Trademe Jobs has hit the market in NZ with a real roar on their first day offering job postings for $25 until Thursday night. On the TV One News tonight the GM for New Zealand's current number one marketshare job board, Seek, put on a brave face and said that price wasn't their only focus. But I know they will be worried. Seek isn't as user friendly as they like to think they are. And their continual price increases coupled with lower effectiveness of their listings has many advertisers looking elsewhere. Trademe also have such huge reach with their traffic that they represent a challenge that Seek have never had to face in the New Zealand market.
IT jobs is a big part of Seek and they currently have 2,800 jobs online for all of New Zealand. In one day Trademe has already added 357 IT jobs. In comparison JobUniverse which is a dedicated IT job board only has 632 after being in the market for as long as I can remember (hardly a "universe" is it). Search4jobs which is apparently the "2nd place" job board in the market has 680 IT jobs advertised at the moment. While I think Seek might catch a cold from Trademe's aggressive entry to the marketplace there is a real chance that Search4jobs and JobUniverse will get terminal pneumonia.
I couldn't agree with you more. Last weekend my non-IT brother and I were talking about how much seek sucks. Seek will have to improve, or it'll be gone in 18 months (if that).
Posted by: Tim Haines | Wednesday, August 09, 2006 at 06:16 PM
Wouldn't it be interesting if someone from Seek actually got on here and left there point of view....
Posted by: Steven Kempton | Wednesday, August 09, 2006 at 08:21 PM
Hi Steven. Thanks for your comments. From our perspective it's great to get Trade Me Jobs launched. Now the real fun starts. We will be watching closely to ensure that it is as effective as we can make it for both advertisers and job seekers.
Posted by: Rowan Simpson | Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 01:17 PM
Hi Rowan thanks for the comment. This is what I like about Trademe, the fact that you are out there checking to see what people are saying. It will be interesting to see how you tweak the site as it moves on.
Posted by: Steven Kempton | Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 04:10 PM