largest_job_boards_globally_2015

2015 Largest Job Boards Globally 30 March 2015 John Nurthen, Executive Director, Global Research [email protected]

Confidential Report – NOT for Distribution | ©2014 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

Global

Title Goes Here

Confidential Report – NOT for Distribution | ©2015 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. 2

2015 Largest Job Boards Globally | 30 March 2015

Key Findings:

Job Boards have their origins in the very early days of the internet but revenue models have evolved

from the late 1980s and now go much further than the classic job advertising model.

Job Boards themselves have also evolved and successful new-style Job Boards include job aggregators

and job distributors as well as the social media giant LinkedIn.

Our report lists the largest 25 Job Boards by 2014 annual revenue. The constituents of our ranking

have a combined revenue of almost USD 8 billion.

The very largest Job Boards have an international presence and enjoy market leading positions in a

number of countries, but there are still many strong national players that dominate local markets and

also niche Job Boards that effectively target specific worker-types.

The largest Job Board provider globally is Recruit, a Japanese HR company that also operates a

number of important staffing firms. Recruit’s most prominent international Job Board brand is Indeed

although the company also operates a number of other important Asian Job Boards.

LinkedIn is 2nd in our ranking, while Monster completes the top three.

This list will help you understand the structure and size of the marketplace. Recognise how the players are positioned. Identify suppliers, competitors, suppliers, or M&A targets.

2015 Largest Job Boards Globally



What is a Job Board?

Staffing Industry Analysts’ Lexicon of Contingent Workforce Related Terms defines Job Boards in the following way:

Job Boards — Internet-based aggregations of either local, national, or international job offerings. In most instances, employers pay up-front to advertise these job offerings, which differs from the cost model of Employment Agencies that charge a fee only when a Candidate has been successfully placed. Job Boards sometimes refer to themselves as Job Portals or Career Portals.

This definition mostly highlights the contrast in the revenue model between a Job Board and an Employment Agency and, indeed, the up-front payment to advertise job offerings is a key feature of what truly defines a Job Board. However, the definition does not address the full revenue streams of a typical Job Board, nor would this definition capture the business models of a number of newer providers who appear in this Job Board Landscape.

A website listing a number of job vacancies is not necessarily a Job Board. Employers, especially large ones, will list vacancies on their own corporate sites and social media pages, while staffing agencies will also promote their clients’ vacancies on their websites (for instance www.randstad.com lists over 80,000 global temporary and permanent vacancies). There are also numerous free online sources where jobs might be displayed. However, in these examples, the end-user is not paying a fee to advertise the vacancy and, while the jobseeker may not discern the difference, to fit our definition, a Job Board must combine the facility to advertise jobs with a relevant pricing model.

Aside from charging clients to advertise jobs, many contemporary Job Boards will also charge a license fee to clients to access and proactively search their database of registered job applicants. This is now an important revenue stream for many Job Boards. LinkedIn goes one step further and allows companies to search passive candidates via its extensive global business network – professionals who are not actively looking for a job but who might be persuaded if the right opportunity comes their way.

Many Job Boards have other complementary revenue streams:-

Candidate-pay models are less common but

not unusual (see Climber, Doostang, The

Blue Line, etc). This normally takes the form

of a membership fee and/or a fee to

provide better visibility. However,

additional jobseeker services may also be

offered:

o Job hunting guides

o Résumé writing services

Many Job Boards will offer additional

website advertising to their clients; such as

banners, buttons, tile ads, etc.

Additional charges may be levied for

enhanced employer profiles

Some Job Boards offer targeted candidate

eBlasts

Newsletter advertising is another option

Multiposting

Where such revenue is complementary, we have included it within the revenue estimates in our rankings, even though they may not be regarded as core Job Board services.

Many Job Boards have other complementary revenue streams:-

Candidate-pay models are less common

but not unusual (see Climber, Doostang,

The Blue Line, etc). This normally takes

the form of a membership fee and/or a

fee to provide better visibility. However,

additional jobseeker services may also be

offered:

o Job hunting guides

o Resume writing services

Many Job Boards will offer additional

website advertising to their clients such as

banners, buttons, tile ads, etc.

