AIRS Develops Web-Based Internet Recruitment Training Products.

HANOVER, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 1999--

AIRS announced an agreement today with Lexicon Systems to create a series of interactive training programs, to be delivered over the Internet, or across the corporate enterprise via Intranet. AIRS is well known for developing courses that teach recruiters to hunt passive candidates hidden in virtual communities, ISPs, news groups and the public web servers of companies, colleges and organizations on the Net.

To replicate the complex strategies and search tools that AIRS teaches in its two day seminars, Lexicon is constructing a parallel Net universe complete with home pages, resumes, employee directories, candidate profiles and contact information buried amid tens of thousands of authentic web-documents -- all searchable with live search engines, delivering live results. "It's important to replicate the Net for this project, rather than train on the Net" explains Michael Hillinger, CEO of Lexicon. "Using the replicant Net database, we can monitor the trainees' position at all times within a very complex environment -- to provide direction, feedback and measure their speed in acquiring the specific documents they're hunting."

In some ways, the new program resembles a virtual reality cockpit, with a set of tutorial controls at the left margin, and a live browser running in a frame at the right. As trainees proceed through the course, the tutorial steps them through each of the 6 stages of the AIRS Search Process, prompting them to define their search, gather search terms, search the net with a variety of tools, retrieve candidates, manage resume data, then build and manage a candidate e-contact database. Searches and examples are conducted through the live browser, in an environment that uncannily mirrors a live Internet experience (complete with error 404 pages and dead links).

"This product is not only at the cutting-edge of recruitment training, it is an example of the latest thinking in multimedia learning strategies as well," says Michael Foster, CEO of AIRS. "Dr. Hillinger and his team are uniquely qualified to help us simplify the business problem of separating the candidates our clients are looking for from the half-billion pages of web-text that surrounds them." Lexicon, founded in 1989 by Dr. Hillinger, conducts research into distance learning models for the Department of Education, and has recently completed projects for Dartmouth Medical School, The Department of the Navy and the National Science Foundation. Trained in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, Dr. Hillinger served as Executive Editor of Houghton Mifflin Educational Software prior to founding Lexicon in 1989.

According to Dr. Hillinger, "The new training courses are designed to be an incremental learning tool at the desktop level, but also serve as a reference and knowledge base for the organization. As users become proficient, the artificial Net will be exchanged for real Net access, and a groupware feature built into the program will enable users to share what works best -- where candidates might be hiding, or other tips they want to store for their colleagues." AIRS expects the first modules to be in beta-test by late summer, and predicts a market launch early in the fourth quarter of this year.

About AIRS

Founded in 1997, AIRS is the largest provider of Internet recruitment training services worldwide. AIRS Seminars, Corporate Training and Search Guide publications have helped over 3500 clients in high-growth companies and recruitment organizations define their active sourcing strategies via the World Wide Web. AIRS vertical portal at http://www.airsdirectory.com has become the starting point for hunting tens of millions of passive candidates hidden on the Net.