California Pizza Kitchen and Starbucks Coffee Company Select The Work Number For Outsourced Employment and Salary Verifications.

ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 1999--

TALX Corporation (NASDAQ: TALX) announced today that California Pizza Kitchen and Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ: SBUX) have selected The Work Number for outsourced employment and salary verifications.

Over 5,000 salary records from California Pizza Kitchen corporate employees throughout the country are currently accessible on The Work Number database and nearly 50,000 current and former Starbucks Coffee Company employee records will be accessible on the database in the coming weeks. The Work Number database is nearing 30 million records under contract.

"We were very impressed with how TALX handled our implementation," said Bill Maruyama, director of benefits and director of risk management for California Pizza Kitchen. "TALX made the exchange of information easy and everything went smoothly. We have already begun to see some of the verification burden decrease in our department and expect this shift to continue to increase."

More than 450 organizations outsource salary verifications using The Work Number, including Bell Atlantic, Countrywide Funding, Domino's, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, the state of Florida, the state of Missouri, Sun Microsystems, Tenet Healthcare Corp., the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Wal-Mart. The Work Number service is used by over 30,000 verifiers throughout the country for efficient and accurate verifications.

"As we continue to build the database, we have recently seen a record number of 150,000 Internet and telephone verification sessions on The Work Number," said Bill Canfield, president and CEO of TALX. "This increased volume comes at the same time interest rates are on the rise, which suggests a growing base of verifiers are using the service."

About The Work Number

Before approving a loan, lenders typically contact the loan applicant's employer to verify the employee's employment and salary. Companies that employ thousands of people are deluged with such requests for information and incur significant administrative costs to process them. The Work Number service offers employers an automated solution that allows them to feed payroll records into a national database. With appropriate security clearances, lenders and other organizations can access the database to instantly verify the information.

Verifiers Access the Data via Phone & Internet

Lenders have several options to access The Work Number service; they can call 1-900-555-WORK; use a toll-free phone number, or go through the Internet. Users of the 1-900 number will be charged on their monthly phone bill. Users of the 800 number and the Internet will be invoiced by TALX and must already be member verifiers. Verifiers also have the option of paying by credit card. Before performing transactions via the Internet, Member Verifiers must obtain a digital certificate for each PC performing online transactions. Verifiers who want more information should contact TALX at 1-800-996-7566 or send an e-mail to [e-mail] or visit www.theworknumber.com.

About TALX Corp.

St. Louis-based TALX Corp. provides software, outsourcing and other services, such as interactive Web, interactive voice response (IVR) and call center solutions, to large organizations such as federal government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. The company offers two branded solutions for the Human Resource, Benefits and Payroll market: The Work Number(R) and Employee Central(TM). To learn more about TALX, visit the company's Web site at www.talx.com.

Statements in this press release expressing the expectations of management may be forward-looking and involve uncertainties. TALX investment information is detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.