Imagine this: you are online and chatting to three companies that are simultaneously quizzing you about your career plans. Suddenly, one of the companies calls you on your mobile and invites you to a video-conferencing session for an interview on the spot. You conclude the chat session with the other two interviewers. Then, after 20 minutes meeting the first company's executives on a number of continents, the recruiter makes you a job offer.

Think that's far-fetched? Think again. European business schools are eager to participate in online recruiting events that bring together their M.B.A. students and corporate recruiters in custom-built chat rooms. There's something in it for the companies, too: ready access to hundreds of potential hires.

Take MBA-Exchange.com (www.mba-exchange.com), a Geneva company that is organizing its sixth "live" online recruitment event over one week this October. Only students enrolled at one of the top 10 European business schools are eligible to place their CVs on the MBA Career Forum's Web site. After that, recruiters who have paid a user's fee are entitled to comb through the several thousand CVs.

Recruiters can narrow down the number of participating students for the next step: M.B.A. candidates are asked to go online over three days when different companies participate in chat rooms. Recruiters can interact live with the job candidates, ask them to participate in video conferencing, attend an interview or make a preliminary job offer.

MBA-Exchange.com will stage the virtual forum three more times in 2003 on behalf of an elite business-school consortium (www.MBACareerForum.com). It also is negotiating a venture with the University of Nyenrode to set up a rival consortium of lesser-known schools in Europe, in order to "support competition," according to its CEO and founder, Bilal Ojjeh.

Nyenrode's Forum

In 2003, Nyenrode will be testing its tailor-made virtual recruitment forum, or "networking platform." This is the latest name for a portal or Web site that allows people searches and provides the usual job-posting services to recruiters. The MBA-Exchange platform provides a few extras, like a student-alumni facility for creating your own "talent group," which is another form of online socializing, or "community building," by looking for others with similar business qualifications and commercial interests.

With London Business School, Insead and IMD on its advisory board, MBA-Exchange.com is scooping up contracts to provide online recruitment services, such as running alumni databases like the lucrative Insead Alumni Association Career Services.

"Schools are working more and more together these days. That's what makes the online recruitment forum so unique, the collaboration," Mr. Ojjeh says.

Another company, London-based TopCareers.net, is also getting in on the act. It took over the London Business School virtual job-search initiative 18 months ago. Global Workplace (www.global-workplace.com) is a networking platform linked to the variety of services offered by the site www.TopMBA.com (www.topmba.com).

Here an M.B.A. candidate can look up information about forthcoming World M.B.A. tours, where business schools lure prospective students at a recruitment fair. Students can also order the latest edition of "The MBA Career Guide," which provides comparisons of schools and interviews with deans and business-education experts.

The new online venture features job postings that are restricted to business students and alumni of the 41 registered schools world-wide. Recruiters are invited to use the headhunting services. "We have a very powerful selection of schools," says the managing director of TopCareers, Nunzio Quacquarelli. "When an event takes place, we get alumni from almost every country imaginable."

The Social Side

Global Workplace doesn't offer a live interactive recruitment forum like Mr. Ojjeh's brainchild, but it provides other networking facilities for its 300,000-strong alumni database. Global Workplace has become known for linking people through international mini-conferences, public talks and informal gatherings. These events are regularly announced on its site.

"It's a great way to meet informally. I try to go to the events even now, although I travel a lot for my job," says David Mirmelli, who was headhunted in April 2001 through Global Workplace. He is a senior consultant at First Generation Consulting, a corporate real-estate firm.

Recently at one of the informal lectures advertised on the Web site, Mr. Mirmelli, a Nyenrode graduate, met an M.B.A. student from another school who has some experience his company was looking for. As a result of the chance meeting and sending off her CV to Mr. Mirmelli's firm, she has an interview coming up after her graduation. "Now I never would have found that person; she wouldn't have had that opportunity, if this networking platform didn't exist," he says.

"At the moment most companies are cautious about recruiting," he adds. "But in future, if you want to find the right quality of person, these are the tools you'll use."

The portal of the Association of M.B.A.s in the U.K. (www.mba.org.uk) is similar to Global Workplace in that it advertises small events restricted to registered alumni and holds recruitment fairs for students and business schools every spring and autumn. The association doesn't provide job-posting services like MBA-Exchange and TopCareers, but it does promote recruitment in the form of a search facility called the "address book," a CD-ROM database that only recently became available online.

"We are trying to make networking contacts become more tangible and live to people," explains Paula Glason, marketing manager of the 14,000-strong alumni of the Association of M.B.A.s. These names and personal profiles are collated from the whole spectrum of business schools in Britain, which enables M.B.A.s to expand their network beyond their own alumni. The address book is also open to graduates of accredited schools abroad who now live and work in Britain.

Meet and Greet

"Our Web site facilitates get-togethers around the country so that M.B.A. graduates can mingle and learn," Ms. Glason notes. The association is officially launching its new networking platform at the end of the year. It will be a more interactive extension of the Web site, building on its "Events" page advertising workshops, seminars and meetings.

The IESE Business School in Spain recognized the start of this e-trend in 1999 and decided to "go paperless because that's the way companies are going," according to Kathleen Dolan, associate director of IESE's M.B.A. Career Services. IESE has the usual array of job postings and chat rooms as well as a database where students can locate alumni by city, company and industry.

Yet one M.B.A. graduate says online recruitment is not for everyone.

"It's a double-edged sword. Online recruitment can be more time- consuming because it is more customized," says the young British consultant. "You need to put more thought into your answers when you apply online."

Despite the new Internet opportunities, companies prefer the traditional personality test of meeting someone face to face. "At the end of the day, the companies want personal contact," says IESE's Ms. Dolan. "They still like to come on campus, do a presentation, meet everybody. They think there's more of a success rate than deciding only through the Internet."