Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-14
2002-10-15
Choi, Kyle J. (Department: 2163)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C705S037000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06466914
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a job brokering apparatus and a recording medium storing a program to realize the job brokering apparatus.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In recent years, what is called SOHO (small office/home office) work environments are becoming widespread. Before ordering a job under a SOHO work environment, a job owner has to find a job contractor who is available for that job if the contractor has not been specified in advance.
Techniques for attaining this purpose in an open network environment such as the internet are developing and coming into practical use. For example, the following recruitment system is known. When a company wants to recruit personnel, it can register information about open position on the company server, and interested job applicants can submit information such as their personal data and qualifications. Using this method, a company can find suitable candidates for open positions, and applicants can find jobs to apply for. Such system can also realize a notification service via e-mail or on a web-site when personnel that is suitable for pre-registered jobs is registered, or when a job that suits their pre-registered wishes is registered.
Other techniques for efficiently retrieving suitable candidates for short-term jobs out of a plurality of contractors and offering a job to them are disclosed in Publications of Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. Tokkai-Hei 9-190469 and No. Tokkai-Hei 9-282068. By using these techniques, a contractor who can carry out the offered job can be sought on the basis of pre-registered information such as schedule information of the pre-registered contractors or information about the contractor's ability to process a job. Thus, suitable applicants can be retrieved efficiently.
On conventional recruitment sites as described above, the job provider can look for the desired personnel, the applicant can look for the desired job, and when personnel or jobs are newly registered that comply with certain pre-registered conditions, a notification can be performed. However, there is the problem that it is not possible to negotiate on-site whether the job can actually be contracted or not. This means that the negotiation whether the job can actually be contracted or not has to be performed using e-mail or other communication means, and in some instances, the time used for such negotiation is longer than the time for the job itself Moreover, the actual situation of job contracting is that the job provider can find a job contractor and negotiate a job contracting using the system as described above, but job contracting often fails because of the job contractor's current circumstances such as tight schedule, unexpected affairs or interruption of other jobs. In almost all cases, negotiations have to be repeated with a plurality of contractors, until finally a contractor can be found.
The technique disclosed in Publication of Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. Tokkai-Hei 9-190469 has the function to offer jobs by acquiring schedule information of the contractor and selecting a contractor who seems to be able to carry out the task. However, in order to actually implement this function, a system for managing the schedules of regular contractors must be always activated and the schedule management on this system must be very precise. In environments using, for example, intra-company LANs, a precise schedule management may well be possible, but in an environment using an open network such as the internet, a perfectly precise schedule management in reality will be almost impossible when jobs are offered to outside professionals. Eventually, the job provider has to repeat individual negotiations with many contractors when offering jobs to outside professionals.
With the technique disclosed in Publication of Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. Tokkai-Hei 9-282068, jobs can be offered appropriately according to the contractor's ability to process a job. However, the applicability of this technique is possibly limited to the case where the job provider is a specified company and the contractor is a specified affiliated company for which no negotiation is necessary, and that it is difficult to apply to the case where an unspecified job provider offers a job to an unspecified contractor.
Regarding the above-described problems, it is a purpose of the present invention to provide a job brokering apparatus and a recording medium storing a program to realize the job brokering apparatus, which can process brokering jobs in an open network client/server computer system environment such as the internet without a complicated negotiation between an unspecified job provider and an unspecified contractor.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To achieve these goals, a job brokering apparatus for brokering a job over a network by receiving a job offer request from a job-provider client used by a job provider, and receiving job applications for the offered job from contractor clients used by contractors, comprises a job offer notification portion for notifying the job offer to at least one contractor client used by contractor candidates who can become contractors for the job when the job offer notification portion receives a job offer request from the job-provider client; a contractor determination portion for determining the contractor who contracts the job from among the contractor candidates who applied for the job when a job application has been received corresponding to the notification from said job offer notification portion; and a contractor determination notification portion for notifying those contractor clients that were notified of the job offer by the job-provider client and said job offer notification portion, of the fact that a contractor has been determined by said contractor determination portion.
According to this structure, a job can be brokered without complicated negotiations between an unspecified job provider and an unspecified contractor. This means, the job-provider client can be used by an unspecified number of job providers and the contractor client can be used by an unspecified number of contractors. The job-provider client can offer jobs for arbitrary professions. The job offer notification portion notifies the job offer to the contractor clients used by contractor candidates who can become contractors for the job. Because the contractor candidates who receive this notification can determine whether to apply for the job or not, it is usually not necessary to control the complete schedule information of the contractors. Moreover, the contractor determination portion determines the contractor who actually contracts the job from among the contractor candidates who applied for the job. When a contractor has been determined, the contractor determination notification portion notifies the job provider and the contractor candidates of this fact, so that it becomes unnecessary to perform complicated negotiations between the job provider and the contractor.
It is preferable that said contractor determination portion determines one or more contractor candidates based on information about the conditions of the offered job and information about the contractors, and said job brokering apparatus further comprises a contractor candidate notification portion for notifying the job-provider client of said contractor candidates; and a job offer judgement receiving portion for receiving a judgement from the job-provider client whether to notify the job offer to one or more contractor candidates who the job-provider client has notified by said contractor candidate notification portion; wherein said job offer notification portion notifies the job offer to the contractor clients used by said one or more contractor candidates when said job offer judgement receiving portion has received a notification of the fact that a job has been awarded.
Referring to information about the conditions for the offered job and information about the contractor, suitable contractor candidates to who the job should a
Kohda Youji
Mitsuoka Madoka
Choi Kyle J.
Staas & Halsey , LLP
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