Where’s The Value?
December 10, 2008 by Geoff Jennings
Where has the value gone out of the recruitment industry?
Recruiters are offering a Christmas half-price special to their clients. Job boards are offering free ads. Jobserve think they are back in the Bobby McGee’s happy hour days and is offering 2 for 1 deals.
My concern is that, while this might all be fun and games for clients of these businesses, what happens in the cold, hard light of January? Are job boards and recruiters who have decided to go down this track of devaluing the service they offer going to wake up with a major, throbbing headache after the Festive period has ended?
Let this stand as a warning, guys: it’s gonna be pretty difficult to contact clients in the new year and tell them that your service is no longer free or half the present price. Christmas doesn’t reduce your costs, and it does not alter how you go about searching for applicants. Don’t let the silly season force you into dropping your pants.
I suspect this is more about downturn than it is about Christmas. In which case there will be no cold hard light of January…… or February…….or March……
Expect more price cuts, free trials and desparate behavior in the new year.
Good point. You might be right. Still, a hole’s a hole, and eventually you’re gonna want to re-surface…
Geoff – I think you’re right.
We trialled a cut-price discount in November to see whether our price point was too high – we discounted our advertisements by $30, down from $79 to $49.
The result? We sold marginally less ad slots than October, which meant that our revenue was significantly less than the previous month.
And by discounting, we have probably now created an expectation in the minds of our clients that we are willing to discount in future…and that’s a dangerous thing.
In retrospect, it was not the right thing to do. Our service is delivering good value to clients and I think our ad slots are already well priced when compared to the national job boards.
Clayton Wehner
http://www.capitaljobs.com.au