KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 — After 15 years in Malaysia, jobsDB has signalled its intention to take on the giant of the online recruitment space and stake a claim in the local market, with a new country manager, a new brand and with its workforce expected to double by the end of the year.
In terms of job portals in Malaysia, “it used to be you had that you had that Goliath, and then you had the rest,” says jobsDB group chief executive officer Adrian Chng, in reference to JobStreet.com.
“In the last four months, you still have that Goliath; but now you also have David, and then all the rest. There was no David before – we’ve just jumped to be head and shoulders above the rest. So I think now, it’s clear for us that our target is Goliath.
“If anyone can beat Goliath; it’s us. I mean, we’re big mean and nasty in Asia – we have the ability to invest in R&D, we have the way to do sales and marketing,” he adds, chuffed with his company’s plans. “We know, frankly, how to attack – because in many markets, we are that Goliath.”
The company is one of the dotcom old-timers, having been set up in 1998. Part of jobsDB’s renewed sense of energy and ambition comes from SEEK Asia, a subsidiary of Australian Stock Exchange-listed jobs portal SEEK Ltd, exercising an option to take over 100per cent of jobsDB earlier this year.
SEEK Asia had first acquired a 40 per cent stake in jobsDB in 2010, increasing it by stages over the following years. With the final acquisition of the remaining 20 per cent, valued at HK$640 million (RM263 million), SEEK itself now owns 68.96 per cent of the jobs portal.
In September 2008, SEEK had also acquired a 10 per cent interst in JobStreet Corporation Bhd, and has since increased its investment in JobStreet.com to around 22 per cent.
Taking on JobStreet.com would be no easy matter. The company, founded in 1997 and which listed in 2004, recently passed RM1 billion in market capitalisation and reported 2012 revenue that was just under RM161 million, making it the most successful Internet company in South-East Asia.
Chng is well aware of that, and makes no claim that jobsDB can overtake the market leader any time soon. Its main target now is to grow that No 2 position and close the gap.
“Am I happy to be No 2? No,” he admits, but adds that it would be hard to put a timeframe for it to knock JobStreet.com off its roost.
“In our business, however, we’ve seen rapid changes happen in consumer or user behaviour; we’ve seen rapid changes in technology and economic environments; and we have a long-term focus with a three-to-five-year plan,” he says.
Malaysia under-represented
The company has a presence in seven markets: Mainland China, Hong Kong (where it is headquartered), Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.
But why the renewed drive in Malaysia?
“We looked at our portfolio and realised that Malaysia was under-represented in terms of market position and reputation,” Chng acknowledges, saying he would be coming down from Hong Kong at least once a month to look into the market here.
There are other very positive signs from Malaysia as a market too.
“Malaysians are big users of the Internet and are very technology-savvy compared with other regions, and as an online business, that’s a big opportunity for us,” Chng says, noting that while Indonesia is a huge market, in terms of Internet access and tech-savvy, Malaysia is ahead.
“The second reason is that the economy is still growing, and more growth means more employment, and more employment means more people need to advertise and look for jobs,” he says, pointing out that the Government’s aim to transform the nation into a high-income economy with its Economic Transformation Programme or ETP means that average wages would also go up.
“This is a positive sign for labour and our type of business,” he adds. “So there are a number of positive macro-economic factors that say you want to be in Malaysia, rather than not.”
Chng says that jobsDB has invested heavily in the Malaysian market. Although he does not put a dollar value to it, he notes the company has finally appointed a country manager; and has boosted the team here from about 20 staff last year to 36 currently – with a few more hires to go before the end of the year to take it to double the headcount from 2012.
“We’ve also invested in a rebranding exercise,” he says, and stretching his arms to take in the company’s new office in Kuala Lumpur, adds: “This is all new!”
The investment has shown pretty good returns, he claims, saying that since May, jobsDB’s market share – the company’s internal estimates according to the number of jobs postings – has jumped from 6 per cent to 20 per cent, while applications have gone up 110 per cent.
“We’re definitely Malaysia’s fastest-growing jobs portal,” he says. “The number of jobseekers ([on its portal] has increased 40 per cent year on year.”
According to jobsDB Malaysia general manager Sheldon Fernandez (picture), the company has grown its number of registered jobseekers since he came on board earlier this year from 800,000 to 850,000.
