2010

Term Paper
Online Job Portals

Kunal Choudhary, Nitish Wadhwa, Puneet Gupta, Yashvardhan Agarwal Hewlett-Packard 4/4/2010

EMPLOYMENT PORTALS
(Kunal Choudhary, Nitish Wadhwa, Puneet Gupta, Yashvardhan Agarwal)

The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out ways to not only excel financially in terms of Growth or Profitability but also work out ways for proper Job satisfaction of the employees, their ability to make people happy by putting the Right People to Right Job Anonymous

The process of picking the right people for the right job has become increasingly complex. Often, there are unfortunate misfits. This impacts productivity and also adversely affects performance. So, there has been increasing the need for Employment Portals. Employment portals are the web-based portals dealing specifically with employment or careers. These Portals are designed to allow job seekers to upload their resumes, search current Job openings. Through the job portal, a prospective employee can locate and fill out a job application or submit resumes over the Internet for the advertised position. They also offer employer reviews, career and job-search advice describe different job descriptions or employers. Employers post job requirements for a position to be filled.

Other means of Employment search/listing used in the past (pre Web 2.0) were:

Job listings (Newspapers, Magazines) Targeted Mailings (letter of inquiry) Private or public Employment Agencies Extended business network or personal network Job Fair Employment News and Employment Exchanges in the Indian Context.

However the key advantages of the Employment Portals in bridging the gap between jobseekers and employers were so immense that it has led to an instant success of these Job Search Engines and has spawned thousands of job sites.

Some of the key features of these portals are:

Job Listing from every possible sector. Job Search Tools (Category, Experience, Keyword, Salary, Place etc.) Resume Posting/Customized Resume Service Step-by-step guide for making resumes and valuables suggestions Job Alert Services according to the resume posted on website. Job Application History and Interview/Walk-in Alerts 24*7 availability of service. Multiple Resumes service, targeting multiple opportunities Help and Guidance, if needed. Group Apply to multiple selected jobs.

Many of these jobs search engines list job opportunities in a specific sector or a number of sectors, such as Information Technology, Manufacturing, Services - Education, Health care, Hospital management, Academics and even in the Government sector. According to the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS), there are over 40,000 employment web sites. These sites cover general all-purpose job boards, to niche sites that serve particular industries or audiences. With the increasing success of these job sites , various other sites have come up which rank them in order of their quality.

Mergers and acquisitions have been very active in this Industry for over many years now. In 2008, several private equity firms started the process of piecing together large job board networks while other firms attempted to expand through acquisition.

Major Players
Online Job portal has seen tremendous growth over the last few years both in India and abroad. The competition in this space has ensured that each firm is trying to outdo the other firm by doling out new features to entice more and more users to their site. Apart from the regular features, each firm is trying to give out features that can add value to their consumers, be it Naukri coming out with NaukriOnChat and Paycheck, TimesJobs collaborating with companies to come out with Job Fairs and Walkins and MonsterIndia innovating in the field of technology to give out the best search results to both the employers and the employees. Each one of the major players is exploring the unexplored pastures and also trying to give better services to the customers. Let us look at some of the leading players in the industry and the unique proposition that they have on offer to their customers.

Naukri.com is the no.1 job portal in India according to the survey conducted by HT. Started in 1997 by Sanjiv Bikhchandani, Naukri.com has used the first movers advantage to its benefit and have grown rapidly. True to its mission statement Every person looking for a Job should get one naukri.com lists more than 35000 employers and has a database of more than 19 million resumes. To hold on to its market leader status naukri.com has come out with a host of innovative features. NaukriOnChat is one of these features. This feature enables a user to search for a job without even logging on to Naukri.com. Its as simple as chatting. To search for a job a person needs to be a registered user of naukri.com and the only other thing that is needed is to add jobs@chat.naukri.com to his friend list on Gtalk. Now when you enter the text in the text window it takes it as a search string and gives out the results based on it. One of the more interesting features that naukri.com offers is Paycheck. With paycheck one can get to know the salary that other people are earning with a similar profile as his. Paycheck can also help the user determine how his salary is going to vary with city that he works in, with time and seniority or with the shift of industry that he works in. Paycheck is a tool which can help you know what is going on in the industry, what the trend is in the market what should he do to progress in his career. It can guide you to go for a course or certification by give out the latest trends in the market. So to sum it up paycheck is the answer to the questions Am I being paid right? What can I do to earn more? Naukri.com has also ventured into various niche segments like Campus Hiring with FirstNaukri.com. It lists various jobs and internships for students and fresh graduates. It also intends to connect campuses to employers to ensure smooth campus hiring. Another such venture of Naukri.com is Shiksha.com. This portal intends to provide information and a platform to discuss various career options. This site gives out information about various courses the institute that offers these courses and can suggest you a course that could suit your interests.