Additional charges may be levied for

enhanced employer profiles

Some Job Boards offer targeted candidate

eBlasts

Newsletter advertising is another option

Multiposting

Where such revenue is complementary, we have included it within the revenue estimates in our rankings even though they may not be regarded as core Job Board services.



What is a Job Board? (continued)

However, where additional revenue streams are clearly delineated and separate, we have excluded them. For instance; the offline advertising revenue of Job Boards owned by media companies, or the staffing and other unrelated revenues of Japanese HR behemoth, Recruit (owner of Indeed, etc).

New business models are also challenging the traditional perception of Job Boards. Social media sites like LinkedIn are the most obvious and prominent example. But other examples would be career communities; such as Glassdoor; job aggregators such as Indeed, Simply Hired, CareerJet, Jobsafari, and JobRobot; or job distributors such as ZipRecruiter, Workable, BambooHR, and Jobvite.

Job Aggregators and Job Distributors

Job aggregators are metasearch Job Boards that aggregate job postings from other sites. Just like a typical search engine, these sites will compile jobs that they have scraped from other third-party websites and match the skill and location to jobseekers’ requirements. Where traditional Job Boards charge their customers to post ads, job aggregators can’t do this as they are only linking to the original ad. Instead, they will rely on supporting advertising revenue from Google Adsense whose ads will pop up next to the jobseekers’ search results. Some job aggregators do work on a paid-inclusion basis; where Job Boards, websites, or recruiters pay a small fee to have their jobs included, or where they pay to have vacancies enhanced or promoted in search results. Another type of job aggregator is the pay-per-click model, whereby jobs are listed for free but recruiters are charged every time a jobseeker clicks on a job listing.

Job distributors provide a convenient platform for hirers to advertise jobs on multiple syndicated Job Boards for a monthly fee based on an agreed number of job slots. As examples, ZipRecruiter posts jobs to over 50 leading Job Boards & social networks including Monster, Indeed, and Craigslist; while Workable offers multiple posting to a number of free Job Boards and discounted pricing (up to 60%) for posting on ‘premium’ Job Boards.

While they may offer alternative variations to the classic Job Board model, for the purposes of this report, we have included both job aggregators and job distributors in our analysis.

Job Boards and Big Media

As traditional classified advertising revenue began to be eroded by online advertising, many media firms looked to capture a new revenue stream by investing in Job Boards. Today, a number of leading Job Boards have larger media organisations as their ultimate parent company; such as Gannett Media (CareerBuilder), Axel Springer (Stepstone, TotalJobs, etc.), Le Figaro Group (Keljob, Cadremploi), and Schibstead Media Group (Infojobs, etc.).

Gannet Media recently announced that it plans to spin off all its digital media and broadcasting businesses by mid-2015. CareerBuilder is the most significant brand in this portfolio but the digital business consists of several other well positioned and growing online companies, such as www.cars.com.

In certain circumstances, these media-owned Job Boards allow recruiters to advertise their jobs in both digital and print formats though often the digital and print parts of these organisations are managed quite independently.



What is a Job Board (continued)

Job Boards and Staffing Firms

Job Boards regard staffing firms as one of their key customer segments – in fact, for many it is their most important customer segment.

While a number of ambitious staffing firms did attempt to create their own Job Boards when the internet first started to gain traction in the early 1990s, many initiatives failed and died. Although superficially the services appear to be quite complementary, there are few, if any, real synergies between staffing firms and Job Boards. Today, these services continue to be offered quite separately even where a staffing firm is the ultimate parent of the Job Board; such as Recruit, the fifth largest staffing firm in the world and also top of our global Job Board ranking; and Reed, a long-established UK staffing firm that operates a highly visible UK Job Board, www.reed.co.uk.

There is good reason for this separation. Staffing firms are naturally reluctant to advertise their jobs on a Job Board controlled by one of their competitors and, therefore, staffing-owned Job Boards can be disadvantaged among this customer-base compared to non-staffing affiliated Job Boards.

