BrassRing Inc. Hires New CFO.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 12, 2000

BrassRing Inc., one of the leading business-to-business hiring management and recruitment firms, has named Keith D. Taylor as its new CFO. Taylor, a senior finance executive with over 20 years of experience in technology and career services, assumes his new role effective immediately.

As CFO, Taylor plans to help the company grow in a number of ways:

--  By providing insightful financial and operational leadership in
    setting and executing business strategies;
--  By providing focus, discipline and structure for decision support
    and analysis throughout the organization;
--  By creating operational efficiencies, standardization and best
    practice application in all financial and administrative
    operations;
--  By participating with management in effectively communicating to
    Wall Street the firm's core strengths and competitive advantages,
    building investors' confidence in BrassRing's ability to execute,
    its consistency, and its long-term sustainable growth and profit
    opportunities.

"With his extensive knowledge and experience in the recruitment and technology industries, Keith will be an invaluable member of the BrassRing team," said Joan Sills, BrassRing Inc. CEO.

Taylor's experience stretches into all aspects of finance, accounting and business development, including pre-IPO startup funding and mergers and acquisitions. In the past year, he has assisted several Silicon Valley startups in funding, strategy and operations. Before joining BrassRing, Taylor was CFO for Cruel World (formerly Career Central), where he helped to close a VC funding round of over $20 million, and was Interim CFO for Intera Systems, a data communications switch fabric developer.

From 1994 through early 1999, Taylor was part of the senior management team for Adecco North America, a division of one of the world's largest global staffing companies, where he served as Vice President of Finance and Administration. During his five-year tenure, he helped the division grow from $400 million in revenues to $2.2 billion. Along with standard controllership and treasury functions, he participated in technology innovation and investment to handle global work force deployment. Taylor also participated in M&A activities and directed the financial integration processes.

Before Adecco, Taylor was the Controller of Corporate Administration at Apple Computer. At Apple, he oversaw financial analysis, planning, forecasting and reporting supporting the senior executive team, responsible for worldwide information systems and technology, human resources, legal, facilities, advertising, and strategic investments.

"The BrassRing business model will reap the rewards of the market, given the evolving maturity of Internet recruiting today," Taylor said. "I am truly excited about joining BrassRing, considering my background and business experience, which I feel are an excellent fit with the company's business proposition. The senior management and board are world-class and will provide strong support to me in executing our strategies."

About BrassRing Inc.

BrassRing Inc. offers employers a vertically integrated suite of online and offline recruitment and hiring management solutions. It is a leading provider of career events in North America and Europe, and offers a wealth of online recruiting services through BrassRing.com (formerly incpad by Westech), one of the Web's largest high-tech career resources, and BrassRing Campus.com (d.b.a. thepavement), a leading career/lifestyle web site for college graduates. The latter site is part of the BrassRing Campus division, also a chief provider of automation tools for college career centers.

In addition, BrassRing Inc. offers state-of-the-art hiring management solutions through its BrassRing Systems unit. Incorporated in 1997, BrassRing Systems (formerly HireSystems) provides hiring management services to more than 100 companies including Time Warner, Inktomi, 3Com, Bose and Phone.com.

Created in September 1999, BrassRing Inc. was formed through the combination of Kaplan Career Services, Westech ExpoCorp, HireSystems, Terra-Starr, Crimson & Brown Associates, thepavement, CareerConnections, and Academic Systems, Inc., some of the most respected names in traditional recruitment, assessment, training and online hiring management.

BrassRing is 42% owned by Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO), 27% owned by Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB) and 23% owned by Central Newspapers Inc. (NYSE:ECP), with the remaining 8% owned by Accel Partners.