Internet Service Providers--Expanding Your Reach

Dotcom companies enable printers to find new employees and attract more customers via the Internet.

BY CAROLINE MILLER

With just a click of the mouse, Miami Valley Publishing's Paul Barrett is improving his chances of finding qualified employees. And Rich Stevens of Stevens Printing is expanding his customer base. Both Barrett and Stevens are improving their businesses by taking advantage of the services two dotcoms are offering the printing industry.

HireSkills.com
In today's tight labor market, finding seasoned employees in the graphic arts industry can be a challenge. But it's a challenge that HireSkills.com is helping commercial printers meet head-on.

"The industry is challenged by the lack of talented people to help it get where it's going. We don't create more employees, but we do enable companies to expand their reach and find qualified employees," remarks Tony Gilmore, chief architect for HireSkills.com. HireSkills is an electronic job board designed specifically for the graphic arts industry. HireSkills was launched last February in response to an industry need for better tools to help locate prospective employees.

"Our sister company is Sprout/Standish Inc., an executive recruiting company in the graphic arts industry. In the course of our conversations, we hear over and over again: 'We don't need a director of sales or some other high-level person, but we sure do need press operators, prepress people and bindery workers,' " reveals Gilmore.

But the traditional methods used to recruit high-level executives did not lend itself to hiring lower-level employees. "We looked around to see what other Websites were out there and most of them were part and parcel of larger recruitment organizations. There wasn't an electronic jobs board to connect candidates and employers," he states.

Thus the creation of Hire-Skills.com. HireSkills is targeted at non-exempt hourly workers, reveals Gilmore. The site offers both employees and employers the ability to search the site's 510 job descriptions, which are specific to the printing, packaging and publishing world.

"You'll not only find prepress, sales, press people and bindery workers. You'll also find the forklift drivers, machinists, ink mixers and much more. It really covers the very broad spectrum of workers within this industry," according to Gilmore.

HireSkills not only offers the ability to target the graphic arts industry. It also enables employees to expand their search by looking outside of their geographic region. "Traditionally, printers looked for an employee by advertising in the local newspaper. But that process is very limiting. You can't give a complete description of your company or your company's culture.

"You're limited by what you can say in the advertisement because of cost. It has a very limited shelf life, and it has very limited geographic reach. None of which is true with HireSkills.com," Gilmore claims.

Employers can post job openings, company profiles and search posted resumes for potential workers. Employees can also search posted jobs, post their resumes and send a resume to a potential employer automatically.

HireSkills offers opportunities not only for those seasoned workers; it also offers a place for new workers to begin their job hunt. "It's also a wonderful opportunity for those in educational settings looking for internships and their first jobs to see what's out there," Gilmore says.

One employer who is using HireSkills to find new employees is Paul Barrett, vice president of sales at Miami Valley Publishing, a Transcontinental company. Miami Valley has recently added HireSkills to its arsenal of tools.

For Barrett, the benefits of such a service are obvious. "I can open my laptop any time of the day and do a search or post a position," he says. By logging on, Barrett has access to potential employees worldwide.

"It's so difficult to find good people in this labor market. But because this site specializes in the graphic arts industry, it makes it so much easier. It offers everything that Monster.com offers, but it's not a monster to use."

PrintBid.com
Local printers can become national printers with just a few clicks at PrintBid.com, a subsidiary of ImageX.com. PrintBid is an online marketplace for both printers and buyers, explains Rick Hawley, PrintBid's director of strategic planning.

Using PrintBid, printers can input a company profile into PrintBid's vendor database, as well as develop new customers by searching and bidding on projects that print buyers have placed on PrintBid for request for quotes.

"We are, in general terms, a matching mechanism for the printing industry," states Hawley.

Vendors can profile their company's capabilities online, including the kind of projects they want to produce, the types of finishing, prepress and postpress equipment they offer.

"Our system allows the vendor to be as detailed as they want to make it," according to Hawley.

"Many vendors have created special niches of capabilities and it's very difficult for a print buyer to ascertain where those printers are in relation to the buyer," he notes.

Once a printer has been profiled in the system, a buyer can then search the site for a list of printers whose capabilities best fit the needs of their project. "You can search for something as specific as four-color printers in the San Francisco area that offer computer-to-plate, can take a Quark file and can offer an in-house bindery," claims Robin Michalisko, PrintBid's marketing director.

Buyers then can define and create preferred print vendors lists based on such criteria as vendor capabilities, geography or product specialty.

However, buyers are not the only ones doing the searching on the site. Printing companies can go after new jobs by searching for jobs that buyers have placed on the marketplace. "Printers can determine the jobs that they want to procure, and then go online and perform a detailed search for those projects," Hawley reports.

It should be stressed that PrintBid does not consider itself an auction site. Instead it sees itself as a place for printers and buyers to connect with each other for the first time or manage existing relationships, notes Michalisko.

It's just this connection that Rick Stevens, owner of Stevens Printing in Portland, OR, has found extremely helpful. "The obvious benefit is the convenience of being able to sit down at your computer at any time and log on to see what kinds of jobs we want to bid on, Stevens says.

Stevens has used PrintBid.com to seek business that would not be cost-effective to go after with a traditional sales force. "It's really opening opportunities in broader markets that we would not normally go after," he remarks.

Stevens reports that he has also taken advantage of the profiling option for vendors. "We are profiled in the database, but our criteria reflects the types of jobs that are the most efficient and profitable for us to run. We don't necessarily list all of our capabilities."

PrintBid also offers Stevens an additional benefit: The ability to find printers in his geographic location to which he can source work out, as well. "It's really helped us to attract new business and it's provided us with the opportunity to expand our business into other geographic areas."