Blue Chip Expert is putting social networking to work--literally. A staffing website for top-tier job seekers,  Blue Chip Experts relies upon a network of talented professionals who know other talented professionals. Since its launch last year, more than 70,000 individuals have registered with the site.

You have to be invited to join the network by another organization or an individual, but once you do you can invite people you know to join in their turn. What’s more, if one of your invitees--or someone invited to join by one of your invitees--gets hired, you get a percent of his or her placement fee.

The site is the brainchild of Scott Langmack, formerly a senior marketing professional for companies including Pepsico and Microsoft. Langmack says he was struck by “how hard it was to find contract workers who met very specific requirements.” And yet, he was astounded by the number of people he met “who wanted to do contract work, had outstanding credentials and had tried every avenue possible” without success.

Langmack set out to solve the problem and make the marketplace a more efficient, a 21^st  century place to be. “We’ve digitized what executive search firms do,” he says. He sees Blue Chip as the next-generation approach to recruiting. The site uses algorithms and matching technologies to rank people on a variety of criteria, including educational level and university attended. Then social referral networking helps connect the right people to the right jobs.

Beyond that, however, Langmack wants to educate employers about the changing realities of the modern work force. For example, he said, companies are geared to hire full-time employees--even when part-time employees have better credentials and experience. Langmack points an abundance of highly trained non-working mothers seeking part-time work and baby boomers who have had their fill of working 80-hour weeks.  In the next few years, he said, “companies will need to be more open to the part-time player, and we want to be there in a big way to help drive that.”--Eve Gumpel