Regional strength

The very largest Job Boards have an international presence and enjoy leading market positions in a number of countries, but there are still many strong national players that can dominate local markets such as:-

Headhunter - Russia

104 Corporation - Taiwan

Info Edge (Naukri) - India

Workopolis - Canada

Navent (Bumeran) - Brazil and other Latin American markets

Bayt - Middle East

A ‘confederation’ of 37 strong regional players have come together to create The Network (www.the-network.com) where multinational clients can leverage their scale and more conveniently negotiate contracts with multiple local partners (in as many as 132 countries), as an alternative to the deals offered by the large multinational Job Boards.

Sector strength

Most Job Boards cover multiple job disciplines but many are focused on a particular sector or sectors.

Niche Job Boards proliferated particularly after the dot.com bubble bust in 2000. The leading niche Job Board, Dice, however has much longer provenance and is in 8th place in our global ranking (see following pages). The company addresses the need for technology and engineering professionals in the US.

Specialist websites address all manner of disciplines; such as exec-appointments.com (senior executives), efinancialcareers.com (finance), healthjobsnationwide.com (healthcare and biotech/pharma), tlnt.com (HR/talent management), simplymarketingjobs.com (marketing/advertising/design/digital), nature.com (agriculture/fishing/forestry), jobsterne.de (catering) and a whole plethora of others.

Some niche job boards target particular groups of jobseekers; such as collegerecruiter.com (recent graduates), 6figurejobs (highly-paid professionals), evenbreak.co.uk (people with disabilities), employ.rhexpat.com (expatriate workers), and seniorjobbank.org (older workers).

To identify niche job boards, a good resource is: www.jobboardfinder.net

http://www.jobboardfinder.net/



Job Boards: The Early Years

As they are now such an established part of the recruitment eco-system, it is easy to forget that Job Boards have only been around for the past 25 years.

Job listings appeared at a very early stage of the internet’s development in the late 1980s as part of the Electronic Bulletin Board System (or BBS). While BBS seems quite primitive now, it enabled those with modems to communicate with each other for the very first time.

Evolving out of this primeval technology swamp, Dice lays claim to being the first Job Board, given the company was founded in 1990 in San Francisco, although the URL, www.dice.com, didn’t come along until 1996.

Another pioneer was The Online Career Center (OCC) which was founded in 1992 by Bill Warren, an ex-HR executive who went on to become President of Monster.

Monster was launched in 1994 as The Monster Board by Jeff Taylor and quickly became one of the most recognisable dot.com brands. The company cemented its reputation when it ran a successful Superbowl ad in 1999 and then went on to absorb other leading Job Board brands such as OCC and HotJobs in order to achieve a market-leading position.

Another early mover was Netstart, which was founded in 1995 and claims to be the “first browser-based recruiting application to accelerate the hiring process”. By 1998, Netstart was rebranded as CareerBuilder and; with an IPO in 1999, investment from Knight Ridder and the Tribune Company, and the acquisition of Headhunter in 2001, became firmly established as one of the industry’s leading players.

Outside of the US, other pioneers included Jobserve (originally formed in the UK in 1993 as a ‘jobs-by-email’ service), Stepstone (launched in Germany in 1996), and SEEK (founded in Australia in 1997).

The beginning of the 21st Century saw the dot.com bust take the shine off of a number of online brands and established Job Boards began to be challenged and squeezed by a profusion of niche job sites and job aggregators (or metasearch engines) who scraped jobs from multiple sites. Indeed, now the leading job aggregator was founded in 2004.

Monster’s 1999 Superbowl ad, “When I grow up”, marked a coming of age for the young job board industry



Size of the Global Job Board Market

Estimates from third-parties for the size of the global Job Board market vary from USD 3 billion to USD 27 billion. The top figure in this range is LinkedIn own assessment of its “addressable market”.

As part of this research project we identified large Job Boards with a combined revenue in excess of USD 7.8 billion so we can easily discount the lower of the third-party estimates. The global market has a very long tail of small providers making any realistic valuation of the market very difficult to estimate; however, we believe that a figure somewhere between USD 10 billion to USD 20 billion would seem sensible.

Even if we accept the larger market estimate from LinkedIn, the global Job Board market would still be less than a tenth of the size of the global staffing market (USD 404 billion).



