Can Seek Ever Be Put Out Of A Job?

It’s time for the major publishers to get serious about challenging the market’s number one in online employment.

By most accounts, Seek has a significant market lead (in terms of eyeballs/unique browsers) over both MyCareer and CareerOne. In fact, the ratio is approximately 2:1 in favour of Seek against its nearest rival. No amount of outdoor advertising will close that gap.

So the call is - no more bus signage, no more cute one liners, no more editorial about job tips. Brand success (read: market share) depends on the value derived by job seekers from the search experience itself - and that does not necessarily have to mean finding the most comprehensive listings, or the right position everytime.

The argument is: develop a unique search experience, create word-of-mouth (WOM) testimonials, build a listings database which duplicates the number one site, then continue to innovate around search functionality and meta-data classification to pull away into first position. Easy.

But that positive grass roots momentum requires significant power to ramp up. In other words, to differentiate the service and stimulate WOM (including its electronic version) requires a radical re-think of the classifieds model, in particular, how listings are categorised (the meta-data used to support classifications) and how the results are displayed to searchers.

The fundamental issue for both News and Fairfax is to:

a) either accept the status quo, and reap the rewards commensurate with being a number 2 and 3 indefinitely;

b) accept that ranking third in a market of three is unsustainable, and fold-in the database with number two through a licensing model, or to close completely;

c) take the risk and radically re-define the whole concept of classifieds as an advertising medium.

What does “radically re-define” mean?

It means initially focusing on three key changes which alter the vanilla search templates common across all employment sites. It also means giving recruiters and employers more options to differentiate their employment advertisements using meta-data and streaming techniques.

These ‘rules’ are: visualisation, video and vector.

a) Visualisation

Employment ads should be colour coded to denote variables such as the preferred personality of candidates, the company’s culture, even the seniority or reporting lines associated with the position;

b)Video streaming

Recruiters should be given this option to run 30 or 60-sec streams on executive level positions. Overview of workplace, personnel and presented by the ‘boss’. Pre-roll ads could be the property of either the recruiter or publisher.

c) Vector

A subjective assessment of the business’s prospects, as well as the opportunities for career progression in the organisation.

Innovation in data management, including more comprehensive contextual and meta-data on each position, requires both publishers and recruiters to do more than simply slap up a job description, with their dubious descriptions and generic phrases. Instead, candidates now have visual queues on both the employer and the role itself, assisting to pre-qualify candidates even further as well as improving the depth of job data.

For too long the competitive employment space has been subjected to a volume game, where the database with the most employment opportunties swayed the active job seeker to make their site number one. With innovations such as visualisation, video and vectors, pllayers two and three have the opportunity to balance this numbers game with qualitative functions which give real value back to both the candidate and recruiter.

That’s how the race for number one can be won by number two in the medium-term.