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Town Website Links to Local Employer (Boston Globe)
By John Laidler, Globe Correspondent | October 23, 2005
The Norwell town website has a new and rather unusual feature -- a link to the website of a local company looking to hire 50 people at its Norwell headquarters, as well as another 600 to 700 statewide.
Last week, Norwell became the first community to post the link as part of an offer that the Computer Merchant Ltd. has extended to local cities and towns. The company will pay $2,500 to any community posting the link for every person who uses the link to apply for a job and gets hired.
''This is a company that is in Norwell, it's a good company, and they are going to be helping us out and we are going to be helping them," said Norwell's town administrator, James Boudreau. ''I think it's a great situation for both of us."
The Computer Merchant is a $150-million-a-year business that provides a range of computer services to corporations and government agencies. The company has about 2,500 employees, including 125 at its corporate headquarters in Norwell's Assinippi Park.
As a result of recent contracts, the company wants to hire 6,000 employees right away. They would be working at client centers across the country, with about 600 to 700 deployed in Massachusetts, according to the company's president and CEO, John Danieli, who said he could not identify the contracts because of client confidentiality.
The 50 jobs available in Norwell represent additional openings, the result of booming business overall, he said. The local positions are for job recruiters, accounting personnel, secretarial and human resources staff, and sales and marketing representatives, Danieli said.
Over the coming year, he said, the Computer Merchant expects to hire another 6,000 to 10,000 employees, based on other anticipated contracts. There was no immediate breakdown on how many would be in Massachusetts.
The company is advertising the job openings in newspapers. But Danieli said that based on experience with such listings, his company concluded filling the jobs quickly would require a creative supplement to traditional methods of advertising.
''The audience you are trying to reach is very difficult to get to. I don't know why," he said.
Connecting with municipal websites seemed ''a unique and different idea," said Danieli, whose company is also offering financial bonuses to employees who are able to persuade their home communities to link their websites to the Computer Merchant's site.
He said the community benefits by getting revenue, and because it increases the chances of a local resident being hired. And the company benefits by getting ''the right person" for a job, he said.
''It's a win-win all the way around," he said.
Danieli, who lives in Norwell, said it makes sense for the company to establish the arrangement in its hometown. But he said the offer is open to any community.
Cort Boulanger, vice president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, said the job market appears to be tightening, and ''some companies with specific needs may . . . need to be creative about filling certain positions."
Boulanger said he had not heard of a company seeking website links with local communities to aid in hiring.
''If they are going to be a long-term part of that community, it makes sense to make the connection with the local government and with the community," he said.
Boudreau said the website link with the Computer Merchant, which received the go-ahead from the Board of Selectmen last week, is the first of its kind in Norwell.
''It's a unique approach," he said, adding that the link is ''not an advertisement."
''That's not what we're doing," said Boudreau. ''
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