VENTURA COUNTY BUSINESS : CLU Plugs Online Job-Search Service

Landing that first big job is rarely easy, but for students at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, the job search may get a little less stressful.

Beginning this year, students enrolled in the university’s liberal arts and science college will be able to use a new electronic recruiting and resume-posting service dubbed eRecruiting.com.

Operated by Massachusetts-based Crimson Solutions, the service allows students to post their resumes and lets companies list job openings electronically.

“We noticed that this was the way things were going and thought it would be a good idea to get in at the beginning,” said university spokeswoman Lynda Fulford. “It’s another tool for students to use and one that’s becoming more important.”

Indeed it is.

A few short years ago, landing a job often meant sending resumes and important information to companies through the mail or hoping the right company turned up at a job fair.

However, with the increasing dependency on sophisticated communications technologies, more companies are delving into the electronic ether and recruiting via the Internet.

There are thousands of companies that list job openings on the Web. And there are other sites, such as Monster.com, which are job databases to which users can subscribe.

Cal Lutheran’s service is about as sophisticated as they come, university officials say.

Whereas some services just post resumes and list job openings, Cal Lutheran offers students the opportunity to input information and peruse job openings and also to submit their resumes electronically, as well as other documents that might help them land a job.

They can look at job openings by category and locate internship and part-time employment opportunities.

“It’s not just for the graduates,” Fulford said. “This is for all the students here. . . . Everybody can find something.”

Cal Lutheran’s service is being administered by the university’s Career Center, which in the past just tacked job openings on a bulletin board and stuffed them into large binders.

“It was very tedious keeping that up to date,” said Christina Nix, the university’s director of career services. “This should make it a lot easier for [career center staff] and students.”

University officials started looking into the possibility of an online recruiting service a year ago and contracted for it through Crimson Solutions for about $3,000 for two years.

Now the university’s sophomore, junior and senior classes are logged into the service. Crimson Solutions is currently inputting the freshman class and expects to have that completed soon.

Nix said the response from students has been enthusiastic.

“This is the wave of the future, and the students were the first to understand that,” she said. “We do, too, and I think it’s something that we needed to do.”