February 14, 1999
Big Stakes in Online Job Listings
By MATT RICHTEL
n online help-wanted service, Hotjobs.com, had revenue of $4 million in all of 1998. Two weeks ago, the company managed to spend fully half of that in just 30 seconds.
That $2 million, spent on a Super Bowl commercial, was the company's attempt to add its name to the list of better-known online employment sites. But the gamble says as much about the industry as it does about Hotjobs itself: Online recruiters are racing to become the Yahoo or Amazon.com of their field.
"The time for Internet recruiting is here and now," said Richard S. Johnson, chief executive and founder of Hotjobs. "This is our time to stand up and be counted."
The competitors are inspired by the high stakes. Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., says help-wanted advertising on the Internet will rise from $105 million, or 1.3 percent of the print share, last year to $1.7 billion, or 19.8 percent, by 2003.
The leader is Monster.com, which in 1994 became one of the first online recruiting agencies. But two other services, Career Mosaic and Career Path are close behind.
Thousands of other sites list jobs, too, including some devoted to specific careers. Web portals like Yahoo and content providers like C-Net are crowding into the business.
Newspaper classifieds provide the model, but with many added twists. On the Internet, employers generally pay the sites to list their openings, which candidates can search free. Job seekers can also post resumes for potential employers to peruse.
Among the advantages of Internet recruiting is global scope (though applicants can search by city or region). Job and resume listings can be updated almost instantaneously.
Job seekers say the Internet also gives them the best picture of the market for their skills. Steve Garcia, 37, of Medina, Ohio, decided last October to scan Monster.com, Headhunter.net and Salesseek.com. He plugged in his desired income, his skills and his preferred job locations.
He soon zeroed in on a job posted at Monster.com. Within two weeks, he came to terms with a real estate company called Real Select, where he now is a district sales manager.
Although online sites would not give success rates for placing job seekers, they point to their huge resume files as evidence of their popularity. And no longer are most of the job openings and candidates in high-technology areas. The larger sites offer jobs ranging from corporate management to entry-level positions at McDonald's.
Monster.com said that three years ago, 97 percent of its listings were in technology, compared with about half today. Its users are now split evenly between men and women, typically in their mid-30s and in mid-career, but fairly new to the Internet. "We're seeing newbie users come on like never before," said Jeff Taylor, chief executive of Monster.com.
Newspaper companies do not plan to concede defeat. Career Path is backed by eight of them, including the New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co., Knight-Ridder and Hearst. It gathers 300,000 job listings, primarily from its 83 member newspapers, and solicits online-only ads as well.
Career Path, in Los Angeles, has begun its own marketing campaign, led by full-page newspaper advertisements on Super Bowl Sunday and the following Monday. Stephen Ste. Marie, the company's chief executive, said it would spend $15 to $20 million in marketing this year, up from almost nothing during 1998. "This really is a watershed year," he said. "The stakes have gotten pretty high, pretty quickly."
Monster.com, of Maynard, Mass., owned by the recruiting agency TMP Worldwide, lists 175,000 jobs. Taylor said that in the two weeks after its own Super Bowl ad, the company received as many as 2,900 job searches a minute, up from a previous peak of 800.
He said that more than 20 newspapers have rejected print ads for Monster.com because it is competing with their help-wanted business. But even with the help of their Career Path site, Taylor said, the newspapers represent the past and his company the future. "This is not a re-purposed help-wanted ad being moved from place to place in the newspaper system," he said of Monster.com. "This is a new way to do business."
The sense of urgency among the sites is well-founded. Internet Profiles, a market research firm in Redwood City, Calif., reported that a 75 percent increase in traffic from 1997 to 1998 at the online help-wanted sites went mostly to the leaders.
A fear of being left behind motivated Hotjobs to place its Super Bowl ad, Johnson said. After the game, the site -- which lists about 17,000 jobs -- was so overwhelmed that many visitors were unable to enter it.
As a result, Johnson deemed the ad expense only a qualified success. "We disappointed a lot of people," he said. "But the traffic isn't tapering off." |
