It seems like ClickJobs is at a fork in the road? An excerpt from a post by Nikhil Pahwa from Medianama:

Consim Info (Bharatmatrimony) is looking to raise money for ClickJobs, and is currently on the lookout for a strategic partner with deep pockets; $3 Million is petty change, and CEO Murugavel Janakiraman says that kind of money is not sufficient to be on top.

They might seek a different business model, and Muruga denies rumours that the site is on the verge of being shut down.

Interesting, I wondered when the flow of new job portals would slow down. When I read about Shine, my reaction (which was probably the same reaction as a lot of people) was ‘Oh my god, another one?’.

It will be interesting to see how this one pans out. I’d be keen to see how they spend their $3mn if they get it. I hope its not just further advertising - if it is, I’m not sure they’ll be able to beat the likes of Shine and TimesJobs at this game - all HT / Times have to do is beef up on print advertising, which is much easier since the real cost of this for them is zero - all they have to do is print a few extra pages now and then in their newspapers.

I do hope that they come up with a more remarkable business model / value adding services - at least more innovative than the standard ‘resume services’. Right now I’m not sure they’re the ‘best’ or #1 at anything - at least nothing that they’re shouting out about from the rooftops (their tag line is ‘India’s premium job portal’ - not exactly a crowd puller).

Another route that they can explore is looking focusing all their energies on one sector. The most obvious one that comes to mind is technology - but perhaps Naukri etc. already have too large a critical mass in that sector to be beaten. Maybe Clickjobs can go up the value chain - not really look at freshers at all - but cater specifically for more senior staff. Perhaps they can strive to offer the best pre-screening services in the market? This would definitely be more labour intensive, but would probably command substantial fees, depending on how good they are. On the flip side, it could consider going down the Vault.com route - offering value added services for the job seeker such as firm rankings and detailed profiles, interview advice and training (online/offline) etc. Whatever they do - I think they have to break away from commonplace services.

I read about LinkedIn’s search for a strategic partner as well. I don’t know if they’ll fork over the $3mn but I imagine that there are significant synergies here? Perhaps Consim drive its more technologically adept customers to set up profiles on LinkedIn, in return for targetted advertising of jobs?

What do you think? How can ClickJobs innovate?

Suggested reading: Medianama’s interview with the Consim CEO on Clickjobs

Tags: ClickJobs, Consim, Funding, LinkedIn, Shine, Startups, Strategic Partnerships, TimesJobs, Vault

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