It's 6:30 a.m. and Colleen Aylward is sizing up the crowd at the Northwest Venture Group's monthly breakfast.

Aylward, who founded the recruiting service Devon James Associates, takes one long look at the crowd of 200-plus, mostly white men and points to the ones who she thinks are "consultants."

"Lots of 'consultants' here today," she says. "Everybody is a consultant these days, it's a nice way to say 'I'm unemployed.'"

The Northwest Venture Group's breakfast meeting is supposed to introduce entrepreneurs with investors—but as it is with nearly every networking event these days—it's dominated by people looking for work.

Colleen Aylward, president of Devon James Associates in Seattle, networks during a monthly meeting of the Northwest Venture Group. As one of the area's headhunters, her role in the employment cycle has changed with the economy.

"People are getting desperate," Aylward said. "I spend about 60 percent of my time these days just trying to cheer people up, encouraging them. There are a lots of desperate people out there."

Seconds later, Aylward is greeted by a man who says he's been doing some "consulting" and wonders when they might get together for lunch.

The unemployment rate has been hovering around 4.5 percent this summer, but Aylward and other headhunters are skeptical.

Aylward says a huge chunk of the recently pink-slipped population is calling themselves consultants and just biding their time until the economy picks up, so they aren't showing up on government statistics.

"A lot of people are looking to fall as the time things will improve," she says. "I hope they are right, but I think it will be more like March or even next summer."

It's not Aylward's nature to be pessimistic. She's a tireless networker and an energetic saleswomen who reaped plenty from the Internet gold rush.

Since founding Devon James in 1992, Aylward engineered the company's ascent to one of the leading recruiting firms on the West Coast.

During the heyday of the technology frenzy, Devon James was among the first recruiting firms to do on-site recruiting for venture-backed startups.

Aylward and her staff spent months helping companies such as Avenue A, Amazon.com, Visio and dozens of other young firms ramp their staffing levels. When Avenue A needed to fill 200 jobs, Aylward led Avenue A's staff in a pub crawl through Belltown to find candidates.

It wasn't unusual in those days for Devon James to work with four or five companies at a time.

But that was then.

Today, Devon James is currently working with two companies—Seattle-based Cray Inc. and Rhaspody Networks in the San Francisco Bay area.

A shortage of workers has been replaced by a glut of resumés.

In one of the conference rooms of Seattle-based Cray Inc. Devon James has set up what they call a War Room™ to help fill 46 jobs at the supercomputer maker's offices in Minnesota and Seattle.

For the past four months, three Devon James' staffers and one person from Cray's human resources department have reviewed nearly 4,000 resumés and fielded on average 100 telephone calls a day regarding Cray's 46 open positions.

"Lots of these resumés are from people who once were chief technology officers and are now willing to step down to a program manager positions because they are desperate," said Jason Hunter, of Devon James.

For former senior level executives, the word that should characterize their job search is "flexibility" said Bill Parfitt, of the Woodinville-based recruiting firm Parfitt Search Partners Inc.

"People really need to sit back and determine what they are willing to sacrifice," Parfitt said. "We all know the economy has gone south, things just aren't going to be like they were."

While the overall market for technology jobs has withered, several skills are still in demand.

"Business development is still a strong area," Parfitt said.

There is also a strong demand for programmers and healthy market for experienced technology sales people, Aylward said.

"Senior level sales and marketing are still pretty strong," she said. "But companies want to hire people who can get them huge contracts right away. Nobody is hiring account managers that baby-sit accounts, they want people who come in with a high-level Rolodex."

While the overall demand for sales and marketing jobs in the technology sector remains weak, demand for those jobs in old economy companies is robust. As is the demand for jobs for engineers of all kinds.

"There is a very strong demand for sales people in the lumber industry or in manufacturing," said a longtime Seattle recruiter based in Seattle who asked not to be identified. "We are seeing lots of positions in small, regional banks looking for senior-level vice presidents," he said.

While their old economy cousins may offer some hope for expatriate technology workers, very few can make the transition. "Most sales positions in manufacturing or lumber require very specific experience. Usually doing sales and marketing for a dot-com just won't work," one Seattle-based recruiter said.

Despite the drastic change in the job market, Aylward remains upbeat.

Being a recruiter is more then just filling jobs when the economy is booming, she said. It also means working with people when times are tough and helping them stay focused and positive.

Aylward encourages candidates, especially those from defunct dot-coms, to capitalize on their mistakes.

"All failures are assets," she said. "People shouldn't be afraid to talk about what went wrong and what they learned from it."

The daily pep-talks can be exhausting, she said. But people need to be ready for the next big technology push, which Aylward says is just around the corner.

"You really have to keep people up during these tough times," she said. "They'll turn around, and—when they do—people need to be ready."

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