Back From The Gold Rush: Employees Who Jumped Ship For Dot.coms Are Trickling Back; Riches Elusive, Hours Long, And The Tech Stuff Is, Well...Geeky And Boring.

Business & Technology Editors

CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2000

Recruiters at Management Recruiters International, Inc. (MRI) are beginning to see what can only be called an inevitable swing of the pendulum.

Employees who jumped to dot.com companies from traditional businesses in the hopes of riches are starting to trickle back to the bricks and mortar world. Some are clearly disillusioned over long hours without a pot of gold at the end, but surprisingly many find that the tech and IT world is simply not a match for their personality. MRI is the world's largest search and recruitment organization and a subsidiary of CDI Corp. (NYSE:CDI), a global top 10 provider of staffing and outsourcing.

"A lot of people emphasized the tech and IT aspects of their experience to get into a dot.com, only to find that the job is not the right fit for them," said Allen Salikof, president and CEO of MRI. "Many people's skills and natural interests don't lie in that direction, but the promise of quick riches and thus the freedom to make other choices led them to give it a shot. With the bloom somewhat off the dot.com rose in terms of company valuations and stock prices, a steady stream of dot.com veterans are now heading back to conventional companies."

But in spite of having Internet components to their own businesses now, most conventional companies do not consider dot.com experience a requirement, as a recent MRI poll of 3500 executive hiring authorities showed. In the MRI poll, 64% said they consider previous work experience at an Internet company unimportant. The result has been that some people who jumped to dot.coms are now back with neither riches nor a particularly enhanced resume.

"It's certainly not a negative to have taken a shot with a dot.com," said Salikof. "After all, some people did get rich. But the people who are thriving in that environment are the ones who truly like the tech and IT worlds, who find it exciting and stimulating. The ones who didn't really like it but took a shot are the ones who are moving back into the mainstream. It's been an interesting year in that regard. We're seeing movement in both directions now, not just employees moving from conventional companies to dot.coms."

Management Recruiters International, Inc. (www.BrilliantPeople.com), is the world's largest search and recruitment organization with 1,000 offices worldwide. Based in Cleveland, MRI has system-wide billings of $575 million and places 35,000 people in jobs annually. MRI is a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based CDI Corp.(www.cdicorp.com), a global top 10 provider of staffing and outsourcing. In 1999, CDI had revenues of more than 1.6 billion and nearly 100,000 people worked on company assignments.