Minority sites expand job ads
By Nancy Coltun Webster

Community Connect, operator of dedicated online communities for Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans, is cultivating a sales niche for recruitment advertising as demand for online diversity ad-vertising increases. "We saw this as a strong op-portunity prompted by companies approaching us,' said Benjamin Sun, president-CEO. "It evolved because of the increased demand of companies looking for talent. We've seen it over the last year with advertisers ranging from Universal Studios, MTV Networks, State Farm [lnsurance Co.] and U.S. Army ROTC. It is a testimony to online recruiting and to using the Web for diversity recruiting."

SET OF SITES
Community Con-nect operates AsianAvenue.com, MiGente.com and Blackplanet.com. Mr.Sun said the group of sites totals 2.5 million registered members. "We are just in the beginning stages, but we feel very confident because of how Community Connect brings the community [ofsites] together," said Marissa Schriefer, VP-HR ser-vices for MTV Networks. MTV is running banners on the three sites. Banners allow viewers to click through to a sponsorship page that describes opportunities at its vari-ous channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and VHi. From that page, individuals can e-advertising exposure as Jobs.com touts the partnership in its TV, radio and outdoor advertising efforts. In return, Jobs.com advertis-ers expand their access to minority job seekers. mail their resumes. "People have responded to the banners, and there are several hun-dred resumes that will be forward-ed to us," said Ms. Schriefer. Community Connect offers advertisers a variety of vehicles for recruitment advertising. Banner ads, special Web pages, newslet-ters and e-mails directly to mem-bers who fit profiles for job openings. MTV uses the newsletters and the e-mail prompts to remind Community Connect members to log in and check out the newsletters.

IMDiversity.com, formerly Minorities Job Bank, has been of-fering diversity recruiting ads for nearly three years. IMDiversity of-fers original content covering ca-reer development and general top-ics to its African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, women's and global villages. Advertisers include American Express Co., AT&T Corp., IBM, ROTC and others.

On Dec. 19, IMDiversity will launch a co-branded Diversity Channel with Jobs.com. Diversity Channel is ac-cessed via the Jobs.com site with content pro-vided by IMDiversity. Ad sales will be handled via Jobs.com sales staff and IMDiversity will get a percentage of the sales.

MORE TRAFFIC
Niraj Kataria, president of IMDiversity, said the partnership will bring in more traffic to his site and provide advertising exposure as Jobs.com touts the partnership in its TV, radio and outdoor advertising efforts. In return, Jobs.com advertis-ers expand their access to minority job seekers. Mr. Sun said he plans to step up sales efforts for Community Connect. "We think the industry is going away from job boards and into more niche value-added service," he said.