I also have no inside knowledge of the actual figures but take a wild leap of logic and assume it was not making a profit and presumably was showing very little sign that it would produce the requisite margin for the company going forward.
So my view is
1. Never liked the JobJourneyNorthWest geographical position. If its a local site then it needs to be local and most recruitment is city/county based. The region stretched from Cheshire to Cumbria and was up against strong Manchester, Liverpool, Preston competition. A North West job board had the feel of something invented from London. (to me anyway)
2. Connected to the point above - but Manchester has just about become the most competitive territory in online this year and this amount of competition affects yields and client retention rate as people go from one trail to another to another.
3. What does a network of local sites adds up to what? A big national site like.......TotalJobs. And what tends to happen in many companies is that someone from the outside (or inside) looks at the numbers and thinks - Blimey we are having to put this amount of resource and effort in to make not a lot of money - what would be the result of diverting all (or some of) this resource to our successful highly profitable national Job Board? Coincidentally there are now TotalJobs sales staff in all key regions which i guess made the situation even more striking.
4. its the economy stupid - lets not be naive - its tough out there - and launching a site is twice as hard in these delicate economic conditions. Patience and long term investment can be thin on the ground in harsher economic times.
5. RBI sell off - i believe that as the company is made ready for sell off that they have conducted a purge of products that do not minimum contribution levels. Not sure about this point - it made be a convenient excuse as if a product showed enough profit potential - it would add value to any acquisition.
Anyway - it did not work out - no shame in that and i applaud their efforts.
Good Luck to all involved in the future.
Given point 1, i'd be interested to know your view on the prospects of the jobs sites Bauer is running alongside its radio stations.
Hi Matthew
Have to declare an interest in that i know the people behind these launches even better than the TotalJobs people. I think that they are based around natural urban recruitment centres - initially Manchester, Preston but then sheffield, Newcastle etc. This is absolutely a positive. The radio stations involvement can give sense of relevance, community to the intended audience/users and a huge marketing push which is massively helpful. However i do not think radio is a great direct response generator for recruitment so the sites have to prosper as indvidual entities - distinct from the parent station and this has to happen quite fast. They also did not have much (any?) job board knowledge in the business but were astute enough to get that in - which if you compare to friendsreunited jobs and other flops has to be a good thing. What do you think?
This is interesting with the progress Northcliffe and Jobsite are making with local sites and the increasing strength of good specialist sites. I had always assumed that the broadbased jobsites would have to push towards the local market because specialist sites would dominate the professional jobs market where applicants would move location for the right career opportunity.
Looks like it is more likely to be poor execution than the wrong direction.
Now Gannett has the controlling shareholding in Careerbuilder in the states and the biggest engagement of the fish4 shareholders through Newsquest. does this mean some interesting changes amongst the generalist jobsite brands coming up.
It seems to me Totaljobs has to tackle the local market it will be interesting to see how they do this now.
Agree with you Dominic. Radio advertising is very powerful but i'd be intrigued to know how this has translated to response (and if they are attempting to measure this) and how much of that push continues to be sustained through the broadcast channels.
Also looking forward to the impending launch of Kerrang! jobs. :-)
yes teh market size of kerrang!jobs will be interesting. I kind of think tis local vs national niche vs general can sometimes massively miss the point. A national (in job board terms not newspaper) is merely a successful aggregator of local jobs and an aggregator of IT, Acc, Eng jobs. I am aware this is a gross oversimplification. But as we both know the "local" market represents 50%+ of total cash in rec adv market and the general boards need to make sure they have a strong foothold in it.
Dominic - you missed two very important regions for job seekers - jobs in swindon and Bracknell are missing
Dominic Sumners
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Last login: 15 Apr 2009
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