MonsterIndia.com is another leading player in the online job portal industry in India. Mosnterjobs.com has a presence in more than 26 countries with a collection of more than 41 million CVs in their database this truly shows that it is a monster. MonsterIndia uses the best of the technology; its Magic search has been a revolutionary tool for the employers to enable the searches of high quality. It has been rated best job site by PC World Web world awards 2007 & 2008 on the basis of

Site Technology, Design, Usability and Content. MonsterIndia has come up with innovative features like Psychometric Test to help the prospective employee to select a suitable job and also Career Astrology for those who believe in luck. MonsterIndia was the first site to launch video resume service for the employers. With its multinational presence and technological superiority MonsterIndia is a force to recon with.

TimesJobs.com is a site with difference. Apart from the regular stuff on other online job portals TimesJobs offer features that are unique to it. Best consultants Zone is one such feature, which brings together the jobs from major consultants under one roof. TimesJobs is one site, which conducts JobFairs and Walkins regularly. Timesjob.com has also collaborated with the Indian Army Placement Agency (APA) in 2005, to leverage the skills of the retiring army personnel in facilitating their entry into the corporate world.It has carved out a niche in the Job portal segment and this will surely hold it in good stead in times to come.

Visitor Analysis
70000 60000 50000 40000 30000 20000 10000 0

Unique Visitors naukri.com Unique Visitors monsterindia.com Unique Visitors timesjobs.com

Niche Segment
Some of the web 2.0 websites cater to niche market of customers having specific needs. E.g. some are specifically made for people fresh out of colleges without any prior work experience, some cater to the jittery souls looking for campus placements. Some are specifically looking after people who want govt. jobs, some specifically to those wanting

to go abroad for jobs. There are also sites available for people interested in a specialized field of work like banking. Some might think that these sites, by not catering to a vast talent pool ready to be acquired, are losing out on business opportunity. But actually they know their target customers so well, that they become the market leaders in the segment by acting like a bible for their customers needs and wants for information. Let us take a few examples of sites running on the above business model.

The site with a name that goes perfectly in sync with its mission statement - To facilitate fresh graduates find first dream jobs!. This site has been there since the year 2000 and they claim to have helped more than 500,000 graduates find their first dream jobs. They also boast of having an active network of over 4000 companies associated with them. Apart from the usual like discussion forums and placement papers database, this site has come up with a never seen before concept of Campus Ambassador. A 5 min browsing through this section of their site makes you realize this is a win - win situation for all. A campus ambassador can not only help her institute have the best of the resources available for freshers recruitment but also gets an opportunity to get a firsthand experience of industry functioning apart from the goodies from the site. The portal in return gains a huge market share and ensures that its visibility in the campus is never sidelined by any of its competitors. In order to let the student remain glued to this site, career information like Higher studies, Freshers News, GD Tips & Mocks, scholarships etc have been made readily accessible. It also tries to be highly competitive by providing job feeds according to domain interests like software jobs, bpo jobs, govt. jobs, defense jobs, civil services and internship opportunities.

A more of an informative site, this is about banking jobs in India. A venture of the Banknet group, this portal tries to provide the banking aspirants a zone of their own. Informative articles like CV writing tips and What banks look for in job applicant gives a peak at the psyche of the future employers and the industry as a whole. Its discussion forums are the main medium for job seekers to get help from this site.

The job portals are now being threatened by an emerging new player in the market: - the companies themselves. Sites like StandoutJobs help create Web 2.0 enabled site or recruitment micro-site in days instead of months. The popularity of such micro sites is so huge that a large number of companies have started these as the foundation for their social recruiting strategies. Some of the major clients of StandoutJobs include Thomas & King, Quantum Corporation and Erricson. These sites can have multiple landing pages which are well-branded, and can include interactive and Web 2.0 features such as chat, polls and blogs. Alternatively you can have a micro site which will have an exact look of the companys corporate website. They also provide services for building long term relationships with job seekers and candidates through email campaigns.

Revenue Model of employment portals

Net sales revenue of naukri.com catapulted from Rs 191.64mn in FY 03-04 to Rs 2116.46mn in FY 08-09. Hits of naukri.com and monster.com witnessed an increase of approx. 185% and 160% in last 1 year.

