To find the top network professionals and managers, recruiters have to go where the talent is -- and, increasingly, the talent is online.

There's more to recruiting online than posting jobs and searching résumé banks, however. Whether it's done by the hiring manager or a recruiter, a sophisticated online search takes parts of a traditional search -- finding candidates, for example, or checking their backgrounds -- and moves them online.

Kent Altena, a network administrator and blogger in West Des Moines, Iowa, knows firsthand that recruiters look for candidates on the Internet. He receives several e-mail messages a month from recruiters who have read his blog -- which covers professional topics, such as certification, but personal ones as well, such as how he lost 200 pounds. Some are simply form letters, he says. But the "more intelligent" recruiters mention the skills Altena has discussed in his blog, or say they're looking for candidates near where he lives.

"I know that they've at least figured out something about me and what I'm capable of doing," says Altena, who works for a large insurance company. And although none of these contacts so far has made him want to leave his job, Altena does answer the more thoughtful letters.

One indication of how job searches are expanding online: Corporate recruiters are using online resources to find more than 40% of their executive-level candidates, according to a recent survey by ExecuNet, a job-search and recruiting organization for senior-level executives and professionals. The recruiters who were surveyed found almost 10% of their candidates using search engines (including blogs), and 3.5% through online social networks.

Looking beyond sites that target job seekers is a good way to find so-called "passive" job-seekers, those who are putting their energy into working, not job-hunting. Experts suggest several ways to find these prized workers:

* Blogs. As Altena's experience indicates, blogs can be an excellent source of expert workers. Because many include personal notes, blogs also can be useful for recruiters trying to build rapport with a potential candidate, says Gretchen Ledgard, a partner at JobSyntax, a recruiting and employment marketing-consulting firm.