HI-TECH Bury companies can now harness the Internet to ease their recruitment problems.

In a new dimension to advertising vacancies, job centres in Bury and elsewhere are now going on-line.

This and other developments were outlined by representatives of the Employment Service during a special employers' forum held at Bury Town Hall.

More than 20 companies, drawn from a range of businesses in the area, attended the event.

The forum allowed local businessmen and women the opportunity to brief Employment Service officials on what improvements they would like to see.

At the event, Employment Service Bolton and Bury district manager Brenda Sweeney highlighted the role new technology was playing in advertising vacancies on the Internet.

Guest speaker was Alan Neil, a senior adviser with ACAS, who spoke about the role and background to the conciliatory service.

Mike Schofield, Employment Service marketing manager, said: "The most fruitful part of the forum was our table syndicated sessions to allow employers to give constructive suggestions on how best we can provide for them in terms of their recruitment needs.

"We will now look at the comments and the suggestions which were made."

Mr Schofield hopes such events will now become a regular feature.

"The employers found the forum very positive and there was quite a bit of feedback.

"We wrote down their structured suggestions and will look at what we can do in terms of making changes."