Job sites click on happy prospects

Online job portals are creating campaigns that go beyond the usual functional benefits
MUMBAI: With the job market growing and becoming a lush picking ground for employees, brands like Monster.com, ClickJobs.com and Naukri.com are picking up new insights with which to target the consumer in advertising and to build brand differentiators.
Naukri.com’s campaign speaks to the employees disgruntled with their boss, while Monster looks at those stuck in the wrong job. And ClickJobs looks at the complacent guy, so happy with his job that he’s missing out on all those good options around.“Research shows that 80% of employees leave their jobs due to their bosses,” states Vasudha Misra, senior writer, FCB Ulka. “The idea of Naukri’s ad campaign was to encourage employees to look for something better beyond their current work.”
Clicking the right emotion Hitesh Oberoi, chief operating officer, Naukri.com adds, “Everybody has a boss, even the boss is working under someone, so the campaign strikes a chord with all levels of people, offering a universal appeal.” Three months post their campaign, traffic on the website saw a 50-60% increase.
Contrasting Naukri’s strategy, Monster.com took on another approach: doing a re-jig of their technological product to make it more ‘job-centric’, and thus from that was born their ad strategy. Dhruv Shenoy, vice president marketing Monster.com, states that their focus was the job seeker. “By installing the sharp-search engine on our site’s home-page we made it much easier for someone to find a specific job on Monster. From this was born the creative that Monster has the ‘sharp search’ ability to find the right job for you.”
In both Monster and Naukri, the message has to put across a very hard hitting insight: that people have options other then their current job and that they don’t have to be unhappy any more. “We should catch powerful insights like there are people unhappy with their work, but channel them in a humorous way so we can create high recall amongst the viewer,” states Misra.
While Monster and Naukri court those stuck in wrong jobs and unhappy with their bosses, ClickJobs.com’s more recent campaign takes a totally different approach. “The idea here is not that you’re in the wrong job, underpaid or hate your boss. It’s just that you’re so complacent in your current job, that you miss the world growing around you,” states Amit Lal, brand manager, ClickJobs.com.
People in smaller cities, and different markets are not ready to move jobs too easily since they are comfortable, though not necessarily fully satisfied, with what they have. ClickJobs wants to target that consumer and that segment of people with their Happy Kumar campaign, encouraging them to seek other opportunities that will help them grow. “Since the ad campaign was unveiled in late January, we have seen a 15% growth in our Mumbai databases alone, which shows a great interest in this sector,” states Lal.
You can move to something betterThe Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates that the payments made by employers who are listed on online job sites is looking to reach Rs. 240 crore in 2006-07, versus Rs 145 crore of 05-06. “This is a growing industry, with not just job sites, but travel and other websites coming up for the public to access,” states Lal. With the launch of their ad in April 2006, Shenoy of Monster says while pre-campaign they were getting 5,500 resumes a day or about a lakh and a half a month, by June they were seeing close to 4 lakh 54 thousand resumes being uploaded on their site.“Internet as a medium is a hot property for this market, where one just needs the right business model to best utilise its attributes,” states Shenoy.
Almost all sectors in the country are seeing massive growth, with the need for skilled labour and resources steadily increasing. Areas like BPOs, outsourcing and call centers see a huge attrition rate of almost 30-35%. These were sectors that initially provided portal Monster.com in early 2000-2001 with most of their primary business, adds Shenoy. Today, information on online job portals spans various sectors and businesses, and not only provides access to new opportunities, but also allows employers to see first-hand what skilled labor is out there.
Ad and promo campaigns, as Misra of FCB Ulka states, “are more about empowerment; it is now a fact that you can move onto something better, and that is what these campaigns are here to highlight.” Attrition rates may be high in a city like Bombay or Delhi, states Lal of ClickJobs, but with the Internet having universal reacsh, people from smaller cities and towns will have a chance to access bigger platforms and opportunities through cyber space.
In the future, Internet job sites will cut out the need for a consultant or middle man. Shenoy says, “Though initially it was the IT sector that utilised the e-recruitment systems the most, today all industries from manufacturing to international services and BPOs are using the Internet as the best place to find suitable employees.”
It is only the ad campaigns for each of these portals that will work to spread knowledge about their services, while attaching a differentiating brand image.


SOURCE : DNA MONEY


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