspective:

• "Hiring over the Internet is like trying to pick your spouse out of the combined personal ads of every newspaper in the country. The quality of the match probably won’t justify the effort."

BOTTOM LINE, Internet employment is geared to the job seeker, not the employer. Web sites allow potential employees to post their resumes, attend virtual job fairs, and peruse employer’s ads and profiles.

THE EMPLOYER, however, isn’t served nearly so well. True, these web sites allow businesses to greatly increase their recruitment reach. But without an experienced professional to assess the person behind the resume, a company can easily wind up with a flood of unqualified applicants. Many employers report spending countless disappointing hours, digging through e-mailed resumes.

• "Most companies just don’t have time to search for a virtual needle in a virtual haystack," commented one President. "After all, the problem in most instances isn’t getting applicants: it’s getting good applicants. You have to weigh the benefits of getting more resumes versus the time it takes to go through more bad ones."

IN ESSENCE, THE POOL of applicants available through the Internet is wide but shallow. Many of the most highly-qualified potential Candidates prefer not to openly post their resumes. Most of those who are currently employed, for example, recognize the potential danger of such a public announcement that they are on the hunt.

• "Some of the very best candidates, particularly for an important permanent position, aren’t actively looking at all," a number of Presidents observed. "They’re too busy working. The most effective recruitment method is geared to quality rather than quantity. It reaches out to these hard-to-get winners."

ANOTHER GROWING PROBLEM with web-only recruiting is that the hotter-demand Candidates, those with Information Technology or e-Commerce Marketing skills, for example, have such high levels of exposure via the 'Net that every hire becomes a bidding war, with multiple competing offers and diminished odds that the Candidate who accepts the job will actually report for work.

• "In high-technology markets, we're seeing offer-to-acceptance ratio's dipping below the 50% level, and fall-offs -- Candidates who accept a new position and then back out just prior to their start date -- increasing to more than 25% of all offers accepted," several Presidents noted.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? If identifying potential Candidates were the only challenge facing Corporate Managers, then the Internet would pose a workable solution. But the key recruiting issue in any market condition is Candidate delivery, not Candidate identification. And that's where the skills of a highly-trained, independent recruiting specialist can make all the difference.

• "There's no question that the Internet is having a tremendous impact on hiring. But when you're hiring a key person for your staff, you’re making a long-term decision about the most important aspect of your company: its people."

"TO ATTRACT THE BEST-QUALIFIED CANDIDATES, and to actually have them report for work, you need the credibility, knowledge and market savvy a professional can bring to the task -- and that goes way beyond the one-dimensional matching of a computer," the Dunhill Search and Staffing Presidents concluded.