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.