PARIS -- Monster.com's top executives blew through town recently, promoting their online job site.

"You should try it," Andrew Wilkinson, managing director of Monster.com (www.monster.com) Europe, suggested.

So I did.

And I decided to tell others of you remaining novices out there what the experience was like: Mixed.

Sure, anybody can see the beauty of an immediate, flexible, cross-border and free job-hunting tool. The whole process also chuffed me up something awful.

But I discovered that the opportunities I imagined amid all the Internet hype are somewhat illusory. And I ended up with a habit of checking my e-mail a lot more often than perhaps I should.

Certainly, the Monster.com way is a lot more pleasant than waiting for executive recruiters to call, or hunting through local help-wanted ads, mailing off laboriously typed CVs, keeping fingers crossed for weeks, and finally getting a don't-contact-us-we'll-contact you form letter.

Choosing instead to electronically post your resume -- a surprisingly easy procedure -- on an Internet job site (The Wall Street Journal Europe owns the one you're reading now -- www.CareerJournalEurope.com) does indeed give you a feeling of "empowerment" -- one of the big buzzwords in the world of human resources.

"We're really changing the world of work," Mr. Wilkinson says. "The thing it is actually doing is giving the job seeker a feeling of control over his destiny."

Yes, for weeks now, I have been carrying around this wonderful feeling that an opportunity might come my way at any moment. It also has made me like my job more than I already did.

Francois Bouyer, a Paris-based human-resources consultant, says that determining their employability through this historic access to the labor market makes employees much bolder about promoting their own ideas in their existing workplaces.

"People tend to play down rather than take risks," Mr. Bouyer says. "But if they know more or less what their employability is, they can ask for what they ought to have -- which is an effective shift of power."

It's helpful having access to so much more information. Employers, who aren't limited by space, provide better-detailed job descriptions on such sites, which also provide complementary information, such as pan-European salary surveys.

And who could not like the ease and flexibility?

After posting your profile, all you really have to do is wait around for an e-mail alerting you that a job has opened up. And you can turn your search on and off according to your circumstances, even mood.

It's been a lot of fun, hopping around searching in different countries -- in my case Britain, France, Switzerland and Belgium. Suddenly, a pan-European job market seems more of a reality.

So now for the bad news.

Monster.com boasts 43,000 European jobs, but when I repeatedly searched my category -- media, arts and entertainment -- between nine and 46 postings came up. Few were suitable, only three were tempting.

Meanwhile, the Monster.com cyber "agent" I had asked to search jobs for me e-mailed back with this opportunity: quality manager at Siemens AG.

Huh?

In fairness, I work in a glamorous, highly competitive industry.

Still, it's not clear how many people actually land jobs this way, and it might be that the old-fashioned approach of using personal connections is more successful.

"I know so many companies and people who find jobs through the Internet," Mr. Bouyer says. "But I believe the biggest form of hiring is still word of mouth."

Monster.com doesn't have statistics on actual match-ups, but Mr. Wilkinson insists: "The evidence is out there is that people like what it does."

There are potential pitfalls.

I made what is probably a common mistake: aiming too high with my desired job description and salary. So a lot of revising downward probably goes on. (Monster.com lets you post five CVs at once, and change them.)

Other concerns job hunters might have are:

• That the quality of the matching between candidate and job needs improvement.
• That our privacy might be violated. (Countries' protections vary.)
• That some of the job postings might be older than tagged.
• That some ads might be decoys from recruiters seeking to beef up their databases.

Then there is the age-old danger of responding to a blind ad that comes from your own employer.

You also might ask yourself whether you should be using work time and computers to look for a new job. People obviously are. Mondays, as well as between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., are the most popular times to search, Monster.com says.

So what I wanted to know from these folks was: What exactly should you say when your employer finds you out?

"You say, 'I love my job,' " Mr. Wilkinson instructs. " 'I just want to see what's out there.' "