Can SimplyHired change the Australian recruitment landscape?

SimplyHired, a US based jobs aggregator, launched its Australian operations yesterday. Already 200,000 Australian jobs are listed on their site.

Jobs aggregator sites have been around since 2005, and the Australian market is well served by a mix of overseas players and local startups. Recruit.net, based in HK, is one of the first and most established companies to serve Australia. UK based Careerjet and local players like Jseekers and myspider are also gaining traction.

At the core of an aggregator’s service is collecting jobs from all over the Internet – company career portals, recruiters websites, blogs, job boards etc , and put them in one searchable database. It delivers value to job seekers by providing a one stop platform to search for jobs. Of course, not everyone like their jobs to be indexed (SEEK is an example) and debate continues on issues like copyright infringements and data ownership (more of this in a later post).

It is too early to gauge how well SimplyHired will perform in Australia. The market looks crowded. However, innovations like its jobomatic service, which allows jobs to be easily syndicated on websites and blogs, will make SimplyHired stand out from the rest. Their collaboration with Linkedin will also go down well with the Australian recruiting community who has embraced Linkedin with gusto. Besides, it is a global operation with deep pockets.

We expect job aggregators to stay, the benefits they give job seekers, convenience and unparalleled  information, is different from those offered by conventional job boards.  For employers, it means their jobs can be distributed to even more places and get more exposure.

History, however, is not kind to American companies who enters the Australian market. Monster and Hotjobs failed to make any dent in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and ultimately quit the market. Only time will tell if Simplyhired will be any different.  Watch this space.