CAREERS MEDIA: Online recruiters lure job hunters with interactivity

Online recruitment websites are causing a stir in the offline recruitment industry as job seekers realise the huge pool of resources the Internet offers and traditional agencies take their services to the Web. One of Shanghai's largest recruitment agencies, China Human Resources Market (Shanghai), recently launched an online recruitment service in China and is to open an office in Hong Kong by the middle of this year. The company's broadband site, www.hrm.sh.cn, allows users to post personal video and audio files, which can be viewed on the 'Net. It also enables job seekers to watch video clips about companies prior to applying for employment. The site has already attracted some 2,000 recruiters and job hunters locally and internationally. According to China Human Resources Market IT manager, Jay Weir, the site offers job opportunities in China as well as in overseas markets. Other Internet recruiters have also included interactive features to attract employers and job seekers. According to Hong Kong-based researcher iamasia, the most visited job site in Hong Kong, in terms of Internet users, was jobsdb.com, with 96,000 home visitors in December last year (5.2 per cent reach). To stay on top, the website recently launched an online personality profiling service with international human resources services company Drake International. While the service is innovative, it is also costly. Employers are to be charged anything from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. The cost will depend on the amount of personality profiling results required on the job applicant. Meanwhile, the traditional hunt by many for a change of career at the start of the new year and the continuous rounds of sackings in the dotcom sector resulted in a surge in traffic to online recruitment agencies, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The researcher found Australian online recruitment sites came into their own during January, suggesting the increased acceptance of the Web as a tool to conduct job searches and canvass career options, the researcher said. Australian households during January revealed the five most popular job sites attracted an aggregated unique audience of more than 400,000 Australian users - the highest on record and almost 50 per cent up on the previous month. In Australia alone, spending on online recruitment advertising totalled Adollars 14.7 million (about USdollars 7.49 million) last year. That figure was expected to grow to Adollars 329.3 million in 2004. The figure included job listings, banners, buttons and other types of ads such as corporate profiles and microsites purchased by recruiters to attract attention to their recruiting campaigns. In China, the most-visited job site was 51job.com, with 281,000 home visitors in December (3.5 per cent reach), according to reports by iamasia. 104.com.tw led Taiwanese job sites with 787,000 home visitors in December (16.5 per cent reach). Iamasia director of marketing and communications, Steve Yap, said the figures indicated there was room for only one major "category killer" in the job-site market. He added, "It would appear that Internet users in Taiwan are much more likely than those in Hong Kong or PRC to look for jobs, or to hire, online."

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