RAMBERG

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Ken Ramberg

Chief Financial Officer

Jobtrak

While studying economics at Stanford University, Ken Ramberg went to the campus career center to check out job listings. What he found was a lot of missing pages in the binders, as students had torn out the plum positions for themselves.

Frustrated, Ramberg determined there had to be a better way. The result was Jobtrak, a service that provides job listings online making them available to anyone with a computer and a modem.

Employers pay a fee to use the service, but it saves them the trouble of individually listing job openings with multiple campuses. Colleges like it too they get paid a fee for carrying the listings.

And students don’t have to worry about their classmates ripping off all the good job postings from the career center bulletin board.

“We set out not only to develop a company that is profitable, but to develop one that offers a service,” said Ramberg, 33. “We’ve had a lot of opportunities to merge (with other companies) but we’re having fun and we’re growing.”

The company was co-founded by Ramberg and Jobtrak Chief Executive David Franey, who were introduced by a mutual friend. At the time, Franey had started a company that provided online company profiles aimed at students seeking work. Ramberg had the idea to provide specific job listings. The two men went into business together in 1988.

The company now has 100 employees at its Westwood offices. Ramberg said 800 college campuses subscribe to the service, which has been used by about 300,000 employers.

Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA career center, credits Jobtrak with improving the efficiency of college career services. Once colleges spent hours on the phone, receiving calls from employers, and typing out job listings. Now Jobtrak does it for them, and they have more time to counsel the students and form relationships with the employers.

“It’s been a wonderful opportunity for UCLA,” Sims said.

Ramberg is working on several new projects, including a virtual job fair that will allow employers to contact students via e-mail to set up interview times. He said Jobtrak also is working with the Princeton Review and Time Magazine to form an online guide to colleges and careers.

Lauren Hollingsworth

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