The Hindu Business Line : Vying for the catch

Job portals, sensing a recovery in the job markets, are fishing furiously to hook jobs for their applicants, and in the process corner a larger slice of the recruitment pie.

ASHUTOSH swears by the job Web site that found him his new assignment as Senior Sales Manager in a leading auto components company in Delhi. Ditto for Manish Kalra, who works for Magnum Solutions, a company providing software solutions to garment producers.

An engineer-MBA, Ashutosh says it took him less than a month after posting his resume on the Web site to get the interview call. The new job materialised with a promotion and a reasonable salary hike.

The time cycle was even shorter for Manish, who got a response within three days of posting his resume on the Web site.

"I had returned from the UK after higher studies and was not sure how to go about looking for a job. Some of my friends suggested that I try out this Web site. They helped me prepare my resume and then posted it to their large panel of placement consultants. The result came in much faster than I had expected," he says.

While nobody knows for sure how many people like Ashutosh and Manish have found jobs on the Net, job portals have raised the pitch after sensing a recovery in the job markets. And, it does seem to reflect in their revenues as they talk of three-figure growth numbers.

Home-grown Naukri.com claims its revenues have more than doubled from Rs 10 crore in 2002-03 to Rs 22 crore in the recently concluded financial year. For the current year, revenues should pierce the Rs 45-crore mark, says Naukri.com Director (Sales and Marketing), Hitesh Oberoi.

Profits have also kept pace and the net cash surplus has climbed from Rs 80 lakh to Rs 3 crore between 2002-03 and 2003-04. For the current year, Oberoi says the profits should be in the region of Rs 8-9 crore.

Jobsahead.com, its rival that has recently been snapped up by Monster Inc, has equally impressive numbers to report. The portal reported Rs 5.6 crore sales in 2002-03, which went up to Rs 15.2 crore last year before it was lapped up by Monster for Rs 40 crore (about $8.8 million).

The Jobsahead.com Vice-Chairman, Alok Mittal, says his company's profits were Rs 1 crore in 2002-03 and Rs 3 crore last year. Monster does not disclose its India-specific figures.

So far so good, but the problem comes when these two large players are asked the obvious question. Who is the biggest?

If we were to paraphrase their common answer, it would read something like: "We are head and shoulders above our nearest rival. And we are not saying this. It is validated by reputed agencies, please go check for yourself."

Now, if that sounds incredulous, the basis of the claim will be even more confusing.

Oberoi of Naukri.com cites the Global Alexa independent traffic ranking service that monitors the Internet as the basis for his claim of the numero uno position. On his part, Mittal of Jobsahead.com says that according to the MediaMetrix survey of Web sites, the combined Monster-Jobsahead entity commands 62 per cent of the traffic, which is double that of "its nearest rival" (read Naukri.com).

Naukri.com claims it has over 10,500 clients and 64,000 live job listings and a 25 lakh-strong resume base. The Monster-Jobsahead combine claims an unduplicated database of 27 lakh resumes.

While both question the credibility of each other's claims, Naukri.com has even questioned the Monster-Jobsahead deal.

"What is surprising is why Jobsahead was sold for a mere Rs 40 crore when it started four years ago with an investment of Rs 25-30 crore. The buyout indicates a return of just above 4.5 per cent per annum and is thus an accurate indicator of the future (or the lack of it) of Jobsahead," according to a communication sent out by Naukri.com to its clients.

Mittal disagrees. "While I do not remember the exact investment that went into Jobsahead, I can tell you for sure that our investors are happy with the deal. Such deals do not happen if the company does not have any intrinsic strengths," Mittal says.

Timesjobs.com, promoted by the Bennett Coleman media group, is another claimant for the top slot. The Web site claims it has over 1,00,000 job postings and is backed by Ascent, the popular employment supplement of the Times of India.

It is easy to understand the reasons behind the slugfest.

These job portals get their revenues from job advertisements by recruiters, subscriptions by companies accessing their database and candidates seeking value-added services like using their expertise to prepare the perfect resume.

With the sustained growth in the job market, the business of job portals is obviously set to scale new heights. The players are making investment in advertising and growth, both organic and inorganic. That also explains Monster's move to buy out Jobsahead.com

"After many years, the recruitment market is booming in India. We thought it is a good time to acquire and grow our business," the Monster Asia President and Managing Director, Arun Tadanki, says.

At the end of the day, what should the users do?

While companies would have to take a call from the experience of working with individual job sites, for individual jobseekers, the choice is rather simple. It does not cost anything to post your resume, so go ahead and do it on all of them. After all, you never know which door may answer your call.

Keep knocking.

gaurav@thehindu.co.in

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