How much do I bid for that job?

Finding a job, or recruiting just the right worker, isn't easy, especially during a recession. Now some people are turning to a new method of hiring - online auctions.

Job auction websites - in which where employers post jobs and job seekers submit bids to do the work - have become popular in many countries, including the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany and India. Now Canada has one, too.

The sites operate something like eBay. A company looking for a sales representative, for example, posts details about the position including the maximum hourly wage. Applicants submit bids, noting their experience and how much they think they should be paid. The employer selects from the bidders. There is no charge to post jobs or to submit bids, and the sites usually make money by selling advertisements.

Yesterday a pair of Swedish university students launched the first job auction site in Canada, dubbed 4job.ca.

Filip Narula said he and partner Robert Hjelmberg got the idea after reading about a site in Germany. Because there already is a similar site in Sweden, they looked around for a country that didn't have an online job auction venue and settled on Canada.

"We only know Swedish and English so that's why we chose Canada," Mr. Narula said from Stockholm, where he is studying economics. "Canada is a big market with a lot of Internet users."

There are at least three job auction sites in the United States, including jobaphiles.com, which was started last August by a group of university students at Williams College near Boston.

"It was launched as a way to help students find short-term work," said Thai Nguyen, one of the jobaphiles.com co-founders. "It kind of just really exploded."

Mr. Nguyen, 23, said the site started with a handful of postings and now has more than 800 jobs listed. They range from babysitting and lawn care to internships for MBA students, physician assistants and garden designers. He said the recession has increased the site's popularity because "everyone is trying to find a job."

Another U.S. site, bid4mybiz.com, launched earlier this year in California's Silicon Valley and specializes in high-tech positions. In Britain, tenderwarehouse.co.uk is aimed largely at consumers looking for services such as home renovations, bookkeepers and car repairs. Contractors troll the listings and submit bids.

Mr. Narula of 4job.ca said he doesn't know much about Canada and has visited the country only once, making a two-day side trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto while visiting the U.S. No jobs had been posted on 4job.ca as of yesterday afternoon, although it had been launched only hours earlier.

"We haven't started marketing it yet," Mr. Narula said. "Our budget is not too big. We are just two students, but we are trying."