By Jennifer DeJong

In her 18 years as an IT recruiter, Onie Hemmingsen has made it her business to keep up with new technologies and the dizzying array of acronyms they are known by.

In the eighties that meant recruiting Oracle DBA's and LAN professionals. A decade later, as the Internet went mainstream, demand for database administrators and local area network skills gave way to requests for "Java developers with J2EE, EJB, JSP and CORBA" and "Web designers fluent in DHTML, XML, and CSS."

Even as the geek speak intensified, Hemmingsen prided herself on keeping pace. No matter what skill-sets her corporate clients were looking for she stayed on top of the hot technologies, delivering great candidates and filling jobs fast. In fact, until November 1999, she might have said there was barely an IT acronym out there that she hadn't at least heard of.

Then a telecomm firm in Denver enlisted her services to fill an opening for a "network engineer with DWDM." And this one really stumped her. "Where was I going to find this person?" she asked herself. An AIRS Certified Internet Recruiter, Hemmingsen was used to digging deep into the Internet to unearth passive candidates. But here was a term she had never come across in her searches.

She needn't have worried. Thanks to her AIRS training, she managed to get the DWDM network engineer on board before Christmas. "It's on the tough searches like this one where the AIRS search skills really kick in," says Hemmingsen.

The request for the network engineer with DWDM skills was a tall order. Not only are candidates with expertise in Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing - widely expected to be the central technology used in the all-optical networks of the future - few and far between. But there were additional factors that made this search more difficult than most. For one thing, it was confidential, which meant she wasn't free to tell prospects what company she was recruiting for. For another, there wasn't much flexibility when it came to salary. And (of course) the position needed to be filled fast.

How did she do it? Armed only with the names of two companies that the client recommended, she went straight to the corporate Web sites, reading through the white papers and press releases. "I never would have done that without AIRS training," admits Hemmingsen. Soon enough, she came across the mystery acronym she was looking for - along with a quote from a technology professional explaining the advantages of DWDM over the earlier optical transmission method called TDM, or time-division multiplexing. Now that she had a name, she was able to track down the perfect prospect. Working in Richardson, Texas, he was eager to make a move back home to Colorado. He took the job.

Hemmingsen discovered the Internet as a source for job candidates as early as 1995, using the first job boards such as Career Mosaic. "The Web opened up the whole world to recruiters," says Hemmingsen. "Candidates were posting their resumes online."

That was something that had never happened before - and a far cry from the old days when she and recruiters like her had to rely on their own rolodexes or simply make cold calls to find candidates. If they were lucky, they might secure a company directory - a list of names and phone numbers - typically from a disgruntled employee.

The job boards were a particular boon to recruiters in the IT field. Their target audience of technical professionals was online long before other professionals followed suit. But as the boards became increasingly prevalent - and more and more players joined the fray - the competitive advantage of using the Internet began to wear off. "Candidates were getting calls as many as 20 calls a week from recruiters," says Hemmingsen. "When you are just one of hundreds, you need a great story to tell," she says. Otherwise the candidates won't even call you back.

It became clear that there had to be a way to tap into the Internet more deeply. There was. Just as Hemmingsen began to grow disenchanted, she started to hear about AIRS. "People would mention it, and at first I didn't pay much attention," she admits. "But when the name "AIRS" kept cropping up again and again and I knew I had to check it out."

When she did she discovered that AIRS training was the next step she was looking for. It would take her beyond the job boards where active candidates posted their resumes and teach her to mine the Internet for the real gold: highly qualified passive candidates who weren't actively looking for a job. Hemmingsen signed on. She took AIRS I and AIRS II in September 1998 and became an AIRS Certified Internet Recruiter in October 1999. "Right away I began to find passive candidates," she says.

It was a whole new way of tapping into the Internet. And one that has paid off handsomely for Hemmingsen. "How can you place a dollar value on value of the AIRS training?" she asks. "It's been worth every penny of it for my career. The AIRS name is widely recognized and it brings me new contracts."

Hemmingsen's quick success in finding the "network engineer with DWDM" has paid off in particular. The telecomm client keeps bringing her repeat business. Shortly after she filled that slot, the company engaged her services to find three database optimization people, specifying that it wasn't willing to pay relocation expenses. "Again, I turned to my AIRS training," says Hemmingsen. "I tracked down a woman just 20 miles away in Boulder, who had managed a whole department of these people. She gave me three names and we wound up hiring all three," she says.

That's earned her a reputation that is sure to keep on paying off no matter how complicated the geek speak gets. The company relies on her for all of its tough-to-fill positions, she says. "They say, 'give it to Onie - she can find anyone'."