The Interenet started out as a bulletin board. Have a need, post it on the bulletin board. Since the bulletin board was electronic in nature, it had users from all around the world who were posting and reading.

One of the most fascinating stories I heard about the Internet was in its infancy days of 1991 or so. A couple of fellow BART commuters were talking about a friend who had need of a proofreader with a specialized knowledge of a particular subject. He posted his need on this electronic bulletin board, as the commuters referred to it. Within a few days, a woman somewhere around Yugoslavia responded and she did, indeed, have the specific talent being sought.

Those were the dark days of black background and DOS-prompt lettering and navigation. There were no graphics. There may not have even been something akin to email. But the mode of have a need and post it, of have information and post it, existed. Any and all information posted to the bulletin board was accessible to anyone and everyone who had access to the bulletin board. The access to the bulletin board has grown. Nearly everyone has it now -- even in remote, Third World, undeveloped countries.

Well, believe it or not, I'm actually getting to a point here. The Internet is still an electronic bulletin board. It merely has more bells and whistles. It no longer uses a black screen with a DOS prompt. It does use graphics and many other enhancements. It still allows a great and varied amount of information to be posted for anyone and everyone to search, read, consider, and use.

The reputation of the site where the information is posted could be as good as gold. The reputation could be notorious. The fact is, every site has some type of reputation and many strive for one extreme or the other simply because some type of reputation is acknowledgement.

Employers use the Internet to try to find potential new employees, either experienced or not experienced. Recruiters look for executives, managers, recent graduates, and interns on the Internet. Human Resource professionals use the Internet to search for talent. Their searches are not restricted to job boards that hold carefully crafted resumes. Those are the obvious places to look for the commodity that is most difficult to find -- qualifed talent.

Employment professionals are becoming very creative in the various means they use to find talent. They will use the Internet to look for papers published by potential candidates. They will look for websites and blogs published by possible new employees. Searches for comments and other types of content that relates to a particular person will be searched using search strings containing particular key words. Articles will be read that reference particular people in certain industries or involved in particular acitivities. Employment professionals will even read CollegeRecruiter.com blogs to see what various talent has to say and how it's said.

A few people have posted to their blogs and talked about what they really want or some other personal thoughts. Several days later, they express surprise when someone has responded by making an offer to fulfill the wish. Actually, there should be no surprise even though there are more than trillions of bits of information floating about on billions of websites on the Internet. A thought on the Internet is the same as posting your picture on a bulletin board in a heavily trafficked area. Do so today. Tomorrow, ask someone, "Say, did you see my face the other day?"