Nonprofits Open New College-Recruiting SiteNonprofits Open New College-Recruiting Site

NACElink.com, a new college-recruiting site, was launched this week by the nonprofit DirectEmployers Association and the National Association of Colleges and Employers as an alternative to commercial job boards that manage online college-recruiting activities.

The organizations introduced the college-recruiting system last summer and performed rigorous testing before rolling out the site to 27 NACE member schools and employers this week. For many of the schools, NACElink will replace exclusive contracts they once held with college-recruiting boards such as MonsterTrak, the college-recruiting division of Monster.com. Concerns about commercial job boards selling personal student data for marketing purposes is one of the issues that prompted NACE member schools to develop their own job board, says Bill Warren, executive director of the DirectEmployers Association, which developed the site.

Schools that sign up to use NACElink to post job openings and student resumés and schedule campus interviews will use the site exclusively on their career center sites. The site also lets college and university alumni search for jobs and post their resumés through their former schools. This feature wasn't originally planned for NACElink, Warren says, but it was requested by the schools as a way to maintain contact and provide a service for alumni.

DirectEmployers and NACE have an aggressive schedule; they want to sign up 40 schools per month to use the new service. More than 400 colleges and universities have already expressed interest.