A Happier New Year for Silicon Valley Job Seekers According to Employment Survey by KIT List; Survey of Employers and Employees by Job Search Site Suggests Optimism for '06.

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- In survey results released today by prominent Bay Area job search site KITlist.org, both employers and employees are predicting company health and modest to strong growth in hiring by Silicon Valley firms this year. The KIT list is a "referral-based" job posting email list with more than 47,000 subscribers. The survey results were compiled from the KIT List subscriber and employer/recruiter responses in Dec. 2005 and represent first-hand views on the strengths and growth of local companies.

Other findings included:

--41% of employers/recruiters predicted up to a 25% increase in hiring this year versus 2005.

--26% predicted 26 - 100% increase in hiring.

--4% predicted more than a 100 % increase in hiring over the same period

--53% reported that their companies were "healthy."

--Job growth was fairly evenly split between technology-specific and marketing-related jobs.

--The majority of job seekers had been on the market for less than 3 months, while 20% had been looking for 3 - 6 months.

"Job seekers should be very encouraged by these findings," said KIT List President and Founder, Sue Connelly. "This is 'feet on the street' data versus the ivory tower predictions of research and government organizations. We're happy to report such good news."

"A job search is a lonely endeavor and we want to humanize this process by using the strength of the community to help each other," she added. "We wanted to find out and report back what employees, employers, laid-off individuals and recruiters really felt about job prospects this year based on they were actually seeing and hearing within their own companies. We hope to continue to leverage the collective knowledge of this group to provide insight into what's really happening in the job market, who's getting hired, who's not ... and why."

Respondents were evenly split between employed and unemployed individuals. Recruiters and employers reported that 25% of the postings were for individual contributors, 11% were for contractors and 56% of the postings were for senior management positions.

About the KIT List

The KIT List was created in 1997 by marketing consultant Sue Connelly to "keep in touch" with her friends at Silicon Graphics. When massive lay-offs began she leveraged her email list to share job opportunities; managed it single-handedly for the following seven years. When the list swelled to 22,000 by word-of-mouth alone, two volunteers came forward to lend their assistance. In 2003, with a subscriber base of 27,000, Sue opted to formalize her "friends network" to expand job postings and help even more people. The KIT List now consists of a high-quality network of more than 47,000 subscribers located nationwide who receive daily job posting emails in technical and non-technical fields. For more information about the KIT List, check www.KITlist.org.

The KIT List(R) is a service of Connelly Communications, Inc.