This years Annual Recruitment Industry Survey undertaken by the Recruitment and Employment Federation finds that there are somewhere in the region of 4,700 recruitment sites now available on the web, which form just part of a recruitment industry worth £16 billion - over 10% more than last year.

Some sites are offering a service purely devoted to recruitment, others offer interview and financial advice to job-seekers, others are adding access to training and a business news service. As we reported earlier this year, tempz.com is one of the sites arranging payroll processing online, in this instance for temporary staff. Freelancers and contractors in the IT market, are, not suprisingly, well catered for on the web - the Spring Group offers learning centres, accountancy services and financial products to contractors.

The question is how employers and job seekers can be expected to find their way around this plethora of sites, who on the surface of things are offering much the same services. As far as TrainingZONE is aware, no-one has yet created a website listing all 4,700 with the services they offer, so finding a suitable site is trial and error, particularly as most are still in the early stages of development. Large amounts of money are being spent by the likes of stepstone.com on television and poster advertising - in such a crowded market, this may be the only way to jostle for a prime position. At the end of the day, though, the experiences of employers and job seekers are going to determine which sites succeed and which fail.