.Jobs, the new domain name extension designed for helping companies more efficiently recruit new employees, has been officially launched in San Diego at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). On hand for the announcement were representatives of SHRM, Employ Media-- the registry operator for .Jobs and EnCirca (www.encirca.com), ICANN-Accredited registrar for .Jobs.

Applications for .Jobs domain names can now be submitted at EnCirca, an ICANN-accredited registrar for .Jobs. The Start-up Period for .jobs officially began at 2:30 p.m. PST on Sunday, June 19, 2005.

"A .Jobs domain for your company provides a non-stop route for job seekers to the specific and compelling career information, eliminating distraction or 'homepage' congestion or confusion," said Tom Embrescia, chairman & CEO of Employ Media and .Jobs. "The .Jobs domain will compliment and enhance your company's current best practices in hiring."

".Jobs has the potential of sparking some changes in the online recruiting industry," said Tom Barrett, president of EnCirca. "Forrester Research Inc estimates that businesses will spend $4.5 billion on job classified ads in 2005 with an efficiency of only 60 percent. This means that over $1.8 billion dollars a year will go to waste. .Jobs promises to eliminate much that waste by providing business with a direct connection to job seekers via the Internet."

Jobs domains are available in the form of companyname.jobs. In addition, companies may register domain names targeting geographic locations or job skills as long as the company name in contained in the domain name. For example, Google Inc. could register Google.jobs, as well as us-google.jobs, uk-google.jobs, china-google.jobs, based on hiring locations, as well as google-search.jobs, google-support.jobs and google-marketing.jobs for types of positions that are available. This benefits companies who have distributed HR departments based on local or divisional requirements. Companies can also register common abbreviations or acronyms for their companies.

During the start-up phase, all companies should make sure to secure their legal trade names (also known as Service Marks) prior to the first-come, first-served operations commencing in September, 2005. Companies worldwide are eligible during this phase.