The above figures clearly indicate the meteoric rise in the use of employment portals. This significant increase in popularity was not unplanned and off-hand , it was the fallout of the meticulous planning, lucrative offering, partnerships, diligent sales team and external factors like proliferation of internet, etc.

Benefit Analysis
Employers : Convenience in hiring : Saves time and money Wider choice : Since all candidates gather at same platform employers have more candidates with requisite skills to choose from. Online advertisement : These advertisements directly focus on the target segment i.e. job-seekers since job potal websites are usually visited by them Job- Seekers : Convenience : Easy uploading of resume, single resume upload targets all companies. Inexpensive : Basic services are available free of cost Wide exposure : Since job portals are flanked by various prospective employers job portals provide better exposure to their resume. Resume related services : These are usually available for a premium

Cost Analysis
Web portals incur huge product and service development . These are usually unit-one costs. i.e. the cost of producing first unit is very high as compared to subsequent units of that kind. eg. The Products and Services that Naukri.com sells to clients run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It hires developers. Employees are also hired to handle marketing and other tasks. Staff cost for naukri.com increased from Rs. 76.28mn to Rs.933.88 mn from FY 07-08 to FY 08-09. Job portals like any other business spend a substantial amount on advertisement. The major chunk goes on online advertisements placed on yahoo, msn, google etc. These costs are incurred on per-click basis. Advertising and promotional costs of naurkri.com clocked Rs.433.20mn in FY 08-09. Costs are incurred on creating and maintaining of networks. These include server costs, network cost,etc. As the hits of site increase the network costs also increased. Since more space and bandwidth will be requirements increase. . Network cost for naukri.com increased from Rs. 60.53mn to Rs.90.41 mn from FY 07-08 to FY 08-09. Job portals also incur some cost on job fairs. Job fairs offer them a faster way to increase their portals visibility and popularity among its target clients.

Clients

Job Seekers

Job Portals
Placement Consultants Employers

Sources of Revenue

Usually 90% of the total revenue comes from corporate and only 10% comes from jobseekers. There are two main revenue generators : Corporate and job-seekers Sources of revenue from corporate clients Job portals provide space to employers to post the job requirements. This space usually varies with the kind of package the employer opts for. Basic package entails listings equivalent to those on newspaper classifieds. Premium package offering varies from providing microsite to placing their advertisements at the home page. Web portals also offer application screening facilities to employers at a premium. For eg. RESDEX Service by naukri.com allows client firm to trawl through resumes for a right match. It accounts for 40 % for its revenue. Sources of revenue from job-seekers Job portals provide a wide array of services like resume development services, response booster services, resume highlight service, cover letter facilities at a premium to the jobseekers. Resume development service is again customized according to seeker need and is charged accordingly. For example : Freshers resume, Mid-career resume, Sr.level reume, Premium Resume. Response booster service tweaks the visibility of the resume in accordance to the package opted for. A better package increases the chances of getting an interview call.eg. In-ex-ta of monster.com Resume highlight helps to attract more attention of employers by differentiating the resume from other job seekers resume. Monster.com came out with a revolutionary video resume development service after timesjobs voice resume service. This service boosts the appeal of the resume manifolds. Some job portals like timesjobs.com also offer career counselling services. Other initiatives taken to boost revenue : Promotional tie-up : Job portals land into a tie-up. Eg. Naukri benefited from the free space given by the newspapers. The quid pro quo was that it lists their advertisements free on its site. Barter Deals : eg. Naukri did mailers for HR managers for their HR events based on the database of the HR managers it has built up. In return, the firm for which the mailer was done would sponsor naukri.com at the event

Future & Already There

These sites still have a lot of areas to evolve upon. First they can go for various vernacular websites. This can help them grow in markets where English is not the first preferred language. The whole system of recruiting can go online through the usage of video conferencing, thus reducing the logistic and commuting costs of both the employer and job-seeker.

With virtual world intruding fast into our lives , since its advent, it beckons a new era for employment portals as they would transcend from a prosaic portal to a virtual employment office which will cater to all company recruitment needs : from inviting applications to interviewing and of hiring right candidates. Die has already been cast.

References
http://siteanalytics.compete.com http://wikipedia.org http://www.naukri.com http://www.monsterindia.com http://www.timesjobs.com http://freshersworld.com http://standoutjobs.com http://www.banknetjobs.com http://hubpages.com/hub/Online-Job-Portal-Helping-Job-Seekers