Take your job site and shove it

The advertisement of zhaopin.com at a subway exit in Beijing. Photo: CFP

By Sun Zhe

When Yin Xing wants to job hunt again, an online employment site is the last place he'd consider going.

The 27-year old IT engineer came to Beijing from Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province early this year to look for a new job. He went online for several months and said he sent about 20 resumes daily to various job sites, but the few calls he got were from salesmen, not potential employers.

"I don't think the companies posting on those sites are seriously recruiting," said Yin, who is still job-hunting. "I doubt that they protected my registration information very well and that's why I got those sales calls."

Ou Chaochao is another frustrated job site user. He said some of the jobs listed are exactly the same as ones he saw last year. "It's confusing," Ou said. "I think they're just posting them as advertisements because they are always there."

There are so many job seekers who share Yin and Ou's bad experiences that job sites were ranked last in a survey of user satisfaction of eight types of websites by Beijing-based iResearch Consulting. Online communities were rated No 1, followed by BBS, travel sites, search engines, e-mail service, online shopping and online payments.

The three giants

The first Chinese job site was founded in 1997, and now there are more than 2,000. But about 65 percent of the market is shared by three giants – 51job.com, chinahr.com and zhaopin. com, all founded before 1999.

The latest data by Analysys showed that 51job.com has 26.3 percent of the market and the share for chinahr. com and zhaopin.com is 22.4 and 15.3 percent respectively.

All the top three have benefited from large foreign investments in the past years and they have spent a lot of money on excessive advertising and marketing, said Jiang Lixin, an IT industry analyst with Beijing-based iResearch Consulting.

Zhaopin.com has collected 882 million yuan ($129 million) since 2000 and chinahr.com and 51job.com have both received 1.6 billion yuan ($234 million), either from venture capital or foreign investors.

According to data provided by CR-Nielsen, chinahr.com and zhaopin. com were ranked among China's top five companies for web advertising. Chinahr.com spent 300 million yuan ($43.9 million) and zhaopin.com doled out 270 million yuan ($39.5 million) on ads while 51job.com declined to release its advertising budged for 2008.

"The three giant sites are just like three boys who are playing war-games, spraying each other with guns loaded with venture capital or foreign investments," said Jiang.

According to the annual report released earlier this year by Australia-based job site Seek, which owns 56.2 percent of zhaopin.com, zhaopin.com suffered a deficit of 170 million yuan ($24.9 million) in 2008.

The annual report of the US-based Monster online job site and the parent company of chinahr.com, revealed that its Chinese subsidiary lost 175 million yuan ($25.6 million) in 2008.

Liu Hao, CEO of zhaopin.com, resigned in late August and his counterpart at china.com Zhang Jianguo resigned at even earlier time this year.

Among the top three, only 51job. com, the country's sole listed job site, saw a net profit of 77 million yuan ($11.3 million) in 2008.

Variety needed

"We (51job) have other businesses like training and labor outsourcing, which makes it more crisis-proof in the global recession," said 51job's public relations director surnamed Wang.

Most of the three sites' employees are marketing personnel, which, along with their enormous ad budgets, means that they attach great significance to expanding their market shares and pay much less attention to developing new products and services, said Jiang of iResearch.

"Even last year during the global recession, all three only created no more than two products to fight the downturn in the job-hunting market," said Jiang.

"It's true that some companies post recruitment ads but they don't really want to employ," said Li. "It's to make job seekers pay attention to their posts. They work like commercials and it is much cheaper than web advertising or TV commercials."

But little is done by the job sites to deal with the problem and because the three giants commonly compete with price wars, sometimes the phony recruiting ads are offered for free, said Li.

Revenues of the job sites totaled 1.1 billion yuan ($161 million), an increase of 13.6 percent from 970 million yuan ($142 million) of 2007, but much slower than the average growth rate of 50 percent from 2003 to 2007, according to iResearch.

The slash and burn price cutting tactics endanger the health of the entire job recruiting market, said Jiang. If the big three continue their "money burning" business mode, it would make it difficult for the average growth rate to stabilize at a healthy 20 percent for the next few years, he said.

New services needed

"When I got no reply after posting my resume, I needed to know who actually read it and why they didn't offer an interview," said Yin, the job-seeker, "but it seems nothing like that is offered by job sites. Actually I would pay for services like that, because it would be more helpful for my future job-hunting."

There are smaller job sites that are proving to be more helpful by offering options and services the big three do not.

One is a Shanghai-based job site yingjiesheng.com that was founded in 2005 by college students, and is now the No 4 job site in terms of visitor volume. It is popular with fresh graduates and compared to the 2,000 plus employees at each of the top three sites, it has only about 20.

Ou, the other job hunter who was disappointed with his search efforts with the big boys said he finally found a job as an assistant with a furniture company through yingjiesheng.com.

"The site offered something others did not," said Ou, "It collects job information from various channels such as university BBS and various government departments and offers it to graduates for free, which is of great help."

The site even offers cheap hotel booking services and travel guides for graduates being interviewed in a strange city.

Some other job sites, such as 800hr. com, the first and now No 1 industry-classified job site in China, is also making changes. It charges companies by the number of ads they post, rather than by the time length as is done by the three giants.

"When the company finds the people they want, we'll ask them to take down their post", said Tao Huiqiong, CEO of the site, "It makes it much easier and friendlier for job seekers."

Industry-classified job sites can also help employers get people they want more easily, said Jiang, the analyst.

Founded in 2004 and enjoying an average annual growth of 70 percent, the site is now China's No 4 job site by revenue, according to iResearch figures.

There are about 4.6 million employers in China, out of which 600,000 tend to post recruiting ads on job sites, according to iResearch. The percentage – 13 percent – is much lower than the 70 percent figure in many Western countries.

About 50 million job hunters used job sites in 2008, 31.6 percent up from 38 million of 2007, according to an iResearch report. iResearch expects that by 2012 the number will reach 71 million, or 60 to 70 percent of all the job seekers by that time.

Qiu Yunxi contributed to the story

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