Sunday 6 May 2007

Mirror mirror on the wall - who is the No.1est of them all


I wrote a couple of hundred words about nothing and nine people commented and encouraged me to continue blogging. Thanks guys.

Ah. The burden of expectations.

So here is my second post.

Over the last two weeks several friends have asked me why bragging rights are important as to who is India’s No. 1 Job Site.

The truth is that users of job sites (whether job seekers or recruiters) already know which job site is No. 1 for them. A recruiter knows how many people he hired from where and at what cost and time per hire. A job seeker knows how many relevant jobs he found when he did a search on which job site. Similarly he knows how many interview calls he (or his friends) got by putting up his resume at which job site.

Response is measurable. Evaluation is easy. And no claims by any job site can beat what the user believes from word of mouth and personal experience. So the user knows the truth. You can't make it using smoke and mirrors.

Hence our reluctance to spend serious money in claiming we are No. 1. We spend money on brand building advertising on television and on immediate response advertising on the Internet.

For us our No. 1 claim is something we put into most of our communication along with our logo. For the simple reason, that it is the truth.

But it has not been the central theme of any of our paid communication recently – because if it is the truth the user knows it already. If this is not the truth that he has experienced, then no amount of saying so will convince him otherwise.

(Emails we send to our users and what we say to the media don’t fall into the category of paid communication)

But a more important issue is how No. 1 should be measured.

Of course aggregation is important – of jobs, resume’s, recruiters, job seekers and applications. However mere aggregation is Job Site 1.0

Job Site 2.0 is way beyond that. While some of our efforts go into defending and possibly increasing our leadership on aggregation, over the last two years a greater part of our efforts have gone into addressing issues that we believe will take us to what Job Site 2.0 will be about.

When you create a large job site with plenty of aggregation you may have solved one problem for the user but you have also created a whole set of new ones. What do we do with applicant spam, what do we do with recruiter spam, how do I find that one resume I need out of the jungle of millions of resume's in the database, how do I find the three jobs that are relevant for me, what do we do with the fake resume problem and so on.


The next frontier lies in the areas of improving the user experience through better UI, better use of analytics, better and faster search, better assessment of intent of user, better search result ranking algorithms, better matching of intents of the job seeker and the recruiter, compatibility assessment, solving the employee reference check problem, incorporating Web 2.0 features into our offering and also taking the site beyond the Internet and onto the mobile.


And that's what we are working on these days. To lead the market to Job Site 2.0, where we will go beyond mere aggregation to create value for users, and thereby consolidate our leadership.


Aside


Within our company after the Timesjobs, “Everyone’s quitting naukri” campaign broke there was some concern for a couple of days. However soon enough both Marketing and Sales people were smiling.


The Marketing guys were happy because our daily new resume registration was up by twenty percent (even though we were off television) without any change in the marketing inputs that we were providing.


The Sales guys were delighted that by putting forward the claim that they were No. 1 because they were bigger than Naukri, Times was effectively saying that Monster is at best No. 3.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sanjeev,
Nice to see your second post and more so with what you have written. FIrstly, there is no doubting that Naukri is no.1 and that too miles ahead of the second best.
What is heartening to read is that you have long started putting efforts in jobsite 2.o. Currently the best candidate for making something like jobster.com is Naukri.com. I would love to see that. A highly socialized and interactive job search. I have bookmarked your blog and looking forward for many more informative posts...

Kapil Ohri said...

No matter who is number one, the one who actually fulfills it's brand promise of providing jobs is the real number one. It should be who has helped how many to get the job. Numbers do matter, but satisfaction is equally important. There is lot of spam happening around from all Indian based job sites, but the point has to be to help a person to get the job, he wants and not just any other job. Even users has to be responsible enough to provide accurate and more precise data, so that recruiters can approach right candidates.

I like the idea of Jobsite 2.0, it should make the job search process as interactive as much possible, so that the communication between a job seeker and a recruiter becomes transparent and instant. This will help the job seeker to get a right job. I believe this is going to be the real challenge and the one who will provide such platform will emerge as number one for both job seeker and recruiter.

Kapil Ohri

Unknown said...

