Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Health Check.
March 6, 2008 by Geoff Jennings
“We think that we can create the number-two job board in Australia within 12 months, which really means knocking off MyCareer and CareerOne, and we think that we can be a third of the size of Seek within three years.”
-Guy Sigston (smart company magazine, 20 Feb., 2007)
It’s nearly a year on for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Call it an early happy birthday present if you like, but I reckon they’re about due for a little health check.Let’s start with the positive. The site has pretty good functionality. It remembers the user and returns the upon entry to their last viewing point. Handy stuff. And not that it really matters so much, but the site is aestetically slick and easy to navigate - a welcome break from some stuff I’ve been looking at lately.Okay.
On to Guy’s quote. See, the problem is, if you’re going to go to the media with big claims, you wanna be pretty sure that you can see the claims through. Based on this idea, Guy Sigston was pretty…um…stupid. Sure, you left Jobs, Jobs, Jobs rather “abruptly”, but you’re back now and I reckon all the hooha is no excuse for not making good your inflated promise, Guy.
Let’s have a look at how things are tracking…According to Hitwise Australia February 08 market share, Seek holds 25% of the market, and CareerOne and MyCareer, 8.7% and 7.3%, respectively. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs has NOT EVEN 1% OF MARKET SHARE. I don’t wanna kick you when you’re down, and frankly, I wouldn’t be expecting much more than what you’ve achieved in such a short time. The thing I have an issue with is your public escalation of expectations. Don’t tell folks that you’ll be number two in a year, don’t tell folks that you’ll be a third of the size of Seek in three years, unless you have a bloody good plan for how this will be achieved.Say we let ‘em off the hook for the Guy comment. Say we’re in a benevolent mood and we’re prepared to allow a pretty humungous margin of error…where do we go from here?
Archie Mills, my friendly telesales rep. from Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, led me to the answer to this question. Archie was pretty keen to get my business by setting up a meeting with one of the sales team. I’m pretty busy, though, and won’t go to meetings unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be fruitful for me (this is the reason I’m self-employed, goddam). I asked Archie for some info about the job board and he sent me an email, jam-packed full of claims. Most of them were pruely propaganda. For instance, “We offer better value”. Der, Arch. Then there was this one “57% growth in the past two months” That one bugged me a bit, considering that January is the comeback month for job boards. I wanted clarification on that point, “How does this compare with the growth of the competing job boards” and “What is the source of the statistics”, I asked my new friend Archie - twice. No reply. That was a few weeks ago.
Looks like Jobs, Jobs, Jobs is up to their old tricks again.
JJJ have an obligation to the industry they (apparently) misled to come clean about their current market position and their plans for the future, if indeed they have a future..?
I heard they budgeted $6-8m to spend to give Seek a shake! I think Seek spends that in about a month (…who mentioned price-gouging??).
General questions - what does the future hold for the jobsboard industry - and where will aggregation fit in - it seems to be working well overseas?
Thanks David and good question.
At the moment it still looks like Seek are the future. No others have really made good on ‘Shaking up the job boards’ in Australia.
As far as aggregators go the only one that is close to our market here is http://www.recruit.net/ They seem to be doing a good job but lack Seek’s inventory and local brand recognition.
The recruitment industry seems pretty p….d off with Seek - have I mentioned price-gouging?? - and I guess they’re hoping that CareerOne or MyCareer will take the fight up to them. Any recruiters out there want to comment?
And are niche boards (industry or geographic segmentation) part of the future?
Re Aussie aggregators - http://www.jobsites.com.au/ uses recruit.net’s engine for a localised board - uninspiring interface but consistently delivers more job ads than Seek (declaration reqd here - it’s a JV between my co and recruit.net).
Nice. Have you researched building your own engine?
I think Seek are happy that MYC and C1 have overpriced their products. This makes Seek’s ads look more reasonable in comparison.
This is where the aggregators come into play with the same mantra Seek used/es against the old market leader in print, i.e. print’s too expensive and is old technology, so move over to us. What’s going to happen, though, when the aggregators take Seek’s place. Will we just have the same old, and will the results be any different?
The idea has certainly crossed our minds here. In the meantime Jobsites is doing its job in proving up the agg model in Australia - it actually works and to be able to shout MORE JOB ADS THAN SEEK is very satisfying!
I predict 08 will see some big moves in the online rec space with aggregation coming into its own as soon as a monetisation model gets sorted.
Any thoughts on niche segment boards - by industry and/or location?
Stats say that niche job sites are useful and have a level of trust amongst users. The problem is that the big boards have successfully created their own niches, i.e. Seek IT, Executive, MYC with Big Chair and C1 with blue collar.
Whilst Seek continues to dominate the jobs market, the niche sites are limited in growth and therefore are not a threat.
Aggregator sites are an interesting beast as they wish to kill the hand that feeds them…
Will the jobs eventually end up there even without Seek’s participation? What happens if they win?
Groundhog day…
Aggregator sites eat their children!! Yes the vision of retail jobsboards funding (or at least unwittingly supporting) their own demise must have appeal in some sectors.
Re Seek - they “respectfully request” that aggregators don’t scrape their content. Wonder who’ll be the first to disrespect them?
That would be Independents Day…
“I predict 08 will see some big moves in the online rec space with aggregation coming into its own as soon as a monetisation model gets sorted.” !!
In other words, 2008 is the year that you pick a sales pitch which goes something like:
“I have no traffic. All your competitors are on here for free. But if you pay me, you can be on here too but in brighter orange/ on the left / on the right / at the top / at the bottom / when you get some applicants.”
This is the central problem with aggregation. There IS no monetisation model unless you’re Google and have massive volumes where you can charge cents per click. You’re simply not going to be able to make enough money even with 300,000 jobs.
Assuming you can get around this issue, the reality is as soon as you become a traffic threat in any way, CareerOne and MyCareer are going to pull their jobs rug out from under your feet leaving you with a fraction of the jobs and no value proposition for jobseekers.
Anyway, I might be wrong but if I had to forecast whether its going to be you or Packer and Murdoch selling The Big Issue outside your office in 2008, I know where I’d put my money.