New recruits

The staff of online recruitment companies may soon be in need of jobs themselves. Niveen Wahish reports on the efforts of online recruitment companies to stay afloat in times of economic trouble
When CareerEgypt.com started business in 1999, it was the star of the market. Founded by four young graduates, the spotlight was on the new online recruitment company. But two years on, the lights are spread a little thinner. At least four other Egyptian companies are offering a similar service. These companies not only compete with each other, but also with Arab sites, such as Bayt.com, which target the region as a whole. Being first, CareerEgypt enjoyed the benefit of a head start in a virgin market. But others coming later may not find things so easy.
CV Town is one of the arrivistes. Still in the making, the site, owned by human resource company, People Plus, is expected to debut early next year. But this leads to a poser: can the market take more recruitment sites? Alaa El- Ghadban, managing director of Skill- Link.com, points to the state of Texas, which, he says, is similar in size to Egypt. There, he argues, at least 600 recruitment service providers are operating, all profitably.
Others, noticing perhaps that where Egypt and Texas differ is in their economies, disagree. "The market cannot take any more copies" says Khaled Bichara, CEO of LinkDotNet, a big shareholder in Skill-Link.com. That does not mean that online opportunities in the field are gone. There are "other concepts to tackle" Bichara points out.
Those other concepts exercise Mohamed Ezzat, managing partner of People Plus. CV Town, he says, will boast a number of features that differ from those of competitors already in the market. The company plans on having all job seekers take an electronic test, providing employers with an accurate profile of applicants. Like other sites, CV Town will accept job applicants from graduates of up to five years experience, free of charge. But unlike existing sites, which either charge employers commission on successful candidates or charge an annual fee to let employers access the database and place job openings, Ezzat's site will let companies browse the database and post job openings free. The employer must merely advertise on the site each month. Ezzat is counting on his and his partners' knowledge of Egyptian companies to procure those advertisements.
For recruitment sites, knowledge of the Egyptian market is the key to success. And that knowledge comes through physical presence: an advantage Egyptian companies have over regional players. Skill-Link, for example, screens job seekers through e-mail, phone interviews and face-to-face meetings. For that, it needs to be physically available.
But that advantage cuts both ways. Many companies which started in the Egyptian market have discovered that the Egyptian market provides insufficient revenue. But moving abroad also means establishing a physical presence abroad. That is why, as Sherif El-Ghatrifi, chief operating officer of CareerEgypt.com, explains, his company, part of the larger CareerMideast portfolio, is keen to set up an office in each of the 12 countries where it offers a service. Currently, it has a physical presence only in five. "Physical presence is an advantage," says El- Ghatrifi. In his opinion, the Arab market is not mature enough for services to be fully online and customers are reluctant to subscribe to services over the Internet. Online recruitment remains "clicks and mortar."
Whether old or new, though, all the recruitment companies are competing in a tougher economic environment. Working in an industry that depends on a thriving job market, online recruitment services may be among the many victims of recession and the fallout of 11 September.
Alaa El-Ghadban notes that one company in the tourism business had 36 job vacancies posted on Skill-Link on the morning of 11 September. The following day, all were cancelled. But while tourism has suffered heavily, other sectors may prove more robust. Information technology firms, general trading companies and banks are all still hiring.
This was confirmed by Mona Ataya, vice president (marketing) for Bayt.com, a recruitment Web site which targets Gulf countries, the Levant and North Africa. "Most employers continued business as usual," she said. Though some industries such as airlines, hospitality firms and the financial industry were hit hard and froze recruitment, "this was balanced by continued aggressive hiring across many other industries such as oil and gas, engineering, government and medicine, among others," says Ataya. El-Ghatrifi of CareerEgypt.com also remarked that, while business has slowed, it has not stopped altogether. "To cut losses, employers are laying off managers who get paid more, and hiring two junior staff for less," he says.
Nonetheless, as Ahmed Badr, E- business division manager at ITWORX, a software company, puts it, "We're in the worst of times." He believes that in these conditions, no site will survive for more than six months unless the owning company has other operations or solid financials.
But while admitting that market conditions are bad, Bichara of LinkDotNet believes that efficiency and a large database will help keep customers. Moreover, El- Ghadban added that "in recruitment there is a lot of money to be made. It may be negatively affected by the overall economic performance, but it comes around."
Such views will be balm to companies like People Plus, as they ready to enter the already thronged world of online hiring.
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor