Online recruitment booms

ONLINE recruitment is booming in Australia according to Internet job site Seek executive director Matthew Rockman.

Mr Rockman said Seek user and advertiser numbers had been growing at 25 per cent per month.

“I think job boards will effectively take the classified market away from newspapers,” he said.

“However, they will also have to keep improving their functionality to keep their audience.”

The functionality of the Internet makes job sites successful by offering the job seeker much more flexibility.

In fact, Seek was formed out of bad newspaper experience its CEO Paul Bassat had while hunting through housing ads.

Mr Rockman is cagey about whether Seek will expand into classified markets outside job ads.

“We are keeping our options open, but we don’t feel the Internet job market has reached its full potential,” he said.

However, simply being a job placer may not be enough.

Jobnet marketing executive Russell Cleeve said companies just posting job ads on their sites risked going the way of the dinosaurs.

“We work solely for recruitment agencies,” Mr Cleeve said.

“We provide products that the agencies can rebrand and market to their clients. It helps to enhance their website.

“For example, we give them a search engine that links to the jobs they’ve advertised on our site.

“We also offer our listing service at a very low price.

“If recruitment companies take on products worth more than $175 per week, they can post their jobs on our site for free.”

Mr Cleeve said this approach was shaking up the online job advertising market.

“A lot of companies out there only have a job ad revenue stream. We’re moving from a job ad revenue stream to a product revenue stream,” he said.

“The fact we concentrate on recruitment agencies makes us unique as well.”