Grab IT opportunities through your TV set

A recruitment service for IT professionals is set to launch on the Sky Digital service.

The backers of TV Job Shop, due for launch in September, hope to attract IT professionals of all levels to a one-hour television programme composed of company advertisements and interviews with industry professionals.

It represents the comeback of Mark Goldberg, founder of IT recruitment firm MSB International, and the man in charge of Crystal Palace Football Club when it went into receivership last year.

"The target market is blue chip companies looking for a full range of IT skills," Goldberg claimed. He plans to offer companies one minute commercials for £10,000 in an hour-long feature, repeated 42 times a week. The programme will also feature rolling tickertape advertisements showing vacancies as they come into the company's call centre, with clients paying £100 for each advertised position.

Rival recruitment companies were sceptical of Goldberg's plan. "We were going to do exactly the same thing ourselves," claimed Andrew Thomas, managing director of recruitment company Haymarket Consulting. "But there isn't enough of a market at the moment, and we didn't believe that we could raise enough money to support it in the short term."

Goldberg, however, is confident. "There are 3.4 million homes that have Digital TV, and the market is growing by 125,000 a month," he said.

TV Job Shop applicants will not, however, be able to apply for jobs interactively through their televisions. Instead, they will have to switch to the company's website for an online application form. The closest five matches to the requirements of a vacancy, according to answers given by candidates from a list of options, are then passed onto the client company.

First published in Computing