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 achieve 0% growth.  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.

Job Board Price War Shake Up?

I received this letter indirectly. A plea from Recruit Me Now.  I can’t call it a media release.  It’s a confusing piece of communication which flits from third-person to first-person (and I’ve offered in past blogs to write your bloody publicity for you – but continue to be witness to the circulation of shite).

Deep breath, Geoff (see, that’s first-person).

Back to the case in point.  Recruit Me Now has offered free job ads for recruiters (now I’m in third-person.  See the difference, Michael?).  This strategy has been used by several job boards (namely, MyCareer, CareerOne, NowHiring).  This is not a successful strategy as it devalues the service offered.

Now I’m going to offer an alternative.  Don’t you just hate it when folks whine all the time but fail to show how things can be improved?  Here it comes, Mike.  Hold on to your jocks.  What Recruit Me Now needs to do is this:  cut ties with JobX.  They’re doing a crap job anyway (also offering free jobs).  Get your shirt and tie on and have a chat with market leader Hughes Recruitment, which has more recruitment jobs than you do, and present yourself as an affiliate marketer that can send them quality apps.  Charge accordingly.  Next, spend your time marketing your site properly instead of begging for free ads.

Let me know how you go:)

News Limited and Monster Worldwide Announce Joint Venture

“Monster Worldwide, the parent company of Monster.com, the premier global online employment brand, will own 50% of News Limited’s employment website CareerOne.com.au in the new joint venture.”

What does this mean for the Australian job board space? Probably not much. Here’s the reason why – Monster have previously folded in Australia, CareerOne has never been any threat to market leader Seek.  Two wrongs don’t make a right, two positives don’t make a negative.  there’s no reason to suggest that this partnership will achieve any more than either entity achieved separately.

What does this mean for the advertising market?  Big dollars. Monster’ll no doubt be putting truckloads into the promotional needs of this alliance…a bit of a boost in a low ebb.

It’s the job seeker who may receive a nominal benefit from the new lovers.  Monster has created some innovative career mapping tools targeted at the job seeker, probably similar to that of Mycareer’s Headhunter offering.  This might make the process of job seeking a little more efficient.

Tackle Your Boss

CareerOne have launched a game called ‘Tackle Your Boss’ on their home page.  This is a great way to get the contact details of potential candidates because, to register a score, you need to give up your details.

It’s quite addictive.  Give it a try, if you have a few hours to lose…

My best is 84.915m which places me in 616 place.  Give me a few days and I may figure out how the winner got over 85m.

CareerOne Powers eBay Jobs

CareerOne has struck a deal with eBay Australia to power eBay jobs. This should prove to be a worthwhile partnership for the folks at CareerOne, who’ll get credit from eBay’s 5.3million monthly visitors.

They need all the help they can get. The latest Hitwise Australia market share rankings shows CareerOne at 7.59% – neck and neck for second spot with MyCareer who are on 7.92%.

Call me belligerent. But I love a good scrap.

Job For Simon

Let’s find a job for Simon. Have you met him yet? Simon Baker. Ex-CEO and MD at realestate.com.au (also known as the REA Group)? Ahhhh. Now the coin’s dropped. I think we both heard it make a clunk sound at the bottom of your skull.

So, here’s the thing. A few weeks ago, the folks at REA decide that they could not agree to differ with Simon. He’s taken to a hotel room, and told the grim news that his services would no longer be required. Bummer. No chance to say goodbye to collegues. No gold bloody pen – or watch. Betcha he didn’t even get one of those snazzy red polo tees.

Bummer.

I don’t need to go into how this was an appalling way to treat an employee of seven and a half years (and third largest shareholder). I wanna look to the future. What’s next for a man of Simon’s experience and achievement?

Perhaps his services are required at a couple of of under-achieving job boards – CareerOne and MyCareer. Perhaps this Midas could deliver them their gold – superiority over Seek.

Marketing Won-O-One

I’m going to call this a poor attempt at marketing collateral by CareerOne. But really, when I say that, I’m just being polite. At best, it’s incompetent. At worst, a fabrication of data. And regular readers will know how it is with me and correct statistical representations…

Let’s play a bit of Where’s Wally.

First up: Where’s the spelling error in this??

Next up: How do you spell CareeeeeerOne again??

Now’s the icing on the cake. This one is more difficult to spot as most folks do not have access to Nielsen//NetRatings data (perhaps that’s what the folks in marketing at CareerOne are relying on).