“I think we’ve grown rapidly, but I do expect the growth rate to slow down eventually; and for us, it would be to then maintain that consistency,” says Fernandez, adding that he expects the current pace can be maintained until at least next January.
“These may be non-financial measurements but they are high-level metrics – no measure is perfect, but they’re all telling the same sort of story: That of rapid growth,” Chng adds.
According to Alexa's rating of the top 500 sites in Malaysia, JobStreet.com is the 37th most popular, making it the most popular jobs portal too. jobsDB is at No 339 and Mystarjob is at No 1,472. ‘Kind of’ up there also is Freelancer at No 289, but it is a global marketplace for independent service providers and freelancers to outsource their work, not a ‘pure’ jobs portal.
Changing consumer behaviour, changing tech
Changing consumer behaviours and technology, especially on the mobile front, would be other weapons in jobsDB’s arsenal in closing the gap on JobStreet.com.
This is another why Malaysia, with its high mobile penetration rates, is an important market for jobsDB.
“Mobile penetration in Malaysia is right up there with Singapore and Hong Kong, where approximately 40 per cent to 45 per cent of visits to our sites are coming from some sort of mobile device, and Malaysia is not far behind at 30 per cent to 35 per cent and is growing quickly,” says Chng.
He says that mobile is also growing rapidly in Thailand and Indonesia, but starting from a smaller base of 15 per cent to 20 per cent.
The company indeed expects access from mobile devices to its sites would be more than 50 per cent in two years.
“Malaysia is right up there in terms of the sophistication of users and jobseeker behaviour, and this means the market is growing and people are moving off their desktops,” says Chng. “And that’s good for us because we’ve invested a lot in mobile.
“In two years, when most people are coming from mobile devices, if you’re not really helping people search, apply and find jobs via mobile, then you’re really not creating value for jobseekers and employers,” he adds.
Which is why the company is dead serious about mobile. jobsDB has development teams dedicated to its various ‘product streams’ – such as candidate relationship management, search and matching and what Chng light-heartedly describes as “all that big data algorithm stuff.”
“What we’ve done is create a mobile stream that looks at every single aspect of our operations from a mobile perspective. It has its own group of people,” he says.
“And it’s not only the technology, which is important, but also about educating our users and employers on what this all means on how people search and apply for jobs,” he adds.
When asked to elaborate on how changing consumer behaviour affects jobs portals, Chng says that about seven to 10 years ago, people used to search for jobs from their desktop for about 12 minutes at lunchtime, from their office. Now however, with mobile surfing, the biggest ‘chunk’ comes during the transit to and from work.
There is also a higher incidence of ‘passive exploration.’ “These are people who are happy at their job and are not actively seeking new ones, but if something better comes up, they’d apply,” Chng says. “These passive candidates are accessing from the mobile a lot, and you’ve probably only got 10-20 seconds to capture their attention.”
Desktop still has its place, he notes. People who want to do serious, in-depth research on the company and the job will do it from the desktop.
“So we have created an integrated experience where if someone is exploring on the mobile, and something looks good, they can quickly save it; then they go home and open it up on the desktop and it’s there, and they can do their research,” Chng says.
“Things like that, for the mobile user, is what we think about – things like how to apply, and we make it easy for them,” he adds.
As for employers, Chng says it goes beyond just putting jobs ads on the mobile. jobsDB spends a lot of time educating employers, especially on its key accounts, on how to take ‘navigate’ the mobile Internet too.
“People write crap job descriptions, with long descriptions and all, and that doesn’t work on the mobile,” he says. “You’ve got to start using [bullet] points; you’ve got to start breaking down the highlights.”
The weekends are no longer the best time to post job ads either. “Our biggest traffic is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, going to and from work, so if you want to attract a bigger audience, you come out on those days,” he adds. “Sure, the ad may be up for 45 days, but you want to catch them then.”
This also where jobsDB hopes to beat its rival, saying that its major shareholder SEEK has a long-term commitment to research and development investments, especially since it can leverage off its economies of scale.
“For example, for me to do a mobile app, I’m doing it regardless of what’s happening in Malaysia – it’s coming, it’s done, and should be released in the next four to five weeks,” says Chng.
“We already have a mobile app, but we’re releasing a brand-new app for the iOS and Android platforms,” he adds. “Malaysia will get that – it’s no extra money for me to do it.