Sanjeev

good to read your blog. I am building two niche portals. One for global securities services industry, launched recently www.gcronweb.com and other one is in pipe line for indian banking, Financial services and insurance www.bfsiindia.com

I always look at your efforts as role model!

Nidhi

Anonymous said...

Sanjeev,

Nice to see 2nd post from U.

Looks like Times has done free advertising for you :)

Direction of the next version looks promising.

Anonymous said...

As per me Naukri.com is still the undisputed leader in its field.

Incorporating web 2.0 tech will really help !!

VK said...

Thanks to ur team ,I got my second job thru naukri after a campus placement and working with the first employer for couple of yrs.....and am happy with it!

I guess healthy competition is good and in the end leaves the consumers smiling!Its the value that one brings on board that helps in differentiation.

So as long as one innovates I guess one need not fear.

Rajesh Barnwal said...

Hi Sanjeev,
Delighted to know that the great league of Ajit Balakrishnan, Hari Nair, Deap Ubhi etc are getting strengthened.
Yes, we need more and more CEOs from the industry blogging about...
Btw, was just wondering whether you have started blogging just for the sake of it or is their a definite purpose?
I am unable to get any clue in this regard from your first post and the second post merely looks like a part of Naukri's PR exercise?
While talking about Naukri, I am really looking forward to read your take on the repeated rumour that Info Edge is working on a Linked-in kind of project that could help companies to hire senior level executives.
Over to you...
Thanks,
Rajesh

Anonymous said...

Hi Sanjeev,

Good one! Job 2.0 needs to be more of social interaction arround the organization/companies and not one-to-one. I'm sure you would work it thru.


But wud love to see a campaign like...

'Times are changing...'

/or/

'Not able to keep up with Times..?'

Anonymous said...

a lot has been told and written about naukri, however would lie to read more, know more about the direction in which your other 2 proeprties are headed. the crowded matrimonial search and the home search. also is it true that you guys are starting off a social network?? Way too crowded a place

Anonymous said...

the question(or the answers rather) would always linger as to who is numero uno, but what matters is who is changing the trends in the industry. Which job sites are coming up with innovative, out-of-the-box( and the synonyms of it) products/services. movement of this from internet to new medium of communication( mobile/interactive tv) is inevitable, and this is really where the new market leader would emerge from. with the govt. taking heavy initiatives towards giving easier and wide access to internet and the mobile market still surging in India, the job sites have a long way to go and the race is still on. Naukri has come a long way and the road ahead looks exciting.

Anonymous said...

Hi Sanjeev,

This looks like a PR article for Naukri.The tone is defensive and it seems you are trying to prove a point. I guess you should let the market do the talking on whcih is India's no 1 job site.

for me the No 1 job site will be the one which will provide me the job that I desire , in the industry I desire at the salary I desire. My personal experience with Naukri has been "Pathetic" with my inbox full of spam and me getting all irrelevant job calls from unimportant people.I will never use Naukri again.

Anyways the issue at hand is not that, I would say that rather than doing your own PR, let the market and the users say whcih is the no 1 Job site.If you are so confident of the same then I am sure Naukri will merge as a winner.

Puneet Goyal said...

i'll probably wait for the next post before leaving a relevant comment, as this post was more about proving naukri is #1...no issues with that, i pretty well know what times group is capable of, and never once felt that they are #1, no matter what their communication says...unless there is an industry standard of measuring the accuracy of claims, we will continue seeing this..the shaadi.com and BM.com standoff being a case in point as well...

Unknown said...

if I may, just some thought to share:

* Instead of eating up each-other customer base, Iam sure you can define ways & means to attract many new users / sectors / options for engineering,MBA,CA college students projects (temp. job, internship), .

* Community based feature (like Linked )

* you have mutilple portal, may be you can consider single sign-on (subject to your business model)

needless to say, you will ignore those which does not suit your business model/interest.

i hope iam making some sense to you
/Yuva

Anonymous said...

I think any company which has to remind clients / prospective clients that it is no. 1 is definitely not.

Which is one thing I noticed when I did the matrimonial site shoot-out.

Almost each site is screaming that they are the best.

You can read it here:
http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=671

Nice to see you blogging Sanjeev...about time Corporate india takes blogging seriously.

Anonymous said...