Largest Job Boards Globally

Based on 2014 annual revenue, the largest Job Board provider globally is Recruit, a Japanese HR company that also operates a number of important staffing firms. Recruit’s most prominent international Job Board brand is Indeed although the company also operates a number of other Asian Job Boards; such as Rikunabi, Work in Japan, Hatalike, Minna-no-Kyujinban, Travaille, and From A Navi. With an estimated USD 2,253 million 2014 annual revenue derived from the “HR Media Segment”, the company is comfortably ahead of other Job Boards in our ranking and, following a very successful IPO at the end of 2014, is aggressively acquisitive.

LinkedIn reported USD 1,328 “talent solutions” revenue for 2014 of which 60% is derived from the US, 25% from EMEA, 8% from APAC, and 8% from ‘Other Americas’. The company has seen exponential growth in its revenues since 2005 when it started to charge for job listings and premium accounts, thereby enabling employers and staffing agencies to mine its extensive business database.

Third in our ranking is Monster. In 2006, Monster was one of the 20 most visited websites in the world. However, the company has experienced some difficulties in recent times; including a failed attempt to sell the business in 2012 and the departure of CEO, Sal Iannuzzi, amidst a 4% reduction in annual revenue and 7% reduction in the company’s workforce in 2014. Despite these problems, the company remains a significant global Job Board and is seeking to restore its former glory under the direction of a new CEO.

With 2014 annual revenues of USD 713 million, Gannett Media is the fourth largest Job Board globally based on its ownership of CareerBuilder. Gannett Media is a large broadcast, digital, mobile, and print media conglomerate that publishes USA Today. Founded in the US, Careerbuilder now operates in 24 countries. In 2011, CareerBuilder acquired JobsCentral in Singapore and JobScout24 in Germany. In 2014, they acquired UK multi-poster Broadbean. They also operate a number of niche job boards; such as Sologig, Headhunter, CareerRookie, MiracleWorkers, WorkinRetail, and JobsInMotion. At the end of 2014, it was announced that Gannett Media will spin-off its digital media and broadcasting businesses, including Careerbuilder, by mid-2015.

Completing the top five Job Boards globally is Melbourne-headquartered, SEEK with 2014 annual revenues of USD 688. With a dominant position in the Australian market, SEEK also own a number of prominent regional Job Boards including Zhaopin (China), JobsDB and JobStreet (SE Asia), Brasil Online (Brazil), and OCC (Mexico).

Our complete ranking of the Top 20 Job Boards by 2014 annual revenue follows on page 9. Of course, any ranking by revenue is not necessarily indicative of the quality of service you may receive.

Job Boards vary in their degree of financial transparency. Some are publicly-listed and their revenues are a matter of public record, some are private firms that have disclosed their revenues, while others do not disclose any financial information at all. Our ranking is, therefore, a mixture of known data and our own estimates. We have done our best to ensure any such estimates are reasonable but would be happy to correct any of them in light of further information.

Currencies have been translated into USD at the average annual rates for 2014 published on www.oanda.com

http://www.oanda.com/



Rank Parent Company Main Job Board Brands if different from (or in addition to) Parent Company brand

Country HQ Website 2014 Annual Revenue (USD million)

Listed?

1 Recruit Indeed, Rikunabi, Work in Japan, Hatalike, Minna-no-Kyujinban, Travaille and From A Navi

Japan www.recruit-rgf.com 2,253 Y

2 LinkedIn US www.linkedin.com 1,328 y

3 Monster CareerOne, Jobpilot, Workania, jobs.cz, profesia US www.monster.com 770 y

4 Gannett Media1 CareerBuilder, JobsCentral, JobScout24, Broadbean, Sologig, Headhunter, CareerRookie, MiracleWorkers, WorkinRetail and JobsInMotion

