Monster Vs. Seek – The Rumble Down Under

The much-anticipated heavyweight battle between the undefeated champion of the job board space, Seek, and the 400-kilo gorilla, Monster,(who will be powering the new CareerOne site) is just around the corner.

And the word on the street is that the contender is in the best shape it has ever been.

This scenario is not dissimilar to an event, thirty-five years ago, The Rumble In The Jungle, when Muhammad Ali entered the ring to challenge undisputed heavyweight champion George Foreman. The fight with Foreman represented more than just a chance for him to become the second former heavyweight champ to regain the title. A victory over Foreman meant validation and redemption for Ali.

For Monster, beating Seek would signify their redemption after having to leave the Australian market several years ago. Seek is still thought to be so invincible that Monster/CareerOne aren’t given much of a chance against them.

Fight Stats:

How many Unique browsers per month:

SEEK:           3,192,692
CareerOne:  1,620,077

How many job ads on site:

SEEK:           97,869
CareerOne:  31,874

Source: Nielsen NetRatings Australia, March ’09

This sets up for one of the greatest heavyweight battles we have seen since Seek took on print – and won (and don’t start on me about how they haven’t really won, peoples.  You’ll start to sound like the fundey right-wing Christians still trying to suggest that evolution is nothing more than a ‘theory)’.

Positions Vacant And Out-dated

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that my major gripe is unsubstantiated or out- dated claims.

Well, PositionsVacant have given me some fresh fodder. I saw this when arriving at their home page…

And:

First up, who cares what your ranking was back in ’06? One year in the online world is equivalent to seven years in the offline world – things move fast. Some days I get motion sickness with how quickly things are moving. According to this calculation, the claim made by Positions Vacant is fourteen-years-old. Just to give you some perspective, it’s kinda like Los Del Rio trying to get free drinks at the local club because they were number one on the Billboards for The Macarena in 1996.

Their second statement, that for June, July and August they were the largest audited privately owned job board in Australia, seems a bit more credible, until you click on the link to find out more. This claim regards data from ’07!

Can we start bragging about stats that are at least remotely current??

I never could quite do that Macarena dance…