Forgot to mention that we blogged about the Naukri YouTube video viral earlier today.

http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=704

Great work on that!

Cheers!

Anil said...

Its very sad that times jobs can promote advertisement of such kind, i think times jobs is desperate to find a place in the market. They should involve in healthy competition and should refrain from such low level and self degrading tactics.

Anil said...

Its very sad that times jobs can go ahead with a poor advertisement. I think times jobs is desperate to find a place in the market. They should involve in healthy competition and should refrain from such low level and self degrading tactics.

Anil Vanam

Mano Kurien said...

I like the open policy of naukri ..For example : u dont have to register to apply to a job.. both recruiter and candidate gets a higher degree of control as compared to other job sites ...

However I am not too happy with the way the subscription is sold ..its not a good experience when u need to haggle with sales like in a subzi mandi..

I know its the same with other sites as well ... but that should not stop u from standardizing ur sales process

Jose Felix said...

Hi Sanjeev,
Great to see you on Blog scene!!
Personally , i have this habit of refusing to listen to predictable gyans and you are one of the two leaders from whom i had absolutely "zero" refusal level. You've always tickled my grey matter in every discussion we had. It'll be great if you share some of your knowledge here ( not just on the online recruitment Industry ). Time passed by;objectives have changed.But still you are my role model :)

About Naukri Vs Timesjobs battle , it benefited everyone except times :)

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Smiling Dolphin said...

Hi Sanjeev, welcome to the blogosphere. I think I have enjoyed reading all the comments as much as reading your posts. Do write about things other than naukri too, so we can all learn more about you and the qualities that have taken you to where you have reached. Personally, I liked your second post very much. Will visit you often, Lynn (Lintas)

Unknown said...

Sanjeev,
As you had mentioned, people knows who is No1 in the job site field, undoubtedly over a period of time the work speaks for itself.
In this regard, I would appreciate if Naukri can do this small changes in the posting of the candidates,
a) candidates who wants the mobile nos not to be shown, can do that but they need to ensure that Naukri has their original No, as recruiting companies pay huge fees to source resumes from the Database, some of them are outdated mobile nos or wrong nos or improper nos then it cause lot of hardship.
Here I want NAUKRI to be very strict is that you need to verify the nos before it is uploaded and the candidate cannot tamper the same, unless he writes to give his changes no.
This will ensure that genuine people use the naukri portal and at the same time you are ensuring that the candidate's don't upload for speculating their marketable strength's the candidate need to fill in their parents or next kith and kin mobile or land line nos, which will be a confidential with the Naukri team, this can be relieved with the permission of the candidate to a prospective Company.
b)flexibility in entering the skills that a recruiter wants, say an open space to fill in the skill by the recruiter.
c) ensuring all unwarranted CV's don't land up for the jobs posted on the portal.
d) you can create a niche segment for prospective candidate to ensure that their profile are seen only to those companies he would like to be seen, here you can charge a small premium say Rs500 or Rs1000, this can be refunded once the client selects the profile within 15days time of the candidate uploading, this can be collected from the client by adding your service charges to the amount.
Trust this above suggestion has value and your able to think in those lines and see if it can be implanted.

Anonymous said...

Hi

I have few more comments.

I'm using the site almost after 3 years...but i dont c any major change or improvement in the user experience.

There is no provision to track what is the status of my application? whether its viewed by the other party? shortlisted? how many times it was viewed etc? Whereas these features were available with Jobstreet.com 3 years ago.

I feel you should have a separate team to track the best practices / best facilities provided by other portals and upgrade naukri.com also on a continuous basis. [I see ur jeevansathi.com site is more eye catchy than naukri.com... why is that? ]

Talking about jobsite 2.0 and all..looks catchy and sexy...but what is more important is to understand what users want and give them still better "user experience".... every time they revisit to your site.

Anonymous said...

Hi more blogs in the below link...


http://www.audiencematters.com/newsdetails.asp

Anonymous said...

I think people who are already signed for a portal (or using a product) and using it, they know if that is working out good or not.

Portals(or any other product) Need to shout loud about ranking for (1) to convert potential candidate into user (2) for stakeholders to tell that you are doing great.

Anonymous said...

Good post.