Jobsahead buyout buoys monster.com mart share

Monster.com, an internet job portal, has increased its share in the online recruitment market to nearly 60 per cent against 20 per cent last year.

"The steep rise has come about as a result of acquisition of JobsAhead.com in June 2004," said Arun Tadanki, MD, Monster Asia. JobsAhead had a market share of approximately 40 per cent.

Monster is focusing on expanding its sales and service network, which now spans across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

On the success rate of applicants using the portal, Marcel Legrand, senior vice-president, Monster Worldwide said, "While we cannot track how many people get placed (as we cannot track the results of the interaction between the job-seeker and the employer), rough estimates suggest that 1-2 per cent of the applications could result in successful hires."

While the portal caters to jobs at all levels, about 66 per cent of the jobs are related to junior management category.

The growth of internet recruitment in India, has been driven by the rapid rise in the internet user population which is estimated to touch 4 crore by Dec 2005.

"The internet user base at 4 per cent of the population appears small but compared with the combined readership of all the English dailies in India which stands at 1.9 per cent, it is substantial", Tadanki added.

Citing the hundred million newspaper business as their toughest competitor, he further said internet recruitment market is 32 per cent of the newspaper recruitment advertising market, which stands at 500 crore.

Legrand said that the job market in India has one of the highest growth rate in Asia-Pacific and compared with China, has more potential.

"A million new internet users are added every month in India which makes it a very important market for monster.com," he said.

According to Tadanki, in 2005 alone, about 1.5 crore job applications have been made through monster sites in India. Of this, about 1.5 lakh applicants have found jobs.