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Sci Tech
Where cyber evolution meets `rojgaar'
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Few of the changes brought about by the Internet have been as dramatic or have impacted more lay users, than the business of matching jobs with job seekers. Anand Parthasarathy looks at recent developments that underline the promi se and the perils of online employment services
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IF IT'S Friday, it must be `Employment News'. If it's Saturday, it must be UPSC.
Those who went through their job hunting phase in the decades 1970s to 1990s, will need no further explanation.
Friday was the day the government's weekly magazine of job advertisements, `Rojgaar Samachar' in Hindi as well as avatars in various other languages including English hit the news stands, nationwide. One queued up early at one's neighbourhood kiosk; in a small town one went to the railway station and picked up a copy from the platform bookstall as soon as the parcel office delivered the copies.
Saturday was the day almost all newspapers carried the advertisement of the Union Public Service Commission.
And for those whose job search extended to the private sector, there were special days when different dailies came out with their `opportunities' pages.
`Those were the days, my friend', but it was a cumbersome system, hardly worthy of nostalgia. Now as thousands of young Indian job seekers have found, there is a faster, easier, way to apply for jobs with most major employers, except a few diehard government departments.
Both job seekers and human resource hunters have taken with enthusiasm to the new online resources for matching the right person with the right vocation.
According to Forrester Research, the online recruitment business which was worth $ 500 million in 2000 is set to explode into a $ 1.7 billion opportunity by the end of this year.
In India alone the major online jobsites claim to display between 40,000 and 60,000 jobs at any given time and report anything from 20 million to 60 million page views in a month.
Those registered to seek jobs number 10 lakh plus with many sites. And employers are not complaining either. Most job sites offer a complete service, formulating the job requirement, posting it online, collating the results, even short listing the aspirants for an interview.
Naukri.com, jobsahead.com and jobnetonline.com are among the better known Indian job sites. Jobstreet.com is a service that is also strong in Singapore and places East. All of them have established good client bases among the major Indian employers and which is better really depends on your particular qualification niche.
The global leader in the online jobs business is generally reckoned to be the Maynard, Massachusetts based Monster.com and it is two years this month since it established an Indian presence. Monster claims over 43 million hits a month worldwide and has registered 20 lakh Indian user sessions in a typical month. India is number one for Monster in Asia-Pacific and in recent weeks it has slashed the cost of creating and sending your express resume to up to Rs. 1200.
Like most job sites, it has a slew of free services but charges for sharp-focussing your application to a few hundred employers.
Doubling its India business is Monster's current aim — or rather doubling the industry's yardstick which it calls `career eyeball minutes' explains Mr Arun Tadanki, Monster's Country Manager for India.
However the global enthusiasm for seeking jobs online has attracted a few rogues and charlatans. Last week the company sent an email to every registered user warning that there have been attempts to extract confidential details from job applicants by unscrupulous agencies posing as employers. Many of these fake jobs are ostensibly located in Europe. Monster says it tries to screen job postings on its sites but in a highly automated environment a few crooks can slip through the net.
Clearly the promise of online job hunting comes with a few perils — and in the untried waters of cyberspace, there are as yet few rules and no clear concept of ethics.
The moral for the jobseekers who are attracted to the ease and (let's face it) the cheapness of sending multiple applications electronically is: go ahead, but establish contact offline with a prospective employer before parting with crucial personal data.
Don't give information that an employer should not require till he actually employs you like your Income Tax PAN number or ration card details.
The other interesting development in recent weeks is something that can happen only in India. Naukri.com has come full circle and has just started a print edition of its job advertisements — a Rs. 20 weekly!
The rationale? ``Only 0.5 per cent of Indians have access to Internet'' says Naukri's CEO Sanjeev Balakrishnan, "The aim of naukri.com (the magazine) is to reach out to the thousands of Indians without Net access or with poor connectivity''.
In any case sites like naukri.com and jobsahead.com already had a printed presence in the form of special sections in a couple of business magazines.
Now it seems a unique Indian `fusion' of online and traditional job hunting is evolving. Another online service, jobnetonline.com also has a print version called Jobnet.
And why not? It takes a shrewd Indian to realise that the Net is all very well; but a half way solution might just be what the `aam janatha' wants. Or maybe it is because online or offline, `we are like this only'.
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