Over the last few days we’ve received news that two national job boards, JobsJobsJobs.com.au (JJJ) and JobX.com.au, are to merge.  It was only a matter of time before these guys got into financial strife, because they are competing directly with the big boys – SEEK, MyCareer and CareerOne – and, in my view, this country just ain’t big enough to support more than three big, generalist national jobs boards.

It might not even be big enough to support three – but the deep pockets of Fairfax and News Corporation respectively have guaranteed the survival of MyCareer and CareerOne up until now.  With the very public problems besetting Fairfax at the moment, who’s to say that the landscape won’t change further over the next twelve months.  We will all watch on with interest as marketing budgets dry up and advertisers tighten their purse strings further.  At the very least, I am sure we will see further job cuts in the advertising sales departments of the big media companies.

After witnessing the failed Careersites start-up several years back and the tens of thousands of dollars that they poured into their initial marketing strategy, I suspected that similar problems would be experienced at JJJ at some stage.  I recall seeing the HUUUGE advertisements that JJJ ran on the MCG scoreboard several years back as I drank Carlton Draught out of a plastic cup – I remember thinking that they would want to be peddling something different to spend so much money on their marketing effort.

But after checking out the site, the reality is that they’re not really peddling anything different – they will argue otherwise, but on close inspection, they are nothing more than a SEEK (albeit a lot smaller) in different clothing.  There’s nothing that JJJ can provide that SEEK can’t.  Nobody really gives a hoot about the sleeker functionality of JJJ – SEEK’s where the jobs are, so that’s where the job seekers go.  JJJ cannot hope to compete head-to-head with SEEK, the Fairfax family and Rupert Murdoch.  If they choose to continue their existing strategy of ‘taking it up to the big boys’, then the new venture will ultimately fail.  Investors beware.

The obvious question then is: why would we (CapitalJobs.com.au) attempt to run a jobs board at all if SEEK are so dominant?  Our website functionality is no better than SEEK’s,  so aren’t we destined for the same fate?  I don’t believe so.  The reason is: we’re different (that sounds a little trite, but we are!).  And so are many of the small, ‘niche’ job boards that are proliferating across Australia.

That’s not to say that all of these niche boards will prosper, because they won’t – just this week we have seen youth employment site Hippo.com.au go into administration.   But those that are able to provide a differentiated service will slowly whittle away at market share of the majors, as well as forge new markets that the majors don’t touch.  These businesses will likely come out the other end of this economic downturn stronger and better.  That’s what I am hoping, anyway…

Here are some reasons why we’re different:

- We’re a small business with limited overheads, no employees and few shareholders – our business is virtually risk-free and we are able to ride out the storm without being chased by creditors, bitter shareholders or angry venture capitalists.

- We can afford to charge less than the majors to advertise on our website, which makes our value proposition more inviting to small businesses in particular.

- We focus on a specific geographic area, our website content and audience is targeted, and we’re not trying to be everything to all people – critically this allows us to focus our marketing efforts, rather than trying to spread the word to a national audience.

- We provide advice, blog articles and personalised support that is tailored for Canberrans – having worked in the military, in the recruitment industry, in the Commonwealth public service and in the private sector in Canberra, our principals know the market and can provide specifically for that market.

- Whilst we love working with recruitment companies and large organisations, our target market also includes small businesses and microbusinesses that might only advertise a vacancy once a year – this is a level of granularity that the big job boards are not interested in because expending energy and money at this level does not provide economies of scale.

- Whilst the quantity of job applications made via our service cannot match the numbers delivered by major job boards, the quality is normally better because of our ‘niche’ audience (ultimately this saves the hiring manager time, because they don’t have to sift through a stack of CVs from unsuitable respondents).

- The relevance of our content means that local job seekers don’t need to worry about all the clutter and irrelevant information on generalist job boards.  They can get what they want quickly and easily from our site.

We’re going to continue to work on these points of difference, because these are critical for the longevity of our business.

There are tough times ahead – the second half of 2009 will be very challenging and 2010 may be even more so.  I am extremely confident that the problems that have beset some job boards will not impact on our business.  I am also extremely confident that CapitalJobs.com.au will emerge from the global financial crisis in a much stronger position than it was in prior to the downturn.