Nearly every employer has been there: You’ve got in front of you a smart and talented applicant who is missing some key skills. Do you hire or not?

Internet-based training makes it easier to say yes. By turning to the Web, an employer can get the candidate worker’s skill sets up to par with unusual speed and efficiency. With the Net, updating training materials is quick and inexpensive. It’s also cost-effective for employers because it doesn’t require that workers leave the office for training. Employees can train at a time or pace that best suits them. And when companies do choose to bring workers together at outside conferences and seminars, the lessons are much more highly focused. "We’re not wasting that time getting introductory, basic information out to the staff," says Stacy Lutz, chief operating officer of Vienna-based Acumen Solutions, which uses the Net to train telecommunications workers.

At the mo-ment, however, Net-based work-force training is in its infancy. It’s a mere wrinkle in the huge corporate training industry, which raked in nearly $62 billion in revenues last year. By contrast, Net training represented only $1 billion in 1999, but it’s expected to grow to $11.4 billion in four years. Because Net training is still in its early stages, there’s no single model for how companies are using it. Some firms link up with national trainers while others take customized Web courses on the road.

One example of how a company resolved some of its training issues by using the Net is Anderson & Associates, a Blacksburg-based engineering company. The company began emphasizing training a few years ago but was faced with the challenge of making training available to all employees, says President Ken Anderson. Reaching the 150 or so employees in the main office was simple, but how could the company get the same information to the staff scattered in its five other offices in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee? What about the Internet? Using IP/TV from Cisco Systems, presentations in Blacksburg are broadcast over the company’s wide area network and displayed on individual computer screens. The company also uses Microsoft’s NetMeeting for the same purpose.

Anderson & Associates now runs a weekly training session during the Tuesday lunch hour, repeating the program on Thursday. Employees in Blacks-burg can either go into the conference room or participate from their desks, just as employees do in other offices. "It wouldn’t be possible to have this level of training for all our employees without the Internet," And-erson says.

In another model, the Rich-mond-based firm Experient e-Learning Technologies is making training via the Internet even more versatile by taking it on the road, says CEO Michael B. Glotz. Experient does a good chunk of its work in the pharmaceutical industry. Since drug company representatives are spread across the country, they rarely come in contact with one another, much less company headquarters. So Experient’s new mobile e-learning changes the training dynamic from "just in case" training — learning material in the event you might need to know it — to "just in time" training. For example, a sales rep who needs to review specifics about a drug before calling on a doctor can download information from the company’s intranet and review it on a laptop just before the sales call.

Experient is selling its mobile capabilities to training companies that want to provide mobile Internet training and to other content providers. One of those is Midlothian-based PDMA Inc., a regulatory consulting firm. PDMA provides Food and Drug Administration and Drug Enforcement Agency regulatory training to pharmaceutical companies. It develops the content and has contracted with Experient to provide mobile learning to complement the current training forums of lecture, discussion, written materials and video. "The sales force cannot stay in one place and be hooked up to the Internet the entire time," says Bill Buzzeo, director of operations. "This technology allows us to offer a training program that doesn’t restrict the mobility of the sales force." Buzzeo sees other benefits: With e-learning, updating material is fast and cheap and it’s easier to track what training employees have had. That’s particularly important whenever new federal regulations go into effect.

It should soon become easier to find a wide range of course offerings on the Internet. The Framingham, Mass.-based research firm International Data Corp. notes that information technology courses account for 78 percent of e-learning revenues. By 2003, tech courses will drop to less than half of revenues as non-tech courses are reformatted for electronic delivery.

For its part, Stacy Lutz’s Acumen Solutions links up with a national Internet teacher. Her firm offers 100 courses that primarily involve technology through SmartForce, a leading Internet-based training company based in Redwood City, Calif. Since starting the program in March, two-thirds of Acumen’s employees have used the Internet courses.