Agent- and Web-Based Employment Marketspaces in the U.S. Department of Defense

Abstract

Two modes of matching people with jobs prevail at present: hierarchical planning and distributed markets. Patterned after centrally planned (e.g., former Soviet-style) economies, hierarchical planning remains prevalent for matching job candidates to jobs internally within an organization. With evolving information technology, the internal job-matching process could be accomplished far more equitably and efficiently using Web-based markets. Intelligent agents offer excellent potential to help both employees and employers find one another in a distributed electronic marketspace. But realizing this potential goes well beyond simply changing the rules of internal job matching or making agent technology available to job searchers. Rather, the corresponding markets and technologies must be designed together to mutually accomplish the desired results (e.g., efficient and effective matching) and conform to necessary properties (e.g., market clearing, employer policies).