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It took a 28-year-old graduate student to jolt Russ Campanello into realizing that for the most ambitious job-hunters, money - bigger salaries, fatter stock options - isn't everything.

Two years ago, Campanello was on a recruiting mission for Nets Inc., a high-profile startup that was trying to build a Web-based marketplace for buyers and sellers of industrial equipment. He found himself facing a hotshot from Carnegie Mellon University: a computer-science grad student who had started writing code by age eight. Campanello launched into a standard-issue interview. But soon it was the candidate who was interviewing the recruiter.

"I was describing the opportunity," Campanello recalls, "when the kid stops the interview and says that he can do everything we need him to do - but that there are a few things that he needs us to do for him."

The hot prospect didn't ask for bigger bucks. In fact, he was willing to give up part of his salary (he was getting offers in the six figures) in return for a flexible work schedule and three weeks off during the summer. Then came the kicker: He insisted on teaming up with one of the top product developers at Nets. His resume would show not only the projects he'd worked on but also the people he'd worked with, and he wanted to work with the best.

"I'm thinking, this guy is a raging prima donna," recalls Campanello, who is now senior vice president for human resources at Genzyme Corp., a pioneering biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "But then it dawned on me that something was going on here, and I'd better pay attention to it: The old game, where people felt they were lucky just to have a job, is over. And an altogether different game - where if a company is lucky, talented people will come and work for it for a while - is just now beginning."

Call it the revenge of the reengineered. "Reengineering really did people a favor," says Campanello. "The people who were laid off and then went to work for themselves - the free agents - had to make their own arrangements for external benefits: work schedules, vacation, health care, child care. Now that companies are trying to attract them back, free agents are holding out for the kinds of benefits that will give them real latitude in their work lives."

Recent studies bear out this analysis. For example, a 1997 survey of 2,500 businesspeople by Towers Perrin, a management-consulting firm, found that 94% of respondents understand that they shouldn't expect a job for life, that it's their responsibility to remain employable. One result of this new outlook: People are bargaining for more than a bigger pay packet.

"People are pushing for nontraditional benefits that will help them advance their career - even if their job blows up," says Stephen Bookbinder, a principal at Towers Perrin. "They aren't looking for job security; they want career security. And companies had better realize this, if they want to attract the people who can take them where they need to go."

People are bargaining for a new deal; Russ Campanello has seen such negotiations from every angle. For nine years, he was in charge of human resources at Lotus Development Corp. His visionary work there prompted Upside magazine to name him Human Resources Executive of the Year in 1993. He then became a mission-critical player at Nets, an ill-fated startup led by former Lotus CEO Jim Manzi. At both companies, he bargained for a benefit that doesn't come in the old-economy pay packet: 20% of his own time, which he used to explore new directions in human resources.