In the the graph below, CareerOne illustrates its supposed Year on Year growth, quoting as its source Nielsen//NetRatings market intelligence.

The graph below illustrates the actual Nielsen//NetRatings data:

While in both graphs, the CareerOne data is consistent, the results for Seek and MyCareer have been drastically altered in the CareerOne graph. For example, CareerOne represents Seek as having 0% growth for May’08, but the Nielsen//NetRatings data actually demonstrates nearly 15% growth for Seek. Therefore, the representation of data in the CareerOne graph is basically fictitious. This may have occurred because the person who redrew the graph inputted the data incorrectly, reversing Seek’s and MyCareer’s results.

The errors in this advertising denigrate CareerOne’s reputation in the market, don’t you agree?

And the really sad thing is – CareerOne didn’t have to fudge the results. They were leading in the growth stakes anyway…

My advice to the folks at CareerOne would be thus: get yourselves a decent copy editor who at least makes sure your name is spelled correctly in your ads, and don’t misrepresent your competitors.

You never know who’s watching.

CareerOne Into AFL…

Nice to see CareerOne learning something from the Seek advertising success story and spending some cash over at the AFL.com.au site.

You know the song, “football, meat pies, kangaroos and a new job…”

Go the cats!

Job Board Traffic Update

According to Nielsen//NetRatings Australia, CareerOne’s traffic as of 25 May 08 is at 1,046,351 unique browsers (UBs). That’s 162,333 UBs ahead of MyCareer and over 1.3 million behind Seek.

MyCareer’s latest TV campaign seems to be a fizzer and not propelling them into second place over C1, as they would have hoped.

CareerOne’s sitting in its dream position – pity it’s your dream position too, MyCareer!

Directing Traffic

Statistics are king in businesses such as online job boards, where success or failure is measured by the amount of traffic to a site.However, there are two methods of collecting data used by the online recruitment industry in Australia.

The industry standard is the panel-based methodology used by Nielson/NetRatings. This tracks data from a panel of about 400 consumers. They report the stats to the market on a monthly basis. As data relies on subscription at a fee, several of the smaller job boards, such as JobX and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs do not participate in this form of data collection.

Alternatively, Hitwise Australia collects data directly from ISP networks. Stats from Hitwise are updated on an hourly basis. The data from this method is therefore more raw and “real-time”. It gives the stats-geeks a chance to analyse the comings and goings of consumers, peak times for views etc, providing an excellent opportunity to better understand consumer practices. Hitwise data is not reliant on individual job board subscription, as is the case with the NetRatings data. However, this data excludes any information from the Telstra ISP networks.

First up, let’s all agree on this: before any one method can be considered the industry standard, it should include data from all possible sources. Therefore, both methods currently in use are deficient in this regard. Hitwise, for its exclusion of Telstra data, and NetRatings for its exclusion of minor job board data.

Arguably, the effect on the data purity of these two deficiencies differs. The NetRatings data gives us no indication whatever of the popularity of the minor sites. It is merely indicative of the popularity of the three main players, Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer. However, the Hitwise data, while excluding a whack of info from the Telstra ISP, allows us a snapshot of where all the industry competitors sit in popularity. It would be difficult to contend that a greater portion of consumers of any one site would be more likely to be Telstra ISP customers. Therefore, as the exclusion affects both the big and smaller players, while it alters quantity of data, it probably does not alter the quality of it.Whatever method of data collection one considers, if we have a look at the figures for January, Seek is the undisputed market leader.CareerOne have seen a better- than- average traffic rise than their close competitors MyCareer and have assumed the number two position. If this was due to spending more dollars on advertising then MyCareer can quickly buy back the number two spot in February.

However, when we consider the popularity of Linkme for the month, there is a conflict between the two data. Linkme have dropped off the NetRatings list with a 97% decline. However HitWise shows a rise in their traffic and rankings. This discrepency may be due to the launch of the new site in January. NetRatings is possibly still tracking the old one and Linkme have moved on.Admittedly, there are several other factors to be considered in the question of success and failure of the job boards. These include: number of c.v.’s on their databases, how many job alert emails go out each day and how good are the quality of applications. Volume isn’t always better.

However when looking at popularity alone, based on the above, we need to challenge the idea that NetRatings is the industry standard of popularity rating for the recruitment industry. But, even if we all concur that a new metric is required for the measure of popularity, will we ever be able to agree on how that measure should be derived?

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