Quick-serves and other restaurants should also acknowledge who is using the Internet to find jobs, as well. According to People Report’s research, Hispanics are more likely than the general population to use the Internet to research brands and job opportunities.

“The Hispanic population is outpacing the rest of the population in utilizing the Internet to research brands and make buying decisions, which means they are also using the Internet to make working decisions,” People Report research says.

This growing demographic would logically be more inclined to inquire about and interview for a job with an online recruiter.

Increased availability to a quality Internet connection might explain why more people are getting jobs online. “You no longer have to be in a top income bracket to afford or have access to a decent connection to the Internet.

“We see that it is becoming ubiquitous,” Arslaner says. “If someone is looking for a job maybe they go to the library. There are lots of places to get free Internet.”

Aside from virtual event services, companies have been reaching out to prospective employees in a variety of online formats. According to The Wall Street Journal, videos on YouTube, pages on social networking sites, and avatars in the virtual world of Second Life are all becoming popular.

Second Life is a free online social network, where users can assume almost any identity.

While the virtual community isn’t as large as MySpace or Facebook, it does allow people, as well as companies and other institutions, to represent themselves.

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard were experimenting with job fairs and interviews on Second Life, where online characters, or avatars, are able to go into a virtual meeting room to discuss open positions.

Smith says the quick-service market has to find a way to capitalize on these new services and Web sites. “Definitely with the boom of social networking, we have to know how to play with this, because it isn’t going away,” he says.

And for managers and franchise owners looking to meet new suppliers and find new products, the same type of video and chat tools are already at work to replace trade shows. Steve Epner, founder of the Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group, says he has been using virtual event service InXpo for his clients for about a year and has hosted two virtual trade shows for clients.

According to Epner, while each virtual booth tends to see less traffic than at an in-person event, the quality of the contacts made for his clients were much better. An average booth at a recent virtual show would host about 250 people, he says, but that most of those leads were more likely to lead to business.

These events feature Skype Internet audio chat connectivity, e-business card exchanges, and video. Vendors can distribute literature in PDF document format to trade show attendees in their virtual briefcase, which costs significantly less than producing paper materials, Epner says. Also gone are travel costs to and from a trade show or conference.

While trade shows, conferences, and job interviews will likely always need some aspect of face-to-face interaction, these new services will allow foodservice companies to hire employees and communicate with the industry more efficiently by simply logging on.