WALLACE IMMEN --Effie Simanikas credits a mentor for helping her get a big promotion. In this case, her mentor wasn't a person. It was a computer that her employer uses to track employee career development. A variety of information about Ms. Simanikas - from her background experience to her career goals, aptitude tests to management evaluations of her performance - has been collected in a giant data base by her employer, gas and electricity marketer Direct Energy, a subsidiary of London-based Centrica PLC.