“Local players can’t do that; and because our business changes so rapidly, the only player who can invest to win, is us,” he claims.
Challenges and the ‘touchy-feely’ edge
When asked what he sees as jobsDB’s main challenge, Chng however acknowledges it’s the competition, but notes there are others.
“The challenge for our business in any country is to hire the right people who fit in with the jobsDB values and culture, who really buy in and drink our Kool-Aid and who really believe in what we do.
“We’re quite open about what we want to do, and we step back and ask what the purpose is of us as a company: Why are we here? It’s to help improve lives by helping people find the right job. Not any job, but the right job.
“And we’re trying to help countries and their economies grow by helping companies find the right talent,” he adds. “Now, this may sound pretty high-level, touchy-feely, but it actually goes into what we do.”
This is why, he says, the company doesn’t do stuff like boosting the number of visits via artificial means. It wants a higher job ads share, but doesn’t “want crap jobs,” says Chng.
“We want to understand jobseekers’ needs. It’s very easy in any business to make the first sale – you can always find somebody who’s willing to give it a shot – but it requires the second sale, and repeat and growing business, to be sustainable.
“So that purpose we talked about – that’s the key to our sustainability. It’s the same in Malaysia – yeah, we’re growing fast, but we want to be sustainable. And if we’re creating that value – which is helping job-seekers and employers match, through the use of technology, through our sales and marketing and our platform, then we will survive anything, because we’re providing that value.
“That’s drinking a lot of juice, but we want our people to be seriously thinking about it. Even if you’re in sales, and you have your targets, you’ve got to be thinking about how to help the jobsDB mission.
“We stand for something, and we use technology to drive this outcome. And that has been a large cultural shift for us in the last two years,” he says.
The company believes it can also offer an edge to Malaysia’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups, which is why it is supporting Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd’s BizSmart Academy, an online platform aimed at the newer generation of SMEs.
“This is right down our alley,” says Chng. “The new generation of SMEs are technology savvy. The Internet is a great disrupter, and while big companies have also benefited from this technology, the biggest beneficiaries of this disruption have been SMEs.”
SMEs, especially the smaller ones, used to have to hire by word-of-mouth or by putting up a notice on their window, which is not the best way to get good results. But now they can go to a portal at jobsDB and for RM99 for a post, get to advertise their vacancies.
“They can write, they can tell their stories and have effectively unlimited space to do so, and then access hundreds of thousands of pageviews almost instantaneously,” says Chng.
“That helps them so much to get the right person. That’s the Internet as a disrupter: We’re making the market transparent, we’re reducing the transaction cost, and the SME is the biggest beneficiary of that,” he adds. “As an online business, we just love the idea of doing this.”
Alliance Bank also launched an SME Innovation Challenge, an American Idol-like contest for SMEs, which recently announced 13 finalists from 200 entries.
Chng is also a judge on the competition, joining others such as SP Setia Bhd chief executive officer and president Liew Kee Sin; Leaderonomics chief executive Roshan Thiran; Microsoft Malaysia’s Azizah Ali; BFM 89.9 founder and managing director Malek Ali; SMI Association Malaysia national president Teh Kee Sin and Alliance Bank executive vice-president Steve Miller.
“It’s very positive for me to be on the judging panel with … some of the best entrepreneurs in Malaysia,” says Chng.
“Two of the biggest reasons why SMEs struggle to grow is access to financial capital, clearly, and lack of human capital – how do they find it? Where do they get it from? And that’s where we can help,” he says.
He points out that SME owners generally hold down a multitude of roles within their companies – they’re the sales director, the human resources manager, the managing director and the operations manager, and “sometimes mum-and-dad too.”
SME owners generally only have time to look into hiring at odd hours, at which time it may be too late to call someone to put in a job ad in a newspaper or magazine, but online jobs portals provide self-service portals allow them to do at any time they’re free to catch a breath.
And that’s why jobsDB is upping the ante in Malaysia – because it can make a difference and bring real value to the people and the companies here, claims its CEO.
“That’s part of the reason why I’m here,” says the Malaysian-born and Melbourne-bred Chng. “It’s important for me that, you know, that my relatives in Malaysia know whom I work for.”
“I don’t want to hear my aunties and all saying ‘Yeah, you know, my nephew works for JobStreet.com – that sort of just kills me,” he chuckles. — Digital News Asia
This article was first published here.
You May Also Like