2009 Predictions

The Christmas trees have now (hopefully) all been packed away, everyone’s recovered from their post NYE HOs, and we’re all gearing up for a fascinating 2009.

Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer have all just popped around and drawn the tarots from the deck (not REALLY.  You guys have got to learn not to take everything I write literally:)) and here are the results of the session.  Here are, in other words, the Geoff Jennings predictions for the online recruitment market in 2009:

Seek will target the SME market

Seek has seen consistent revenue growth of over 30% for the past four years.  This is largely attributed to  growing job ad volumes, price increases and the Seek Learning revenue contribution. 2009 will be a very different story for the market leader and it will take a mighty effort to break even.  They might attempt this feat by:

- Ditching their focus on recruiters and targeting the SME’s (Small Medium Sized) businesses, especially those who currently advertise in print. This will enable them to tap into a new advertiser that will be much easier to grow the yield with because it is accustomed to paying hefty print prices.

- Push new products. Stand Out ads, Premium ads…obviously, this will also contribute to yield growth and it is a path that Seek has already begun to promenade.

- Grow the Learning business: this will supplement the losses of the Core business.

- Concentrate on ensuring that the international investments work contribute to the bottom line.

CareerOne will tread water.

No significant inroads were made by CareerOne in 2008.  I’m going to acknowledge that they moved ahead of MyCareer in traffic numbers, and this was a good effort…but that has more to do with my imbibing post-festive spirit and less to do with any sort of massive leap by the former.

In 2007 they sold against the promise of a new website for almost a year, leaving many advertisers scratching their heads.   They’re likely to do the same in 2009,  as a result of the new joint venture with Monster. We might see some action on the new look partnership offering by the end of 2009, but by then it will be too little too late for their bottom line.  Promises, promises…

MyCareer will change business models.

MyCareer will move from being a generalist job board (with the only variation on this being their failed attempt with Job Fox in the Headhunter plan).  They will continue their downsizing (hopefully with a little more aplomb than their last Melbourne attempt) and they will cash in on their quality audience by launching a range of fully-integrated EGN executive ads. across all their online news sites.  They could also acquire PageUp People, the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) provider that has an enviable relationship with the corporate market that MyCareer could benefit from.  This would also mean getting in before Seek does.

Aggregators

These pimps of the job space are here and have set-up shop on a street corner near you. Will they make any real impact on the job market? Probably not. They fall short in a few areas.  Firstly, they don’t really have an adequate revenue model and we don’t have enough users in Australia to warrant further investment. Secondly, Seek has ensured the demise of aggregators by not allowing its job inventory to be scrapped. Lastly, the user experience is not great because of the searchability of expired ads..

Referral sites

The new guard are here. It will take all of 2009/10 to establish their offering. But traditional job boards beware. 2Vouch, Hoojano and the like will have a large impact on how the market is shaped for the future and will be targeting the same SME market as you are.

Latest Jobs

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OnlineRecruitment.com.au
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Linkme.com.au
Business Development Manager - NSW

MyCareer.com.au
Client Relationship Manager, Brisbane
Sales Coordinator, Melbourne

SimplyHired Heads Downunder

Those of us in the online recruitment industry have been waiting the arrival of a major global player in the jobs aggregation space into Australia.

Simply Hired the Mountain View, CA-based jobs service has made the plunge. Not simply stopping with Australia they have also launched:

Canada (www.SimplyHired.ca), the United Kingdom (www.SimplyHired.co.uk), Australia (www.SimplyHired.com.au) and India (www.SimplyHired.co.in).

The aggregation market has seen a lot of small fish come and go, resulting in its general lack of success.  The idea’s a good one, though, and perhaps a larger player will be able to support this enterprise better than a smaller one.  The reason for my hypothesis is simply centered on the financial backing a bigger enterprise might have to promote the product.  Aggregation does not yield massive revenue without massive traffic. The difficulty is that, without promotion (and therefore funding), massive traffic is unlikely to occur.

Online Recruitment Industry Jobs

Monday morning’s  peak time for job-hunters, so I thought I’d start this week off by highlighting some of the available online recruitment industry jobs.  So, for those of you who can’t stand the thought of another week of the same old, same old, check these out:

Business Development / Sales Executive - JobsJobsJobs
We are on the search for a sales professional to join our team in Sydney.

