Back From My Tour Of Europe

So I’m back from my tour.  I’ve slept, eaten an huge bowl of veges, and ready to resume where I left off.

Nothing catastrophic happened in my absence, but there are a few points I’d like to draw your attention to.

Firstly, a recent Seek survey indicated:

67% of jobseekers are concerned about their current job or career in light of the global economic slowdown according to research from SEEK Intelligence. In a sign that employee confidence is dropping rapidly, when asked the same question in August only 39% of respondents were feeling worried. 

59% of respondents are feeling less secure in their job now compared to 12 months ago, nearly double the number of jobseekers who felt this way in August (31%) 

71% of people think that it will take them longer to find a job now compared to 12 months ago, a massive jump from 39% when the question was posed in August and an even bigger increase from the 29% recorded in 2007

Happiness levels in relation to the respondent’s job continue to decrease, with only 22% of respondents describing themselves as happy (down from 27% in August and 29% in 2007)

These aren’t great results for participants in the survey – but I’m sorry to report that the leverage recruiters can receive from employee dissatisfaction is considerable, especially in a candidate-tight market.

Also, it is important for us as recruiters to keep a picture of the overall feeling of the market place.  If security is a key concern of employees, then this can be used as a selling point in the dance of wooing candidates into various positions.

Secondly, Thomas Shaw, owner of Recruitment Directory, and one of our regular contributors, recently acquired the niche job board digitalindustryjobs.com from its existing UK owners. Here’s to hoping he didn’t pay too much for this as the exchange rate of the pound in relation to the $AUD is not great. However the revenue potential when converted back could work well.

Thirdly, MyCareer is still A/B testing their job search functionality. This has been happening for a number of months now. A decision should be made sooner than later as jobseekers will start to get confused.

Finally.  Seek remains the market leader. Their key drivers remain consistent:

1. Grow Volume of job ads

2. Grow yield

3. Introduce new products

Why change the strategy when you have financial results like these:

$M

 

(Seek presentation to UBS conference)

And I swear, I’m not receiving cash for comments from Seek.  There’s not much I can give these folks a hard time about, though.   The praise I give them is well-deserved.

 

 

JobX, Search More Find Less!

I received an email from Jobx.com.au containing a bold statement regarding their job search functionality.

The JobX email here.

Search less, find more

Our search is faster, more efficient and is more likely to deliver what you are looking for than any other career site in Australia. Yes it’s a big claim, but we stand by it wholeheartedly.

I was excited by that statement and road tested it by checking out the search results from Jobx and then comparing the results with those from the major job sites. My results were as follows:

I typed in the keyword, “Account Manager” and chose location anywhere;

- Jobx – No1 result: Recruitment Consultant. Search results here

- MyCareer - No1 result:Business Development Manager, Key Account Manager. Search results here

- Seek – No1 result: Account Manager – Direct Marketing – 100k Search results here

- CareerOne – No1 result: Account Manager / Online Account Manager Search results here

Notice something disappointing?

While all the other jobsites came up with jobs directly related to my keyword search, Jobx’s results gave me a role for recruitment consultant as its premier listing. The Jobx role does not have the word ‘account manager’, my keyword search, in either its title or its short description. What of Jobx’s claim that it is more likely to deliver what I’m looking for than any other site in Australia? It seems that the other sites gave me what I was looking for…

Now, if you’ve got time and you do manage to get to the fortieth page of jobx’s search results , you will see that the final listing is for an account manager, but it’s dated September 18, 2007 – four months old and still listed.

C’mon, Jobx. Jobseekers want tight search results from current jobs.