US www.gannett.com 713 y

5 SEEK Zaopin, JobsDB, JobStreet, Brasil Online and OCC Australia www.seek.com.au 688 y

6 Axel Springer Stepstone, Totaljobs, Jobsite, Saongroup (IrishJobs and ChinaHR) and YourCareer Group

Germany www.axelspringer.de/en 304 y

7 Craigslist US www.craigslst.org 265

8 Dice eFinancialCareers, AllHealthcareJobs, Rigzone, Geeknet, Workdigital, IT JobBoard, OnTarget Jobs and Oil Careers

US www.dice.com 263 y

9 51Job China www.51job.com 203 y

10 Mail.ru2 Headhunter Russia www.hh.ru 197 Y

11 CareerNet Corp Albaro, Joblink and Noblealbacareer Korea www.careenet.co.kr 110

12 104 Corporation Taiwan www.104corp.com 104 Y

13 Schibsted Media Group Infojobs Norway (but most Job Board revenue derived from Spain)

www.schibsted.com 98 Y

14 The Ladders US www.theladders.com 86

15 Info Edge Naukri and Naukri Gulf India www.infoedge.in 72 Y

16 Torstar Corp & Power Corp of Canada (50/50 Joint Venture)

Workopolis Canada www.workopolis.com 62 Y

=17 Groupe Dassault (Le Figaro Group)

Keljob and Cadremploi France www.lefigaro.fr 50 Y

=17 Zip Recruiter www.ziprecruiter.com 50

19 Navent3 Bumeran, Konzerta, Multitrabajos, Universobit Execuzone and Laborum Brazil www.navent.com 42

20 Beyond US www.beyond.com 39

21 Jobindex Jobindex, Jobsafari, Stepstone Denmark and it-jobbanck Denmark www.jobindex.dk 36 y

22 Groupe Télégramme Regionsjob, Pacajob, Nordjob, Estjob, Sudouestjob, Rhonealpesjob.com, ParisJob and CentreJob

France www.regionsjob.com 33

23 Glassdoor4 US www.glassdoor.com 31

24 Jobs2Careers US www.jobs2careers.com 24

25 SimplyHired US www.simplyhired.com 20

Largest Job Boards Globally by 2014 Annual Revenue



Largest Job Boards Globally – Notes to our Top 25 Ranking

1In 2014, it was announced that Gannett Media will spin off the publishing and broadcasting/digital parts of its business. Careerbuilder and the media giant’s other Job Board brands will become part of the broadcasting/digital business, which is yet to be named. The spin-off is expected to be completed in mid-2015.

2Mail.ru Group, the giant Russian internet holding, sold Headhunter for USD 210 million to a consortium of mainly Russian investors under the umbrella company Elbrus Capital. The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2015. It is claimed that Headhunter is the number one online recruitment classifieds platform in Russia measured by both revenue and traffic.

3On 6 March 2015, Navent acquired Dridco (owner of Zonajobs and Zonaprop in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Chile). Both Navent and Dridco have a mixture of Job Board and real estate revenue.

4It is no secret that Glassdoor is planning a public listing at some stage and it is possible that this could be scheduled for 2015.

The majority (15) of the companies in our ranking are publicly listed though many are subsidiaries of larger companies.

North American companies dominate the ranking with 10 Job Boards headquartered in the US and one in Canada. Six are headquartered in Europe and another six in Asia. Only one Job Board (Navent) is headquartered in Latin America.

There were a few prominent Job Boards that we found it impossible to calculate a revenue estimate. While we don’t believe any of these companies is large enough to appear in the top half of our ranking, they could feasibly make it into the lower half of the top 25. We would be happy to include any of these companies in light of further information:

– reed.co.uk UK – bayt.com Middle East – careerjunction.co.za South Africa – JobRobot.de Germany



About Staffing Industry Analysts

Staffing Industry Analysts is the global advisor on contingent work. Known for its independent and

objective insights, the company’s proprietary research, award-winning content, data, support tools,

publications, and executive conferences provide a competitive edge to decision-makers who supply and

buy temporary staffing. In addition to temporary staffing, Staffing Industry Analysts also covers related

staffing sectors. The company provides accreditation with its Certified Contingent Workforce Professional

(CCWP) program. Founded in 1989 and acquired by Crain Communications Inc. in 2008, the company is

headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England.

Independent Advisory

We provide practical, actionable, forward-thinking advice to help our clients develop their business and

consistently treat them with the utmost respect, honesty and care. In our role as advisors we maintain

strict confidentiality.

We deliver research and editorial judgments that are completely objective and independent of financial

considerations.

For more information: www.staffingindustry.com

http://www.staffingindustry.com/

largest_job_boards_globally_2015

Documents