Business Development Manager - LinkMe - Neutral Bay, NSW
$60,000 to $100,000; Full time; Neutral Bay NSW 2089

Graphic Designer - LinkMe - St Kilda, Vic
An exciting new role has been created to support both the Development and Marketing teams of LinkMe

Senior Strategy Analyst - Seek
Work for SEEK, an entrepreneurial, market leading company

Plenty more roles at Seek. Click here

Drop me a line if I have missed any. Email: gjennings(at)onrec.com.au

2Vouch Goes Beta

I’ve discussed 2vouch on this Onrec blog already back in February Vouching For 2Vouch . Today they launched in Beta. Congratulations.

Social referral sites such as 2vouch and Hoojano(which launched some months back) will be a prominent aspect of how we recruit into the future. The idea is nothing new, as indicated by the old adage 2vouch has chosen to adopt as their motto, “It’s not what you know…” (initially they had a genie as part of their campaign. I wanna know where the genie’s gone:)). Being social creatures, we communicate with one another. Being creatures ruled by the ego, we like to be “in the loop”, and being creatures driven by economic concerns, we like to make money. 2vouch satisfies all the needs.

Recruiters pay referral fees to people who give them a lead on a placement. 2vouch is merely formalising this already-existing convention.

Online recruitment has placed some jobs on 2vouch, to give it a go. Stay tuned for how that’s tracking…I wish, I wish (picture me rubbing the magic lantern here) for several successful job placements….

Where’s the Genie??

Old School Meets New School

An alliance between JobX.com.au and social networking site, friendsreunited.com.au was announced today.

JOBX will provide FriendsReunited.com.au a full white label of its technology and functionality, including powering and launching the FriendsReunited.com.au jobs portal.

Good on ‘em. JobX has done the right thing in that, prior to spending squillions on marketing, it’s building some strategic alliances.This’ll help friendsreunited, too. Friendsreuinited is old school, web1.0, whereas JobX is more web2.0, giving its counterpart a bit more wizz-bang.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Health Check.

“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.

.asia Landrush Kicks Off Today

The Landrush phase for .Asia domain names started at about 10p.m. last night our time. It ends on the 12th March 2008. What this means is that any member of the general public can apply for webestate in Asia. If uncontested, the space is yours. If it is contested, you will be asked to enter a bidding process for ownership.

The timing of the Landrush didn’t aid my already well-documented insomnia as I spent the good part of last night buying up on Asian webestate. It was worth the dark patches under my eyes this morning. This is the kind of opportunity folks are witness to only every few generations. It represents the chance to be a pioneer on untouched land. It’s great to see that Seek, Career Builder and Montser have secured their slice of Asian cyberspace, but where were the other players? C’mon guys, surely you’re not that hung up on your need for beauty sleep?

Vouching For 2Vouch?

2Vouch coming soon.

This is a site based on profiteering from the popularity of internet-based social networking.It works like this: folks sign up and get sent ads for jobs. If they think that one of their friends fits the requirements, they recommend the friend and that person becomes a member as well. If the friend secures the position, the person “vouching” for them gets paid a fee, which can go directly to them or their favorite charity. The beta for the site is well prepared and the instructions are presented to would-be participants in a clear and cogent manner (except the voice-over syncing in the clip is a bit off and reminds one of a Chinese martial arts film). This is always a good start.

I’m a huge fan of this idea and have often pondered its implications at four in the morning when my head is full of cyberspace and the flashing of the computer screen that haunts my days begins to intrude into my night-time. Sites such as Facebook have demonstrated that the drive to be popular and fill one’s profile with a plethora of friends drives many an introvert into sudden extroversion.

I’m bugged by a few factors, though. And I’m prepared to risk appearing overly-critical and ponderous in order to get the low-down on what others think about my suspicions.

Firstly, any business that relies on friends or acquaintances making a profit from one another has an air of the Amway about it. Just the knowledge that there is more to my friend’s recommending me for a job than the simple pleasure they experience from me being happier or taking one more step up the ladder of success - they stand to make money from me. And whether this goes straight to their hip pocket or to that of their favorite charity, they are still gaining something more tangible from my taking the job offered than the joy of an alturistic act.

There are all sorts of personal and political dilemmas that can be foreseen here that may lead people to steer well clear of the site. What about the promotion of jobs from colleague to colleague within the same company? What about the guy who vouches for his mate for a position but the mate refuses to take the job, thereby doing the guy out of a buck. Personal strain…hello, here we come.

And haven’t the old Jobs.com.au kinda tried to do this anyway? Is this another attempt to cut out the recruiter that is going to fall on its face.Let me tell you up front - I hope I’m wrong.

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