BUSINESSES TURN TO COST-EFFECTIVE PC INTERVIEWS.

Byline: Stephen C. Miller The New York Times

Corporate recruiters have traditionally relied on university job fairs to snare the best and brightest college graduates. But traveling to them can be expensive and time-consuming, and in an era of cost-cutting, personal interviews are becoming a luxury that some companies can ill afford.

Now there is another way: video conferencing via personal computer. It isn't as sophisticated or expensive as the television-based systems in some corporate boardrooms, but for many recruiters, it's a convenient and affordable way to connect a face and voice with a resume.

All it takes is the use of a special high-speed telephone line and - on both ends of the connection, of course - a tiny television camera, a microphone, a personal computer and the right software.

ViewNet, a Madison, Wis., company that began marketing a PC-based video-conferencing system to universities about a year ago, has now signed up more than 100 schools, including Brown, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia and Notre Dame. About two dozen companies, including Boeing, Chemical Bank, Procter & Gamble, Intel, Citibank, Price Waterhouse, Coopers & Lybrand and Shell Oil also participate.

To use the system, a student and recruiter sit at their personal computers, which are equipped with circuit boards that can translate video and audio signals. Small solid-state cameras are mounted on the computers, which are also connected to microphones and speakers or headphones.

The computer screen is split in half: on one side the user sees a live television picture of the other person, and on the other side a copy of the student's resume. Depending on the software used, there may also be a work space on the screen where either party can type private notes.

Because of the limitations of sending video images over phone lines, most PC-based video-conferencing systems run at fewer than 20 frames per second, compared with 30 frames a second for normal television. While one can easily see the other party, the picture has a slight delay. The audio quality, however, is as good as that of any clear telephone line.

Students have quickly adjusted to the new recruitment technology, several university officials said. John Hannabach, director of career services at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, remembers one student who dressed for the camera in a jacket, shirt and tie. Since he believed that only his torso would be seen, he also wore cut-off blue jeans and sneakers.

"He was right, up to a point," Hannabach said, "but he didn't know that there was also a recruiter on campus." The student did so well during his video interview, Hannabach added, "that the recruiter came by for a face-to-face follow-up." Fortunately, he said, the recruiter had a sense of humor.

Until the advent of PC-based video conferencing, a number of universities used actual television to link students with recruiters. A student would be interviewed sitting in front of a television camera and the signal would be broadcast to another location via high-speed telephone line or even satellite.

Although the technology was effective, it was also very expensive. The first television-based system, introduced in 1985, cost about $150,000 for the hardware and $1,000 per hour for the telephone line.

Today's PC-based system now averages slightly over $5,000 for the hardware and software. The cost of the high-speed phone line has gone down to less than a dollar a minute.

David Small, assistant vice president for student services at the University of Houston, said that his university turned to the ViewNet system because of its relatively low cost and potential to reach a larger group of businesses. The school is also offering to rent its video-conferencing facilities to corporations wanting to interview students at other schools that use the same system.

ViewNet, which has been in the video-conferencing business for eight years, is one of several companies competing for the college market. Unlike some of its competitors, which include Creative Labs of Milpitas, Calif., and Connectix of San Mateo, Calif., ViewNet handles all the details of the system, from providing equipment to ordering high-speed telephone lines. It even schedules the times a recruiter can "visit" several campuses during a video-conferencing session.

ViewNet and other companies selling video-conferencing systems have been pushing the educational market as a way to promote remote campus recruiting to corporations.

"We felt that once we had a critical mass of universities, we could then go after the corporations," said John Ungaro, ViewNet's executive vice president.